Sunday 9 September 2007

Brussels demo guide

Luxembourg Place is not large. The signal to move off from the assembly point will be stewards raising white objects in their hands at the allotted time.

Please use white cardboard for the rally cries for your signs

STOP ISLAMISATION OF EUROPE!

NO SHARIA HERE! DEMOCRACY NOT THEOCRACY!

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Good advice: Bring an umbrella. It’ll help a lot if it stats to rain hard!
After the demonstration please don’t carry your signs around in the town. You’ll easily be recognised as a participant in the demonstration.



SURVIVAL GUIDE TO BRUSSELS

USEFUL NUMBERS:

Emergencies & Ambulance 112
Police 101
Red Cross 105

Legal help: 0475 47 24 55

Are you lost during the demo: 0474 89 53 73 or 0485 52 95 05 Remember: The phones are not open before tuesday morning

We will provide you with some more numbers Monday.


FOOD:

Restaurants are generally of a high quality and reasonably priced as long as you avoid obvious tourist traps.

Budget Eating:

The best value is a chain of self-service restaurants called LUNCH GARDEN.

There’s a good one in the INNOVATION Department store in the Rue Neuve,

a pedestrian street parallel to Place de Brouckere. Go to the Lunch Garden grill

counter and they’ll cook you a steak, pork chop or chicken piece in front of you.

Can be hectic at peak hours.

The local McDonalds imitation is QUICK BURGER. They’re everywhere.

They serve wine and beer too.

The local version of KFC is HECTOR CHICKEN. There’s one on the PLACE

DE BROUCKERE (metro: Brouckere.)


Restaurants:

Steak and chips (‘steck-frites’) must be the national dish. Other local

dishes include ‘waterzooi’ (soup with chunks of chicken) and ‘carbonade’

(Beef stewed in beer.) Round off your meal with a waffle (‘gauffre’) with ice-cream

or fresh cream.

The restaurants and cafes along either side of the BOURSE (the old stock

exchange building that looks like a Greek temple) are mostly reliable and

popular with locals as well as tourists. The FALSTAFF is a traditional

place with a good reputation. A big meal around here should cost about

£10/15 a head. Check out the daily Specials (‘plat du jour’) or set menu

for bargains.

Avoid the restaurant area known as the ‘Ilot Sacre’ in the narrow

streets around the Rue des Bouchers. It’s colourful but over-priced.

The back streets around the Grand Place have lots of bars and small restaurants

too, including decent pizza places. Avoid kebab joints.

The area known as ST CATHERINE’S has more upmarket restaurants,.

many specialising in seafood.

DRINK

No lack of beers to choose from. Stella Artois, Ekla and Jupiler are popular.

Try some of the less well-known types like gueuze, lambic, kriek or ‘white

beer’ (biere blanc.)

A white coffee is a ‘café au lait’. A creamy coffee is a ‘café crème’. A latte type

milky coffee is known as a ‘lait russe’.


TRANSPORT

Brussels has a reliable transport system with a metro (underground), buses

and some remaining trams. Any journey costs 2 Euros including

changes in transit.


SAFETY

Brussels is generally pretty safe especially around the Grand Place district.

Watch out for pick pockets in tourist areas and on crowded buses and trains.

The areas around the Midi Station and North Station are best avoided at night.

Same for the area around the Botanical Gardens.

1 comment:

Brian said...

I was there observing the whole thing. My blog entry including phtots is here.

While I made some suggestions really I understand how hard it is to predict what was going to happen and to be prepared for the maximum effect.

It was a great effort overall considering the resources employed against you.