Hi everybody,
I%26#39;m searching information about how to go from %26quot;Brussels International Airport%26quot; to the %26quot;Brussels MIDI%26quot; station.
I searched in http://hari.b-holding.be/, and I get information like this:
Walk from BRUSSELS AIRPORT [BRU] to Brussel-Nat-Luchthaven [B].
Allow about 9 min. to get there.
Take IR 3737 from Brussel-Nat-Luchthaven [B] towards Quievrain [B] to
Bruxelles-Midi [B].
Your departure from Brussel-Nat-Luchthaven [B] is at 16:33, your
arrival in Bruxelles-Midi [B] is at 17:00.
Walk from Bruxelles-Midi [B] to BRUXELLES Midi/BRUSSEL Zuid [T].
Allow about 9 min. to get there.
The duration of your journey is: 0:45
Days of operation: Sa, Su, also 1., 17., 28. May, 15. Aug, 1. Nov
The number of changes is: 0
I%26#39;m not sure about the difference between %26quot;BRUSSELS AIRPORT%26quot;,
%26quot;Brussel-Nat-Luchthaven%26quot;, %26quot;Bruxelles-Midi [B] %26quot; and %26quot;BRUXELLES
Midi/BRUSSEL Zuid [T]%26quot;. Which one is the train station:
%26quot;Bruxelles-Midi [B] %26quot; or %26quot;BRUXELLES Midi/BRUSSEL Zuid [T]%26quot;?
On the other hand, I have find in some websites that the BRUXELLES NAT
AEROPORT is in ZAVENTEM and the airport code is ZYR. Is that right? I
thought the airport code was BRU. However, both airport codes are in
Brussels...
Thanks in advance,
Sergio
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My guide book tells me that the main Brussels airport IS at Zaventem.
My guide book also tells me that you can get a train from the airport to Gare du Nord, Gare Centrale or Gare du Midi with tickets priced at 2.50 euros if you buy them at the station although you can also buy them on the train at a higher price (doesn%26#39;t say how much). Three trains run each hour between 5am and midnight with a journey time of 20 minutes.
Sound like this is the easiest / quickest / cheapest option (other than buying your own guide book!!).
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BRU is the international (ICAO) code for Brussels Airport, which is indeed in Zaventem, just outside the Brussels City/Region limit. ZYR is the international code for Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel-Zuid (Brussels South) railway station. Why does that station have an airport code? Because Air France sells tickets from ZYR to Paris-CDG, which are treated exactly like flights even though they take place in Air France carriages on a Thalys/TGV train!
When using railway timetables, these codes are replaced by actual names for stations, although both may appear in websites that attempt to combine different types of transport information, which (unfortunately, in my opinion, because it was much simpler before), the B-rail site now does. In addition, because Belgium is officially bilingual and English names are widely used, there are often alternatives.
The first line of your instructions simply means, walk from the airport (BRU) to the airport%26#39;s railway station. As this is on level -1 of the terminal building, this is merely a matter of taking escalators. When identifying this station in the %26quot;from%26quot; or %26quot;to%26quot; box on a railway timetable, the following names, at least, are acceptable: Zaventem (airport); Brussel-Nat-Luchthaven; Bruxelles-Nat-Aeroport.
For the Gare du Midi/Zuidstation/South Station, you can similarly use Bruxelles-Midi or Brussel-Midi. The (B) in brackets means Belgian Railways, so THIS is the train station.
While I haven%26#39;t been able to reproduce it in any simulation, the instructions given for a further 9-minute walk from the station must be directing you either to the metro station below the railway station or to bus/tram stops outside it. I can only assume that when given a choice between Bruxelles-Midi (B) and Bruxelles-Midi (T) you selected the latter which means that it gives you the full information for walking from the station to the bus/tram stop. From memory, Bruxelles-Midi has 4 options because it is a station/stop for different means of transport: SNCB (B) which is of course the railway station; STIB, which means Brussels City transport including buses, trams and metro; TEC buses, for Wallonia; and De Lijn buses for Flanders, I don%26#39;t know what the letters were for these other 3 - but of course they are all in much the same place!
Just to add to the confusion, the system separates the EuroStar Terminal (abbreviated EST, which unfortunately means East in French and has led to people asking where is this station!) from Bruxelles-Midi and Hafas gives a 20 minute walk between them, when it is in fact merely platforms 1 and 2 of the Gare du Midi.
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For the record, the 4 possible abbreviations that can appear after the name of a station or stop (e.g. Bruxelles-Midi) in the multi-transport mode timetable are:
B = Belgian Railways, otherwise known as SNCB/NMBS (train)
T = TEC (bus)
DL = De Lijn (bus)
BRU = Brussels City Transport - STIB/MIVB (bus, tram, metro)
This last abbreviation is a bit awkward given that it is also the international airport code for Brussels Airport, but they were obviously trying to use something that would be the same in all languages, and the company is called STIB in French and MIVB in Dutch so nothing else was obvious.
I was also interested that Bruxelles-Midi comes up with only 2 possibilities, B (train) and T (buses to Wallonia). This is because in the STIB timetable the stops near this station are called %26quot;Gare du Midi%26quot; and %26quot;Gare du Midi-France%26quot; (all STIB stops are in Brussels with the sole exception of Brussels Airport, so they don%26#39;t need Bruxelles in front of them like the railway stations do); while in the De Lijn timetable (Dutch-speaking because these buses serve Flanders) they are called Brussel Zuid Perron 1, 2, 6, 8 (= Brussels South Platform or Stand 1 etc.).
How people who don%26#39;t already know which companies would be using which languages could guess all this is not entirely obvious, and in my opinion it makes this multi-transport-mode timetable very difficult to use. To get full directions e.g. for train from Brugge to Bruxelles-Midi and then tram/bus to a stop further on, you would have had to look up the name of the tram/bus stop in the STIB map/timetable, in which case you would have already seen how to get there from the station anyway!
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