*Twinkle*
18-02-2006, 14:50
This post is designed to warn women who are going, or are considering visiting Brussels. It is NOT going to turn into a thread whereby we accuse one another as being racist, or stereotyping people.
I've just returned from a university trip to Brussels. The purpose of the trip was to visit the courts, council of europe etc etc and obviously we had the evenings to ourselves to basically sightsee, or whatever.
Brussels is a lovely place to visit and I really liked all the shops and restaurants, we had loads to do there.1major problem was the attitude that the men frequenting this area had towards women. This really spoiled the trip for me because I felt really vulnerable and on my guard even more than usual.
On the first night, we all (70 of us) went to an Irish bar and there was a dance floor so once the alcohol had got flowing, some of us went home and some of us went for a boogie. We noticed that there was a high proportion of men (at least 3 to every woman) but we danced around our handbags and attempted to keep ourselves to ourselves. This wasnt good enough however, and we were constantly grabbed, nipped, poked and deliberately bumped into by men and when you turned round to have a go at them, they thought you were giving them the come on and proceeded to touch you and try and dance with you. This really got to me because I could see how vulnerable some of the women were as we were all excessively drunk and I worried that we might get followed home or something :(
If you so much as look at a man, he came onto you, it was so horrible. Obviously I didnt know this and ended up kicking some pervert out of my way when he tried to put his hand up my top :( None of us were even provocatavely dressed, I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt but still they would not leave us alone, no matter how much we protested.
In the end, I spoke to a group of 3 guys who werent dancing or harrassing anyone and they were locals and spoke quite well in english... They warned us that the men are always like it and that Brussels has a really bad name for this type of behaviour. Me and my mate stuck with those guys and we met another who was from Finland and between them, they took care of us and didn't let the other men come near us or touch us when we were dancing because we'd explained how uncomfortable we felt. They then took us back to our hotel safely once we'd been kicked out of the bar at 5am, bless them.
The second night we were accosted in the street, my mate got her hair pulled and a man grabbed my wrists and tried to drag me with them. Luckily a group of lads from our trip were walking behind us and came to our rescue. We stuck with those lads for the night and were pretty much alright apart from a few pervs that were dancing too close, but they werent half as cocky as the men from the night before.
It was the same in the daytime, we were hounded whilst eating lunch in the main square in broad daylight. They just never give up.
So there you go, I just hope that sharing this experience with you serves as a warning to women going there, especially in female-only groups. I had no idea that this kind of behaviour went off there, or even that it was known for it. It completely ruined my trip because I was so horrified and scared for myself and my friends.
I've just returned from a university trip to Brussels. The purpose of the trip was to visit the courts, council of europe etc etc and obviously we had the evenings to ourselves to basically sightsee, or whatever.
Brussels is a lovely place to visit and I really liked all the shops and restaurants, we had loads to do there.1major problem was the attitude that the men frequenting this area had towards women. This really spoiled the trip for me because I felt really vulnerable and on my guard even more than usual.
On the first night, we all (70 of us) went to an Irish bar and there was a dance floor so once the alcohol had got flowing, some of us went home and some of us went for a boogie. We noticed that there was a high proportion of men (at least 3 to every woman) but we danced around our handbags and attempted to keep ourselves to ourselves. This wasnt good enough however, and we were constantly grabbed, nipped, poked and deliberately bumped into by men and when you turned round to have a go at them, they thought you were giving them the come on and proceeded to touch you and try and dance with you. This really got to me because I could see how vulnerable some of the women were as we were all excessively drunk and I worried that we might get followed home or something :(
If you so much as look at a man, he came onto you, it was so horrible. Obviously I didnt know this and ended up kicking some pervert out of my way when he tried to put his hand up my top :( None of us were even provocatavely dressed, I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt but still they would not leave us alone, no matter how much we protested.
In the end, I spoke to a group of 3 guys who werent dancing or harrassing anyone and they were locals and spoke quite well in english... They warned us that the men are always like it and that Brussels has a really bad name for this type of behaviour. Me and my mate stuck with those guys and we met another who was from Finland and between them, they took care of us and didn't let the other men come near us or touch us when we were dancing because we'd explained how uncomfortable we felt. They then took us back to our hotel safely once we'd been kicked out of the bar at 5am, bless them.
The second night we were accosted in the street, my mate got her hair pulled and a man grabbed my wrists and tried to drag me with them. Luckily a group of lads from our trip were walking behind us and came to our rescue. We stuck with those lads for the night and were pretty much alright apart from a few pervs that were dancing too close, but they werent half as cocky as the men from the night before.
It was the same in the daytime, we were hounded whilst eating lunch in the main square in broad daylight. They just never give up.
So there you go, I just hope that sharing this experience with you serves as a warning to women going there, especially in female-only groups. I had no idea that this kind of behaviour went off there, or even that it was known for it. It completely ruined my trip because I was so horrified and scared for myself and my friends.