030tango Road Trip – Day 03 – Brussels Tango

published on
September 11th 2015
Written by Jonas
This day showed all the ups and downs of such a trip in one day. I wanted to make sure to test out being in a city, doing the interviews, and getting all the material I need in just one day. After all, this will happen several times during the 2nd trip and you should know what you get yourself into.
Bus station in Brussels
So I caught my bus at 9:30 in Amsterdam and was on my way to Brussels, till that huge traffic jam in whole Belgium changed the timetable from relaxed to "Hurry up dude!"
Highway to Brussels
I dropped off my baggage at Inês's place, who would host me that night in Brussels. We met at the first Copenhagen marathon in 2012. It was one of the times when I had real problems connecting to the event and I was close to staying at home on Sunday. In the end, I went out, after all, to meet local friends who were not at the marathon. And then the after-party took me completely by surprise, with only wonderful dances and encounters, Inês was one of those!
Having only a little time to reconnect, I had to hurry to my first interview. Daniel is a regular visitor to Berlin, to dance, DJ, and meet with friends. It's his 2nd Tango home. We sat down in the studio where he teaches and talked about how he found the teachers of the older generation he was looking for when he started dancing 16 years ago.
Daniel Rossi, Tango dancer from Brussels
Afterwards I hurried over to Jens-Ingo. He is very well known as a DJ and a collector of Tango music all over Europe. He is digitalizing his music collection himself, to always bring the best experience to the dancers he is playing for. His researches he publishes on his blog tango-dj.be and together with his partner Benedicte he organizes twice a year the marathon La Cita de Los Amigos in Belgium.
Jens-Ingo Brodesser, Tango DJ from Brussels
Without a break I went directly on to the parc du cinquantenaire. There Inês organizes once a week an open air milonga in the colonnades of the museum "Musees Royaux d'art et d'Histoire/Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis", as long as the weather is warm and the sun is shining.
It's a donation-based event and people bring food and drinks for everyone. They chat and dance till 12.
Parc du cinquantenaire in Brussels
At that point, my energy kind of lost me. I wanted to do another interview with the very welcoming Flávia. Unfortunately packing up my equipment, doing the interview, and then going home to wake up at 6:30 in the morning was just too much.
Thinking didn't work anymore, so the evening ended with some dancing (you shouldn't overthink that after all), meeting old friends again, and finding new ones.
Brussels Tango Milonga
I had only one day for Brussels Tango, but it was an intense one and I'll surely come back!
km count: 746