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Sometimes when I visit Belgium for the weekend and want to return to the Netherlands, I book a Flixbus from Brussels to Amsterdam. It takes just under 3 hours, about the same as a train, and is often much cheaper, and basically, it does the trick.
The buses leave from Brussel Noord station. This sounds simple enough, but in fact it's a big station with many exits and the buses actually leave from a street a few blocks away. (My main tip: leave yourself plenty of time to get there. It's all pretty easy once you get the hang of it, but the first few times can be confusing.)
Anyway, taking my own advice, I often arrive around an hour to 45 minutes early, just to be on the safe side.
And, in a way, it's kinda fascinating. I've seen:
- Low-cost buses departing to all parts of Europe - to Amsterdam, to Bilbao, to Genoa (via Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Saarbrucken and Aosta) and Warsaw (via many German cities on the way).
- With each bus pulling in, a small flurry of activity: where is it going, is it to X place or Y place, stopping at X? The Flixbus staff ask 'where are you going?' and greet regular passengers.
- A real mix of people:
- A middle-aged man with a suitcase, he looks like a businessman
- A couple, probably in their 30s, the man holding all their luggage
- A young man with his elderly grandfather, holding an old-fashioned suitcase
- People loading their luggage - sometimes simple plastic shopping bags filled with stuff
- A woman with bright red hair, wearing a large white fluffy hat with a bright red bow
- A couple, and a mother-in-law
- A lanky young Dutch guy returning after an EU event, phoning his mother to say how it went
- A woman bringing a fried chicken takeaway on board
- Sometimes whole families come along to travel themselves or to wave someone off.
I often wonder who everyone is, why they are going where they are going, why on a bus. Maybe some are young migrants, returning home via a cheap way, possibly the only way their low wages allow. Maybe they are scared of flying? An irony being that, all the while, huge planes are landing into Brussels Airport, low on their descent.
So many different stories, in just one hour. And, in my experience, when on board, everyone goes quiet, looking at their phones or falling asleep. Something we all have in common.