Subway Tip of the Day

Subways go by all different names. In San Fransisco, it's called the BART. It travels at speeds up to 80 mph. In NY city, it's the MTA NYC Transit. In Paris, Brussels and Washington DC, they call it the Metro. In London, it's the Tube. All of these are similar in structure and are designed to move a mass amount of people from one place to another cheaply and efficiently. Most of these places have turnstiles that make you at least work to "steal" a ride. The same, however, is not true in Brussels. In fact, the ticket box is so obscure that it is quite easy to miss it all together. There is NOTHING, no security, no turnstile, no person to ask you politely to go get a ticket, no camera to stop you from just walking down to the train.
Here's the thing about that...it's an easy market for thieves and pickpockets. They don't even have to pay to steal something from you! There is no accountability at all. Most of the stations, there is only one way on and one way off the train. You either get out the doors on the left or the doors on the right. However, at the main train station, the doors open on both sides! So watch your wallets and your purses. Keep separate ID's in separate places. Keep your money somewhere else. Because in this particular train station, it's so easy for someone to just brush by you and by the time you can look down to verify that what you felt go missing actually is gone (even if there are three other people around you whom you know at the time), they'll be out the other door, and the train will have left the station!