Belgium in Memories and Photographs just moving around

Belgium was never just one specific journey for me, nor was it a country I visited once, wrote about and then left behind. I kept returning there over many years, at very different stages of my life and for very different reasons.

Sometimes I travelled there for work connected with projects for the European Commission, sometimes for conferences, sometimes only for a very short stay between flights and meetings.

Yet even during the most demanding professional trips I usually tried to keep at least a small part of the journey for myself. I would pack my camera, stay through the weekend if possible, or simply use a free afternoon to walk through the city alone.

Looking back now, I think Brussels became one of the foreign cities in which I spent the most cumulative time outside Poland. Altogether it must have been at least two maybe closer to three months spread across many separate journeys over the years. Because of that, my memories of Belgium are layered and deeply connected with different periods of my life rather than with one single trip.

On this page you will find not only some of my personal memories connected with Belgium, but also links to many posts I have written about the country over the years.

Some of these texts are practical, others more personal, but together they create a record of a country I kept returning to again and again, sometimes for work, sometimes for photography, and very often simply out of curiosity and attachment to the atmosphere of Belgian cities.

My first visit to Belgium took place long before Poland joined the European Union, probably around 1996 or 97. At the time I had just finished university and travelled there with an international group, mostly people from Germany. Those were still the days before digital photography became common, so my visual memories from that trip are strangely incomplete. I only have a few analogue group photographs left, none of which would really fit the kind of blog I write today.

What survived much more clearly than the pictures is the atmosphere of those days – travelling across Belgium for the first time, seeing European institutions almost abstractly connected with Europe itself, discovering cities whose names I had previously known mostly from books and maps, and experiencing a completely different rhythm of life.

One of the places I remember from that first trip was Antwerp. What remained with me much more vividly was the port, because the trip was partly connected with transport and logistics, areas that later stayed with me professionally for many years. I remember visiting the enormous port installations in great detail and being fascinated by the scale of the infrastructure. At that stage of my life Antwerp existed in my memory much more as a working port city than as a tourist destination.

I also remember the hotel where we stayed, located somewhere near the diamond district. It was a fully kosher hotel and, in many ways, my first close encounter with Orthodox Jewish culture. At the time it felt completely unfamiliar and fascinating – not in the sense of sightseeing, but in the simple everyday details of the place itself, the atmosphere, the people around us and the feeling of suddenly being immersed in a cultural environment I had never experienced before.

I also vaguely remember an evening meal somewhere in Antwerp with Belgian beer and an international group of people whose faces I can no longer fully reconstruct. That is perhaps what makes old journeys so strange after many years. Some things disappear completely, while tiny fragments remain almost untouched – the atmosphere of a restaurant, the sound of conversations in different languages, the feeling of being abroad for the first time in a more adult and independent way. Belgium still belonged then to a slightly distant Western Europe that felt much less accessible than it does today.

Years later I returned to Antwerp during one of my longer stays in Brussels. By then my relationship with Belgian cities had changed completely. I travelled differently, spent time alone, walked endlessly with a camera and observed cities far more carefully than before. While wandering through the streets and taking photographs I suddenly recognised one particular street almost instinctively. For a brief moment I realised that I had already walked there more than a decade earlier. It was one of those rare moments when memory returns unexpectedly through architecture and urban space rather than through deliberate recollection. Until then I had thought that I barely remembered Antwerp at all.

Bruges left a completely different impression on me. During my first visit the city practically disappeared behind rain. We took a small boat trip through the canals and I remember feeling genuinely frustrated because the weather made it impossible to properly look at the city, let alone photograph it. At the time I was still using analogue film and could not simply take hundreds of pictures without thinking about cost or limitations. What remained from that day were mostly blurred memories of wet streets, grey water, raincoats and the feeling that such a beautiful place had somehow escaped me.

When I returned to Bruges years later during one of my stays in Brussels almost on impulse, I bought a ticket for one of the small tourist buses that drive through the city with a guide explaining its history and landmarks along the way. Normally I rarely do things like that, especially when travelling alone with the intention of simply walking around and taking photographs. Yet this time I was genuinely glad I did. Listening to the guide allowed me to notice details and places I would probably have overlooked otherwise, and it gave me a different perspective on the city beyond simply photographing its streets and façades. Later I returned to several of those places on foot with my camera, already carrying fragments of stories and history connected with them.

What fascinated me about Bruges most was not only the obvious beauty of the medieval centre, but also the way contemporary architecture had been integrated into the old urban fabric. Bruges is often presented almost like a preserved historical stage set, yet what impressed me was precisely the fact that it still functioned as a living city rather than merely a postcard for tourists.

Ghent perhaps surprised me most immediately of all the Belgian cities I visited. I still remember stepping out of the tram and suddenly seeing towers, churches and monumental buildings rising dramatically above the streets. My first spontaneous thought was that Ghent looked like a medieval Manhattan. There was something unexpectedly vertical and powerful about the cityscape, something that made the city feel both historic and monumental at the same time. It was one of those very rare travel moments when a city creates an instant emotional reaction before you even properly begin exploring it.

In Ghent I took advantage of the fact that the historic centre is crossed by tram lines. I simply bought a ticket and kept hopping on and off the trams, getting out after one stop, walking for a while with my camera and then catching another tram further along. It turned out to be a surprisingly good way of exploring the city. Thanks to that, even within a relatively short amount of time, I managed to see several different parts of the old town.

Brussels itself became a completely separate chapter of my life. I started returning there regularly many years after my first Belgian journey, already as part of my professional work connected with European institutions. Sometimes I stayed only briefly, sometimes nearly two weeks. Occasionally my schedule was exhausting and I spent entire days working in offices, meetings and international environments where there was hardly any time left for anything else. On such evenings I would simply return to my apartment, make dinner and rest. Yet there were also trips when I had free weekends, half-days without meetings or even several free days between assignments. Those were the moments when Brussels became mine.

Over time I always began staying in the same apartment building. Even though I rented different flats within it, the building itself became familiar. After enough visits I no longer felt like a tourist moving randomly through the city. I knew the streets, shortcuts, tram routes and rhythms of that neighbourhood by heart. Brussels slowly stopped being simply a destination and became one of those recurring cities that quietly weave themselves into everyday life.

One thing that changed profoundly over the years was my relationship with Grand Place. The first time I saw it, I honestly did not fully understand why people considered it so extraordinary. Maybe because we visited it only for a short moment or maybe because it was a rainy day. Only much later, after returning repeatedly with a camera and a longer lens, did I begin to truly notice it.

Suddenly the square revealed itself through details rather than through its overall appearance. I started photographing gilded decorations, sculptures, fragments of façades, textures of stone and architectural ornaments invisible at first glance. Grand Place became one of those places I returned to almost automatically during every longer stay in Brussels. Even today, after seeing many beautiful cities across Europe, I still think it is probably the most beautiful market square on the continent.

At the same time Brussels was never a romanticised city in my memory. Over the years I also watched it change. It became increasingly multicultural, more complex and in some districts noticeably less comfortable than during my earlier visits. There were areas where I no longer felt entirely safe and places where I would probably not choose to leave a tram alone late in the evening. I think regular returns make you observe cities differently. A tourist notices monuments and famous landmarks; someone who keeps coming back begins noticing atmosphere, tensions and the subtle changes in how a city feels over time.

What I also remember very clearly from that period was the moment of the terrorist attacks in Brussels and at Zaventem Airport. Over the years I had accumulated an entire network of people connected with it – friends from university, colleagues from international projects, people I had worked with professionally and others who had gradually built their lives there. I remember sitting for hours on Facebook, watching people check in one after another, posting short messages saying they were safe and that nothing had happened to them. It was one of those moments when I suddenly realised how deeply Brussels had woven itself into the background of my own life. The city mattered to me not only because I had spent so much time there myself, but also because so many people I knew either lived there permanently or could very easily have been caught in the middle of those events. I also remember Brussels in the months following the attacks. I travelled there not long afterwards and at that time even entering the airport building required additional security checks.

Today I travel to Brussels far less frequently than before the pandemic. Much of the work that once required constant travel has moved online. Even so, Belgium remains one of those countries that became connected not with a single journey, but with an entire period of my life – with airports, train stations, architecture, photography, professional meetings and the quiet routine of returning to the same places over and over again.