Today is a bank holiday in Belgium. But for me that means little – I have projects to complete, so I need to work. In addition I urgently need to post a letter to the UK, but I’m out of stamps. Can I manage to find a postage stamp for purchase anywhere in Brussels? Absolutely not.
The long hours post office at Gare du Midi is shut, and the smaller supermarkets that are open today do not sell stamps. Larger supermarkets sell stamps, but they are shut for the holiday… Newsagents stores are no better. I wanted to scream at the woman at the Relay shop at Gare du Midi “c’est un jour ferié” – yes, thank you, I know, but have you ever had the thought in your small, statist, anti-customer, rules-obsessed, restricted brain that someone might want to buy stamps outside the opening hours of a post office, and that asking at a newsagent store is actually sensible? Oh, and while we’re at it, tomorrow (a normal work day for the rest of Belgium) it’s actually hard for me to get to post office because I have a bunch of meetings to attend. And no, I don’t actually care whether the post is not going to be picked up from the post box today – I need to get the letter in the post box today. It’s not complex.
