This is Jacques Brel Hostel in Brussel City. Once you arrive at the Eurostar station, buy a metro (their lrt/mrt) ticket to Madou Station. The hostel is right behind Madou Station, about 5-7 minutes walk. Quite a convenient location as the mini market is also around the corner. There is also a 3 storey Express Supermarket nearby, about 10 minutes walk, that sells a variety of drinks and pre-pack food at reasonable price e.g. mineral water cost 0.54 euros. To get to the Express Supermarket, turn left from the hostel's entrance. At the roundabout, walk towards the right and turn to the right on the second right lane. Go straight down the road till the corner. Turn left towards the main road. The supermarket is opposite the main road on the right corner.
From Madou Station, walk towards the back to the building behind, then turn right. You will see a roundabout with a green statue. The hostel is right at the corner. It's a white colour building and you won't missed it.
People in Brussel don't really speak English. It's difficult to find someone on the road who speaks English and can direct the way. It is better to get your facts right before you travel there independently.
The hostel has a beautiful, large open area outside the lobby as the picture above. It's a good place to hang out. At night, the entrance is via the 'bar'/'restaurant'. The reception close at about 7pm in the evening and the check-in, in/out to the hostel is through the bar/restaurant. Food, drinks, beers are available at the bar/restaurant and free internet access is also available at the bar. Unfortunately, they only have two computer terminals and it is not easy to wait for your turn to use it. The bar is opened from 7pm - 1am. A plate of spaghetti costs 6 euros.
The luggage room is underground. You need your room card access to enter the luggage room. Bring along a padlock. There is also a lift in the hostel so you don't need to worry about carrying your lugggage upstairs.
That's the lobby of the hostel. It's spacious and has a coffee machine as well. Cost 1 euro for hot water, 0.70 euro for coffee/hot chocolate. The wordings on the machine is not in English. French, I suppose and I have some problems trying to buy my drinks from the machine. Fortunately there were some young kids playing ping pong there and I had to stop them from the game for help :-). They translated the words on the coffee machine to English for me and for the next few days I had to memorize the foreign language and the combination of the words on the machine to buy my same hot chocolate without milk and little sugar.
That's the lobby outside the room. Isn't it spacious? There is a balcony outside the large window and I see people hanging outside chatting or smoking sometimes. The common washroom is around the corridor, but not to worry, there is an attached bathroom in the room. The lift is also around the corner.
That's my room. When you stay at hostel, you always need to bring along some padlocks to lock your cupboards. The red door is the entrance. It is a six bed dorm and costs 16 euros per night. My room mates came from everywhere. They greet each other in foreign language so I ignored them most of the time because when I greeted them back in English, they don't seem to understand me. There was a girl from Poland who speaks English and she is the only one that I talked to. However, she got herself confused at times and she spoke to me in another language and to another girl in English instead and we were looking at her like....err, I don't understand what you are saying...haha...that's the fun thing about staying in hostels. You meet people from all over the world and we try to live together and understand each other. I met a Japanese girl on the morning when I was checking out from the room but it was just a hi and bye and enjoy your holiday thing.....
This is the bathroom in my room. You can leave the bathroom door open and just close the shower curtain when you bathe so that others can use the basins and mirror but I usually lock the bathroom door so that I have the whole room to myself when I bathe...haha...anyway, I am always back in my room by around 8pm or 9pm and the rest will be back much later so I have not inconvenienced anyone.
The cafeteria is nicely decorated and spacious too. This hostel provides the best breakfast that I ever had in any other hostel. There are hard boiled eggs, apples, ham, different types of bread and jams, few types of cereals, cheese, a few types of coffees, teas, drinking water and even orange juice. I had a good breakfast every morning as I need lots of energy to walk in the city. Sometimes I brought along one apple and one hard boiled egg for my dinner. That's how I save when I travel...not everyone can follow what I do unless you are a small eater like me.
If I ever go back to Brussels, I will stay here again. The tour bus even comes to the hostel to pick me when I signed up for the local tour and I think this is a very valued for money hostel.
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