Thinking back to FOSDEM '26/BXL

Plan

The plan I had, was simple, and simpleminded. It was essentially: fly in Friday evening, spend the weekend at FOSDEM, fly back Monday morning. My philosophy was that I didn’t need such luxuries as “a place to stay” because I’d just do FOSDEM by day, tourism by night, and sleep “like, whereever the fuck, I don’t know, somewhere somewhen.”

Wonderful. That was about as much as I had planned.

As for packing, I ended up just going with a laptop bag with:

• a laptop,
• small plastic bag of toiletries,
• razor, nail file & nail clipper (just because they’re not bulky and it sucks if you want to use them and don’t have them),

no water bottle, no food, because “they have grocery stores in Brussels, don’t they?”

The mighty packed laptop bag:

Friday

I will be suplemmenting my memory with some of the digital footprint from that time, most prominently my Discord messages updating my friends.

Ok so I woke up at 10:30, finished packing, had cheese pizza at the dorm canteen, and was en route to the airport by like 12:00. On the way there I found out that the airport has 3 terminals instead of the 2 I thought it had (Non-EU, EU, private). Another thing I found out is that Brussels public transport is expensive. Much more expensive than Czech. I also found out I won’t be able to take advantage of the student discount since for that you need to send them documents verifying your studies and they have to formally verify them. It’s sad that they have to do all this, if only there existed, I don’t know, some sort of a, I don’t know, International Student Identity Card? That they could use to verify you’re a student? That everybody sane would use for this purpose? Oh well.

At the airport, thanks to the 3D scanners, security was really easy. Only issue was that I was three hours early. I also found out that the laptop bag I had everything in was just barely small enough to fit in the Ryanair bag requirements:

They didn’t end up checking it anyway, and I eventually went through to boarding… once the “LAST CALL” started flashing on the display that is, because I didn’t realize we were boarding before that.

From the flight itself I don’t have much. Didn’t have internet, and I only recall that it lasted like 20 minutes and my ears hurt like hell throughout all of it.

Once we landed, I instantly got hit with a wave of uncertainty:

You see, my original plan to just take normal public transport from Charloi (where Ryanair flies to because actual Brussels is too expensive) to Brussels fell through almost instantly once I tried to actually look up a route through, so instead, flibco bus to the rescue.

Now I don’t speak French. But then, I didn’t know they spoke french in Brussels anyway (I thought they spoke it at the airport just because it’s one of the major languages). Really, most of my knowledge about Belgium came from a high school presentation one of my classmates did on it, which, the teacher pointed out, was full of contradicted itself at many points. So this was one of the things I had to look up on the bus ride there.

Another thing was trying to find out how Brussels public transport works, and trying to find a Lidl to buy a water bottle from for the night. Of course, both of these attempts failed, first because the system was too unlike Prague’s, second because I found out that all major stores close in Brussels at 6pm. Which I instantly thought was bullshit, as someone who regularly hits up groceries at 22:00 in Prague. But, we arrive at Midi:

So, now knowing all the grocery stores are closed, I spent a couple hours messing around and familirizing myself with Midi. In the meantime, I started understanding Brussels bit by bit.

No clue if the STIB/MIVB daily cap actually works anything like that, probably not. For some reason I was also really hellbent on being extremely cheap. So I was absolutely not gonna get no €2.5 water bottle from a vending machine at Midi. Unfortunately, as I recall, there was no easy way to get water at Midi without getting screwed on the pricing, so I just kind of didn’t. And I didn’t bring any from the airport either because I expected to just hit up a grocery store once I got to Brussels. This means at this point the last time I drank anything was a glass of water I had with the pizza at the dorm canteen at 12:00.

Saturday

My first expirience with Brussels subway probably speaks for itself:

I very vividly remember getting into the subway station below Midi, seeing that it looks nothing like how a Czech subway station looks, looking up at a board, seeing something like “Churchill 6” with no labels and going “wtf.”

Eventually though, I figure it out somehow, partially, and arrived in front of the McDonald’s at de la Bourse:

I didn’t go in. Too bougie for me. I explored the streets around for a bit. Saw a Marriot hotel, which I thought was also bougie because of the location and the American name but recently I found out it’s actually a very mid tier hotel.

Eventually, I made it to one of the two other 24/7 Brussels McDonald’s, the one on Ixelles. The fucking Ixelles McDonald’s.

You couldn’t get water at the McDonald’s. And I did end up getting the fries that I didn’t want, however, tragedy struck, multiple tragedies in fact:

So I just ended up leaving having ate some mediocre fries that I wasn’t able to wash down. Nor was I able to brush my teeth. Not that you should do that after having just ate, especially not after a thing as toxic as Mccie fries. As you can see, it’s also roughly where I found out that Brussels public transport shuts down for the night. We don’t do that in Prague. So, with nothing better to do, I went to do some tourism.

I recall walking all around Parc de Bruxelles for about 2 hours before declaring:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a super good recollection past this, and my phone died about this point, so the time up to about 10:30 is a complete blur.

What I do remember is that I wanted to charge my phone but I didn’t want to go back to Midi. So I figured, Midi is a train station, surely it’s interchangeable with any other train station I can go to? So I somehow took random busses till I ended up at Vilvoorde station and got completely fucking lost.

Fun fact about Vilvoorde that I know now: it’s not in Brussels. Like, at all. I didn’t know this at the time, I had no clue. Couldn’t look it up either because my phone was dead. And that wasn’t going to change either because while Vilvoorde is certainly a train station, it’s not like Midi, it’s a tiny train station where you really aren’t likely to find a socket to charge your phone.

So, after a couple tens of minutes spent watching busses come and go, not really understanding where they’re going, I took one, rode one station illegaly because I didn’t realize it wasn’t one of the STIB/MIVB busses, and got off. Nice, now I got truly no clue where I am.

So, I got to walking. Initially it looked innocent enough, standard residential area stuff. Then I was walking down a really, really long street. It was also really wide. With a bikelane that I only realized was a bike lane after I almost got hit by a cyclist while walking on it.

It was a really picturesque suburb. Block houses as far as the eye can see, cars, no busses, and so on. I walked like this for a kilometre, maybe two, before reaching a small roundabout and realizing that nothing was going to be gained by continueing this way.

I briefly consider going the way the “Centrum” sign was pointing, before deciding against it (it definitely didn’t mean Brussels center as I thought it did then). So, with no other choice, I turned around and started walking all these kilometres back. Sun was dawning at this point. My knee also started seriously acting up by this point, partially due to the overexertion, partially due to the cold.

It was then that I started to think I might be lost. Yes, it’s quite funny that this didn’t occur to me before, but in our modern world, with a phone with internet and GPS and everything, we never really seriously think we could get lost. Fortunately, at some point I managed to turn my phone on for a second and check the route back, including what bus I need to take once I finish the walk to Vilvoorde station.

By 10:30 I was back at Midi, where I borrowed a powerbank from a kiosk at an extortionate rate.

I didn’t end up going to an Aldi, because the buses going from Midi to one were not STIB/MIVB. Instead, I ended up going to a random Lidl, and bought the water bottle (drank some water finally, after almost 24 hours) and tissues there (oh yea, I was also riding the end of a cold at this point).

Despite the overflowing busses, where I could only take like the third one or something, I was at ULB by 12:20.

Familiar faces in unfamiliar places. We made eye concact, though its look told me “I don’t know you and I absolutely do not want to talk to you, I much prefer talking to the person I’m talking to right now, go away.” (in a non hostile, I’m here to talk to people I don’t get to talk to normally way)

I was there like 3 hours late anyway. I was really impressed by how huge the campus was. “An actual campus, not like the thing in Troja that we call a campus.” I went to UB2.252A (Lameere) where the Databases track was at. However, my body was already getting the better of me:

Also a reflection of the amazing hygiene situation (couldn’t find a free public bathroom and I was NOT paying for one):

I don’t recall which talks I saw, they were also like 5 minutes each so not very in depth or interesting, but I appreciated the rest. I think I also fell asleep during some of them.

Then something actually important happened and I did some much needed reflection:

Eventually I tried getting into the room for the Stalwart: Can Open Source do Gmail-scale Email? talk, which I thought was going to be really interesting, unfortunately everybody else thought that too and the room ended up filling up like crazy. So I ended up just sitting outside and watching it on my phone. I also saw another MFF person there, who will appear later. He didn’t notice me.

There’s also this mystery for the history books (I have literally no recollection of this and I didn’t elaborate anywhere):

Also, semblence of a plan:

And a mid-trip city review:

I did not end up finding the parliament that night, as something much more interesting happened, but on that later.

On the MFF business side, after the Stalwart talk, there was the Building a student wiki at MFF Charles University in a room nearby, with 4 different MFF people (including the guy from the hallway in front of the Stalwart talk) + me, which might’ve ended up being like 1/4 of the attendance.

The subject of the talk was Matfyz Wiki, the MFF student wiki (duh), which I myself contributed to somewhat on the software side. The talk itself was… okay, real talk? I don’t know what was the purpose of this talk since a MFF student wiki is obviously only useful to MFF people and the software behind it is I guess decent but given it’s only recently that we started having a consistent way to start the damn thing, I can’t really see anybody recommending it to anyone in good faith.

After the talk, when FOSDEM was wrapping for the day, I was talking with the MFF people from the talk and they mentioned an afterparty, “Bytenight.” I did not know it at the time, but this one thing ended up partially saving the trip.

Bytenight 2026, the (unofficial) FOSDEM afterparty. Organized by HSBXL. I showed up, fashionably late, fucked by Brussels public transport as always, to a place that looked real sketchy. Rectrospectively I think it was some repurposed industrial space.

Got asked by the gatekeeper some weird questions, just barely got through them and I was in… And I had no clue what to do. I ended up just hanging out in the corner, getting the read on situation. Figuring out where the bathrooms are, where the dance floor is. Eventually I realized that the bathrooms are actually gender neutral, and really quite architecturally interesting. I think the first piss of this trip was here.

This bathroom realization was quite interesting, because I finally realized what kind of crowd I’m in. And that crowd is, very progressive, the kind of progressive that isn’t anywhere in Prague it feels like. I noticed this more later on.

I also took a pre-scheduled call related to MFF, that one was very uninteresting.

Sitting in the corner, I overheard bunch of conversations, then as the night went on I noticed things.

Further:

Sunday

Later on I even actually left the chair and had a couple conversations. About auth, about the necessesity of violence in finance as a refutation of crypto, and about CUDA support in NixOS strangely enough. I vividly recall going on about how something creates contradictions in capitalist society, and being suprised by how uncaptured by capitalist realism people were there, wouldn’t happen in Prague.

Later on, I overheard a conversation with a person calling another a “dutch girl” and the other person vehemently saying she’s not dutch. This, along with the “FUCK FRANCE” grafitti from before, made me think that maybe there’s some ethnic conflict in this country.

But, just like everything good, it was over way too quickly, and by 4am I had to go elsewhere to wait till FOSDEM opens again at 9. I also think it was around this time that I started feeling the symptoms of not taking my meds, namely: melancholy.

At Bytenight I actually picked up a guy to go to Midi with. He was a student from Netherlands who was also broke like I was. We had to walk it all the way back because the buses were long out by that point. Along the way he gave me a talk about how I gotta care for myself better and bought me an overpriced €1 water bottle. I still feel kinda bad that I didn’t offer to Revolut him.

At Midi, we split up, he went to a hostel, I went… not actually sure, the messages cut out at this point again, unfortunately, but from what I recall I just walked around a bunch and then went on some buses once they started going again and tried sleeping on them.

Then I went to some FOSDEM talks and slept there too. The second day was a bit weaker I think, but at least I got to brush my teeth in the bathroom (the first and only time I managed to brush my teeth this trip, I’m very sorry to say).

At some point I ended up linking up with the other MFF people from the day before and ended up walking with them back to their place. One of them said, that in his mind, “in the vector space of cities, Brussels, relative to Prague, is in the same direction as Berlin, but further” no clue what he meant by that.

When we reached their place, I broke off, intending to go to do one last bit of tourism: the European Parliament. Minutes after breaking off, while I was sitting on somebody’s doorstep looking up the bus route, an older lady approached me speaking in a language I didn’t understand. I just said “Sorry, I don’t speak…” because while I thought she was speaking french, I was afraid she was actually speaking dutch, and I didn’t want a random Brussels street to be my final resting place, so I trailed off.

I don’t know why I thought I was gonna get shot up by a grandma in the middle of Brussels for calling Dutch French, but either way it turns out she was speaking French and just asking for directions, she told me in English. I was really suprised that someone of the older generation had such an incredible command of the language. Again, wouldn’t happen in Prague.

After I signed up for some classes (the signup coincidentally opened right around this time), I went to the Parliament, took a few pictures:

then went back to Midi.

Well, ultimately I stayed. Armed with my phone for mild entertainment, insane tiredness, and being really cold, I had to wait about 6.5 hours at Midi. I recall at some point I bought some overpriced bread and ate a part of it, which was probably the second food of the trip.

Ignoring the cold, the time among the homeless of the Midi station wasn’t the worst, I actually enjoyed the sense of community we had between us for those couple hours. Though I have to say, the other people had it figured out better. Stuff like protecting against the wind by pulling a carpet over yourself while you’re trying to sleep. Unfortunately, one last Brussels tragedy struck at around 1:50.

Monday

Yop. So we were just sitting there, all of us, in the cold, in the rain. Anyway, eventually a line started forming and I was in the stupid flibco return bus by 2am.

Once I sat down in the bus, I pretty much fell asleep instantly. When I woke up, we were at Charloi. The airside wasn’t open yet, but it didn’t really matter.

With this genius-tier insight, I just slept around outside till the lines cleared up a bit and then got through security by 5am:

I don’t remember buying anything. I think I just slept on the benches for a few hours. Then the boarding was a cluster fuck again:

On the flight I just ended up listening to some zone out music.

Conclusion

In conclusion? What is there to conclude? That trip was a mess.

I think I will forever call Brussels “BXL.” In fact, I had to resist doing so throughout this piece to not be confusing.

Following this trip, I adopted a sort of “Brussels razor,” where I inform all my tech and otherwise choices by a simple question “what if you had to do that Brussels trip again?” Ditch the laptop. Ditch the laptop bag. Get a trench coat with 30 pockets. Get a powerbank. Maybe even get a backpack. I practically gave up on furniture because of this and everything that I can’t fit in one of my pockets.

I never feel safe if my life doesn’t fit inside of a Ryanair-sized backpack.