Wide streets with lots of traffic, glass skyscrapers surrounded by marble, medieval buildings including a royal palace and people from all walks of life – this kind of sounds like New York City. However, if you want to experience this kind of big city vibe without travelling across the pond, you don’t even have to get on a plane – just head to Brussels. Over the last 30 years, the metropolis that is often referred to as the European capital, has undergone some major transformations, and judging by the countless construction sites, this is bound to continue for quite some time to come… and provided the architects remain true to their principles, this can only be a good thing for skateboarders. Welcome to „the city of ledges”!

As soon as we arrived at the Airbnb-style hotel, I had to hit the toilet. That wouldn’t be worth mentioning of course, but well, it turned out that the door to this place, that was 2 square metres in size, just wouldn’t open anymore, as soon as I had walked in. And no, it wasn’t the lock that was broken, but the door handle! I broke my credit card trying to get out again and started stressing a bit. In the end, Rocco saved me with a knife. I had been stuck for 20 minutes and from then on, whenever someone had to go to the toilet, it became a case of “extend the lock and leave the door ajar” – neither I nor anyone else wanted to experience this situation a second time.

Our crew on this trip consisted of Jelle Maatman, Patrick Rogalski, Dani Lebron, Markus Blessing and Jesse Kloes. Jesse is not only very good at preparing scrambled eggs, but also devotes every spare minute to his schoolwork. A real good student, this kid! The young Hamburg native has also learnt a lot on his board and filmed at least a clip a day, even if the weather wasn’t on our side – that’s what you call being productive! But well, our Brussels days were filled with anything but blue skies and sunshine. C’est la vie! The boys still made the best out of it.

Brussels is truly beautiful. But as soon as you leave the more prestigious corners of the city, you’ll realise that not all that glitters is gold. Numerous times, when we just walked out through the doors our hotel, we would witness police operations, including one where police officers drew white lines on the ground, in the shape of a human body. We still got to enjoy our city quarter, though – especially the Syrian restaurant around the corner, one which belongs into the “where the locals go” category. Delicious and plentiful meals!

As always on such trips, the time went by far too quickly. And maybe especially this time around, cause we had to take so many skate breaks due to the rain… „we should have gone here”, “we should have hit that spot instead”, … you know the vibes. But hey, we made good use of our skate breaks, in the end. We got to visit all the “Brussels essentials”, from the Manneken Pis to the Mont des Arts and we’ve enjoyed plenty of Belgian waffles. Despite the many sketchy characters that we got to meet at some of the spots, we didn’t get anything stolen and the van wasn’t broken into. Brussels is always worth a trip – especially if you like skating ledges!