Before coming to Europe, I had never been on a train before. The closest I had come to being on a train were the subways in San Francisco and Boston. Here in Europe, train travel is the preferred way to get to and from cities within Belgium as well as to get to nearby countries (Germany, France, and the Netherlands). A local once told me that it is a “luxury” to have a car in Hasselt, because it is truly unnecessary given the high quality of the Belgian public transportation. This comment was a suprise to someone like me who is coming from the U.S.A., where a car almost seems like a necessity, and most people have their own from as young an age as sixteen or eighhteen.
The mode of transportation in Belgium really depends on how far you are going. Whereas in the U.S.A., a car would typically be used for both a short trip to the grocery store and to a cross-country road trip, cars are not used as much here. A bicycle is used to get someone around the town of Hasselt, from going to work to going to the store. It is common to see people in suits riding a bike, presumably heading to or from their place of work. Busses are used within the city to go larger distances, like maybe from your neighborhood to your school (which would otherwise be a twenty minute bike ride). Trains are used to go from one city to another.
