12 June 2019-11 July 2019: Yes, you read correctly. That’s a month. In the Terminal at Zaventem. What happened was that I had an offer of lodging in Liège, arranged plenty far enough in advance, and all set to go, but when I got to this Airport on the way to Liège and contacted the person, they acted like they wanted me to be constantly in contact with them en route as if they expected my phone to work while on the train and on the platform and all that, the usual schpiel for me lately. I had to tell the guy my phone only works on wi-fi like at Zaventem and at Liège Station at the Starbucks there. So he told me there’s payphones at the station in Liège. I replied that I knew that because I’d been there before, 17 years ago. Then he asked how old I was, and like a fool I told him, and then CRICKETS. I never heard from the bastard again. I had to spend the night at the station in Liège which is open all night, granted, but it’s cold because it’s a train station and the trains aren’t underground, they’re above-ground. So, pissed-off, I made my way back to Brussels Zaventem to the airport which at least is warmer than a train station. And proceeded to try frantically to make other arrangements. Constantly. Now, fortunately Zaventem’s wi-fi finally works on my computer so I was able to make some progress on frantically applying for everything I could, down in Lille instead of University of Liège. I had started arranging Liège THREE YEARS AGO so this is not going to go well. Now I have to start all over again, applying for university acceptance, housing, jobs, financial assistance, now in the case since Lille is actually IN France and I’m French I get to go the “government assistance” route which also takes forever.
I’m not really mad at Belgium as to why I had to stay at their Airport for a whole month before I started to get hungry (they are anal about cleaning out the bins every 15 minutes and scavenging even food is technically illegal in Belgium, but not in France) and had to come back down here to France where at least I can EAT. The idiot who did that to me wasn’t even Belgian. Actually, Zaventem Airport is pretty good about ignoring the 50+ regular sleepers every night. Some of them even seemed to have their own “spot” near an outlet. The Starbucks in the terminal, Landside of course, is open 24/7 and there are padded armchairs over behind it, the problem with snagging one of those is that if you have your luggage trolley full like most people, you will get “boxed in” by morning. Now that’s fine if you really don’t have anywhere to go anytime soon that you know of, like me, but the main problem was going to the bathroom in that situation. You can’t leave your luggage trolley unattended there, you can’t even be a mere 10 feet from it if the military patrol is anywhere in sight. Really, you can be that close to it and get “yelled at” and if you were actually in the bathroom —?? It feels like there’s a war going on, or something, all that increased security there.
While I was there they sort of “astro-turfed” the waiting area over by the less-used ticket counters and made it into some sort of indoor “park” like thing. To make the wait more bearable, seeing as how that seems to be the Delay Capital of Eurabia. I actually think the delays are on the other end of where they’re going, as a lot of places don’t seem to trust a plane coming out of Brussels for some reason. Can’t imagine why not…..