First leg: Brussels to London Victoria Coach Station. Estimated time: 4 hours; actual time: 8 hours.

 

Brussels

I stand outside the grotty little Eurolines office in front of Brussels North Station. They have a flag outside the office, bearing their logo, though that’s barely visible since the flag is so dirty and frayed it could be anything from a loincloth to an archaeological find. I get a slight foreboding feeling, something like ‘uh-oh’, but still very quiet at the back of my head.

Inside the office are a dozen or so chairs, holding people of every size and colour. Most of them look as if they are permanently moving abroad, they carry so much luggage. There is no noticeboard or screen advertising departures or arrivals, and the guys working the office offer no such valuable information. In fact they don’t offer any information at all. Sit tight and wait seems to be the thing here.

I go outside to wait, and there’s me, an old man in a baseball cap and five or six English guys, which is kind of a relief, since I assume they must be travelling to England as well. It’s windy and chilly out there, and quarter past ten – scheduled leaving time for my coach – comes and goes with no coach in sight and no one telling us why. I start to wonder whether I might have missed it, but there’s the English lads. Surely they must be waiting for the same one? One of them gets impatient and goes to check the spot where the coach should have been by now, only to return, shrugging. No coach.

Finally, half an hour late, it arrives. And it’s jam-packed full of people – I can see that even from where I’m standing. The coach stops, the doors open and whole families of gypsy-ish looking people tumble out: some wear headscarves, some carry tiny babies, most have very little and filthy-looking teeth or no teeth at all. The children are fat and pasty and everyone wears clothes that went out of fashion in 1987.
I must have the wrong bus. I can tell that’s what the Englishmen are thinking too. I check the sign on the windscreen: there’s a whole string of unpronounceable town names, then comes Vienna, Aachen, Brussels and so on. Destination is London via Dover. This is the bus allright. All hope of catching a quiet ride is now definitely lost. I notice that the bus company, printed on the door, is not Belgian but something unpronounceable again. I will later discover that it’s Slovakian. And so are the drivers.

‘Destination?’, one of them demands. I’m relieved to hear that he speaks English. Little do I know at that time that this word is unfortunately also the full stretch of his English vocabulary.

‘London’, I say, sounding more confident than I feel.

I get on the bus. Oh, good, there’s a toilet on board. I’m going to be here for quite a while so a toilet is no unnecessary luxury. Reaching the top of the narrow stairs I look around.
Wow.
This is unlike anything I have ever seen before. It’s total and utter chaos. There are indeed complete families travelling on this vehicle, including second cousins four times removed, and in my opinion definitely not one of them is planning on returning any time soon. By the look of things these people have been here for quite some time. There is a kind of musty, mushroomy smell on the bus, like blankets that haven’t been washed for a couple of years, or dead birds. Most people look beyond tired. They are pale and their eyes are hollow and uninterested. Their clothes are filthy and smelly. The babies cry incessantly. I feel as if I’ve ended up in Schindler’s List, on a deportation bus to one of Hitler’s death camps. One of the English guys, having got on the bus just before me, describes the general atmosphere accurately with a muttered but heart-felt ‘fucking hell’.

I look around for a seat but there seem to be none left. Maybe I should get off and stay here. Oh no, there’s one. Next to a man. I don’t want to sit next to a man. Oh, but he’s got his wife and tiny son sitting in the seats in front. Good, that means he won’t try any funny business. With some difficulty I make my way through the jungle of people, rubbish and luggage to the seat and decide English is my best shot.

‘Is this free?’

He looks up and nods. I sink into the seat, the pillow I brought especially to have a nap on the coach now lying uselessly on my lap, more of a burden than a blessing. My knees hardly fit into the leg space between the seats and is it just me or are these seats extremely narrow? This is my spot for the next couple of hours, so I’d better make the most of it.