Using an eSIM in Brussels

What Brussels is like on a phone

Brussels is where people change trains more often than they linger, since the high-speed lines from London, Paris, Amsterdam and Germany all meet here. Visitors include those staying a night before moving on, people working with the international institutions, and families who come for the central square. Signs are in two languages, so searching for a place name in an app gives different results depending on which one you type. Coverage across town is even, with the metro tunnels being where the line goes quiet.

When you land

Brussels Airport (BRU) has a station beneath the terminal, about twenty minutes from town, while many low-cost flights use Charleroi, much further out with a coach ride of nearly an hour. Eurostar and the high-speed services arrive at Brussels-Midi. Switch the line on inside the terminal, because you must work out which train to take while the screens alternate station names between two languages. The ride in keeps service until the train enters the tunnels at the underground central stations.

Where coverage changes

The centre, the institutional quarter and the residential districts all stay connected. The narrow lanes around the gilded central square feel slower when the evening crowd fills them. The metro and the shared tunnels under the middle of the city have stretches that go quiet until the next station. What catches people out is how small the country is and how close the borders are: half an hour's drive out of the city can put you near enough for a handset to pick up a neighbouring country's network.

What a day here costs in data

A day in town runs about 700MB to 1.1GB, since the walking is short and the sights sit close together. What costs more than expected is searching a street or venue twice, in both languages, when the first result does not match, plus translating menus and signs that already carry two languages at once. Someone changing trains here for a couple of hours uses very little: enough to check a platform and message whoever is waiting at the other end.

Districts travellers ask about

• The Grand-Place: An open square boxed in by tall façades on every side: on a crowded evening video uploads slow, so keep the clips and send them once you are back on a main street.
• The European quarter: Wide avenues and modern offices give a connection steady enough for online meetings, though the lobbies and basement levels of some large buildings weaken.
• Sablon and Marolles: Antique shops and a flea market on a slope: the gradient nudges your position on the map, so meet at a named church or square rather than a coordinate.
• Around Brussels-Midi: The busiest interchange in the country: usable, but the underground platforms and multi-level passages slow down — load your onward ticket before going down.

Day trips out of the city

• Ghent: A short train with service all the way; in the old centre, where tall stone houses line the water, it slows a little in the tight lanes between them.
• Antwerp: The station there stacks its platforms several levels down and the lowest is weakest; in the city itself and the diamond district the streets are broad and it works well.
• The eastern border towns: A short drive brings you to the frontier, where a handset can settle on a neighbouring country's network while you are still on the Belgian side — check the plan's country list before setting off.