A long and not very pleasant day of travel.
I was supposed to get to Brussels at about half six in the evening, but I’m writing this at midnight and I’m still in Liège.
The day started well enough, with a good breakfast at the hotel and an easy walk to the station. My first train was delayed, which meant I would miss my connections, but it was no big deal because there were options for different trains.
I chose to go via Olten rather than Zurich because I wanted to see Lac Lucerne. It was very pretty!
From Olten I travelled to Basel, where I was able to get a short distance away from the station and have some lunch.
The train from Basel to Cologne was very warm. There was air con but the heatwave was too much for it to cope with. The temperature inside the carriage must have been in the high 20s at least. I saw a red kite from the window on this and the previous train (the bird, I mean) but didn’t take a photo. It would probably only have come out as a speck!
We were late into Cologne too, but not so much that I missed my connection. The train from Cologne to Brussels was a little cooler and there was free water (room temperature) and decent things to eat and drink at the buffet. Hooray!
But then there was a fatality on the line ahead 😕 We sat in Aachen for about three hours, and when we finally got going we terminated in Liège!
At least I got the last (individual) bottle of sparkling riesling from the buffet, and the sweet server even gave me a glass although the dishwasher was broken so they weren’t giving out glasses. He is supposed to be spending the night in Brussels too! Maybe they’ll put him up in Liège instead.
Even at midnight, Liège was pretty warm. I’m not looking forward to going through London at midday tomorrow 😣
I eventually got to Brussels after one on the morning, about seven hours after I had planned to, and four hours after the Cologne train was supposed to get in. There were loads of taxis available but they didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Apparently they were all waiting in the hope of more lucrative, longer-distance fares and most of us were staying in Brussels. A German woman commented that this is illegal in Germany, and I wish it had been in Brussels, too. Eventually I got a taxi with a nice woman who was also staying in the centre. I was charged €15 and she was charged separately, which is almost certainly a rip off, but who wants to argue at two in the morning?
The hotel was another of those krypton factor ones. Find the unmarked hotel (through a shop), enter your code, find the unmarked door for the stairs, enter your code again, climb four flights of narrow stairs, enter another code and voilà: a boiling hot room with no air con and just a fan to move the hot air around. At least I could get a shower because by this point I was stinking. It was too hot to sleep but I hit on the idea of sleeping on top of a wet towel and under a wet sheet, and that brought my temperature low enough to drop off. Apparently I was supposed to pay the city tax direct to the hotel, but as there was no reception desk and no sign of a living soul either last night or the following morning, they can whistle for it.*
*For people reading that in translation, it means they’re not getting it.
K C Murdarasi 
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