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Oh, oh! I love FOSDEM. I live in Brussels and love the city, I want to make a couple of recommendations for people coming to visit: 1. DON'T RELY ON CARS. Traf
by scrollaway 3y ago
Oh, oh! I love FOSDEM. I live in Brussels and love the city, I want to make a couple of recommendations for people coming to visit:
1. DON'T RELY ON CARS. Traffic is awful here. Brussels is bikeable, has shared scooters and shared bikes as well as a fairly solid public transport infrastructure.
2. I recommend finding a hotel either in the city center, or near the Merode area (east of Parc du Cinquantenaire). Don't try to get a hotel near the ULB (the venue) itself... it's not the most exciting part of the city.
3. While you're here, take a moment to visit other cities in Belgium such as Mechelen, Leuven, or even Antwerp. They're a cheap and short train ride away (20 mins for Mechelen/Leuven, 40 for Antwerp).
Also if you have any questions feel free to ask them here I'll check back in a little while.
- NeutralForest 3y agoGhent/Gent is also lovely and quite easily accessible!
- dralley 3y agoGhent and Bruges are both wonderful and vastly nicer to visit, IMO, than Brussels.
- NeutralForest 3y agoI understand this point from a tourist perspective but if you stay over for a longer time, you'll realize there's just that much more to do in cities like Brussels or Antwerp.
- dralley 3y agoI don't doubt it, but the short term tourist perspective is what's relevant if we're talking about bookending a conference with some vacation. Granted, I don't know if Bruges is quite as nice in February as in June.
- NeutralForest 3y agoThat's true
- Share6323 3y agoCan you recommend some low budget district, with cheaper restaurants hostels ,etc.. I don't mind if it's 20 min more commute in the morning. I want to come with a group of students from Berlin and we have to do it on a shoestring budget
- scrollaway 3y agoLook at hotels in Mechelen, it'll be a lot cheaper, cozier, and it's a 20min train ride away!
- hutzlibu 3y agoAirBnB should also show the cheaper options?
- NeutralForest 3y agoFOSDEM has a page with [practical info](https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/practical/accommodation/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/practical/accommodation/). I don't know the policy of the uni during the event but it might be useful contact the FOSDEM people and ask if it's possible to setup camp in the uni for the wk? There are a lot of empty rooms during the weekend after all and the students are on holiday at that time.
- Insanity 3y ago+1 to this. I'm from Leuven and would visit FOSDEM yearly - until I moved to Canada ~3 years ago. For tourists going to Belgium to attend FOSDEM, definitely stay a couple of days to explore what's around BE. It's a small country so relatively easy and cheap to travel around. :) With any luck, I might be able to travel to Belgium around Feb and attend FOSDEM in-person this year.
- unixfox 3y agoOr cities in wallonia too. Like louvain-la-neuve or wavre.