Moi je ne sais pas. C'est quoi l'énigme de Bruxelles? Brussels raises a lot of passions in people.... mostly bad. But at the same time there's an animated counterspin to that, coming mostly from those who have had a real chance to get to know it. But there's still a lot of those who've lived there for years who hate it.
The Royal Palace: I guess its pretty nice.... but not really spectacular enough to keep people interested for long.
The stereotype is obviously that its boring and full of eurocrats. Personally I think that's idiotic, but I guess I'm sympathetic to eurocrats being essentially a eurocrat in training. Eurocrats are actually pretty interesting, educated people and one of the saving graces of the city. They come from all over and make for an unusually dynamic and mixed crowd of people...
Most of the modern EU buildings are quite hideous.
One real problem is the crime level and generally unsavoury attitude of some residents. I've never been to a city in which I knew personally of so many incidents of crime violent and otherwise. I saw several violent incidents first hand. The homeless population is fairly large and aggressive in its panhandling, and in its treatment of each other. Incidentally the police don't always help since they're quite transparently racist, as I can attest from an overheard conversation with a cabbie who they told "to learn the rules, this isn't Marrakesh anymore"...
The city is also very dirty, and run down in many parts. It smells of urine, probably the result of a dire lack of public facilities, and the generally high fees charged for them. The sidewalks are horribly uneven, not in an interesting cobble stone kind of way, but in a run down, we can't be bothered to fix them way. Its generally just not a beautiful place. It rarely grabs people at first sight in the way that many other European cities do.
The weather is terrible. That's about all that needs to be said on that file.
Other annoyances include bureaucracy, pig headedness, and baffling inefficiency on the part of any institution or business. The hospitals give you the run around, the metro closes at midnight, the police are jerks, taxes are high (but services are poor), instituions close at random times, stores and any businesses close at completely random times, officials are unhelpful, etc...
On the other hand, its not a huge city: you can easily walk anywhere in the main parts of the city within 45 minutes at most. Its easy to get to know places; there's a lot of interesting restaurants, bars, pubs, etc...; there's enough intersting parks and monuments and stuff to be fairly interesting in an indolent kind of way, though this is obviously not excellent by european standards. There's music going on all over the place. The city isn't outrageously expensive, certainly by west European standards.
Best of all, are the wide variety of neighbourhoods, that offer a vibrant street life and different things for different people. From immigrant ghettos full of markets and cheap everything, to expensive areas full of fashionable people, they offer a real variety for different moods. I really liked Louise, Étangs d'Ixelles, Most of Ixelles, Etterbeek, St. Catherine, and some of Anderlecht (though a lot of Anderlecht is in more of day trip kind of way).
I'm working on this, but
here are some pictures of Belgium, mostly from Brussels.
The pic is of Ry Guy and JBo and their reaction to Brussels after returning from Dubrovnik. In retrospect they're spoiled brats, but it does give an insight to our general attitude to the city at the time. Now we know that despite its annoyances Brussels still a great place. Its is no Dubrovnik, but we all still miss it.
