Where is Rue de l’Aqueduc?

One girl's search for a street turns into a little adventure...

As I make my way out of Louise metro station, Brussels envelope me in a beautiful darkness. It’s a quarter past eight. The street lights illuminate the liveliness of a Friday night out. Couples are meeting for dinner. Young people are swarming the streets like ants. Many of them just like me are newcomers and don’t really know where to go. I have my map wide open, and there is only one question on my mind: how to get to the Rue de l’Aqueduc?

I need to go there because I am invited for a friend’s “Bye-bye party”. I feel I am already getting late, but instead of becoming anxious and nervously checking the time, I decide to leave it in the hands of Brussels, my new friend, whom I entitle to guide me. I decide to first get on Louise Avenue and then turn right on Charleroise street. From there, I should find my way.

“Excuse me, do you know where is Louise avenue?” I ask the two random girls I meet on a wide street.

“Yes, it’s this one… but I am not sure.. we are new here,” one of the girls answer to me. “Where do you need to go?” she asks me.

“Charleroise street,” I decide not to complicate the thing with Rue de l’Aqueduc yet.

“Oh,” she says. I see uncertainty in her eyes. “I am not sure. We are new here too,” she repeats once again. Her wish to help me seems stronger than her ability to say “no, I don’t know”.  

“But this is Louise Avenue, right?” I double-check.

“Yes, it should be,” she looks even less certain now. I thank the girls, we exchange naïve smiles, the ones that newcomers make as they don’t know the city yet, but don’t want to be impolite to another such newcomer. That’s it - “au revoir”, and they are gone. I am now certain, this is NOT Avenue Louise. But out of curiosity, I go further on, to find at least one street sign to confirm my doubts. And as I see I am already approaching Porte de Namur metro station, I am sure, this is a wrong way and I should be going back.

I think I am now on the avenue Louisa. But for some reason, I turn right where I see a street with many restaurants. People are tucked in warm and cosy places and are happily dining and chatting. There’s a Chinese restaurant on the right and the smell of Italian pizza reaches my nostrils on the left side. I look that direction and make a quick eye contact with a chef. It seems so natural now to enter his pizzeria.

“Excuse me, do you know where Charleroise street is?” I ask him and even show it on a map.

He starts explaining something in French and by his confident look I see, he knows the place. But it’s too loud to hear him, and I don’t speak French. He points a finger on my map with one hand and in the next moment he takes out a fresh pizza from the oven with the other hand. I laugh as he does it. He laughs too. Then he hands the pizza to the customer and opens the door so that we could go outside. We finally hear each other and he explicitly tells me where the place is. My French is almost zero level, but somehow it’s a language you can sometimes understand. And I do understand him – I have to go straight, then see plaza and turn right. He paints his explanations with his hands and I notice how concerned he is to make sure I got it. And I did. I smile. “Merci beaucoup,” I tell him and I am back on the track. He is back in pizzeria.

I have reached Charleroise street and from here Rue de l’Aqueduc should pop up as one of the side streets. I say to myself. But the side streets are becoming more obscure. There are less and less people outside. I feel I could have gone too far, but I am pretty sure I am on the right way. It’s maybe my confusing face that betrays me. And I hear an old man calling something on my right.

“Mademoiselle,” he says in French. I look at him puzzled and he swiftly changes to English.

“Are you looking for a street?” he asks me. I still have the map in my hands, so no wonder why the correct question.

“Yeah,” I answer. I like his tone. I like his initiative. I like the way he approached me. He is looking at me through a tiny window grille. I can only see his white shirt and bald head. I suddenly feel like in medieval times when these kind of old men were in charge of a restaurant or an inn or even a cell. I find it so antique and charming. This man. His voice. The way he is leaning towards me from that grille. The entire situation. I tell him what I am looking for.

“L’aqueduc, l’Aqueduc,” he repeats, “it sounds familiar, it should be near… just go straight and then ask people, but you should be on the right way, I am sure,” he affirms and wishes me a nice day. I thank him in French and wish the same. Then a sudden thought corrects me – it’s an evening, not a day… well, but I keep on walking, blessed by the kind man.

I have walked for a bit and now I feel I might have really gone too far. No sign of finding what I am looking for. I hardly see anyone on a street now. There’s an old lady waiting at the red light. I ask her, but she doesn’t know. Then I cross another street and see a young man walking fast and talking on his mobile phone. I clearly see he looks busy and this is not really the best time to disturb him. But for some reason I present myself and my problem right in his face.

He hangs up the phone immediately. “L’aqueduc..,” he quickly repeats and says something in French. Having noticed I am not getting him, he starts decorating his French with some words in English. He proposes to go to the video rental place on the corner to ask a man there, and in the next minute I am following him. He has clearly taken the lead. We take stairs to go down in the shop, he asks me again for the exact address and number. Then he asks the guy at video rental, but also that guy doesn’t know more than “having heard that street”. We get out of the video rental place and go along the street. My cavalier doesn’t even think of leaving me alone any more and I feel a strong determination in him to help me find a place. On the way he makes a phone call. He speaks partly French, partly Arabic and I assume he might be Moroccan or Tunisian. He mentions La Bourse metro station and I assume it’s the place where he has to meet someone. That also explains his hurry.

“You can leave if you need to go somewhere,” I don’t want him to be late for his meeting.

“No, no,” he insists, “no problem. You don’t speak French, here all French,” he answers. Now it’s him doing my job. He stops people as we walk and asks them for the street I am looking for. They give him directions, but it still seems not to be clear. We walk for a while in silence. The only sound is our shoes pacing the road. I have a quick thought of asking him about his origins (since I speak a little Arabic), but then I give up this idea as it might distract us from our task. Besides, I already know he has something planned and he shouldn’t be here helping me.

There are not many people in the area and it seems we tell our problem to everyone we meet. There’s a couple walking down to us and my cavalier abruptly stops them. He asks them for the Rue de l’Aqueduc in French. They don’t know. Suddenly there’s another charming gentleman coming out of a nearby restaurant. Now it’s the couple that notices them first.

“Monsieur, Rue de l’Aqueduc?” the lady calls to the gentleman. He doesn’t know, but he takes out his smart-phone and comes to us. He slowly enters the street name on the screen. Meanwhile there is an elder man passing by and the lady asks them too: “Rue de l’Aqueduc?” He starts explaining something in French. The guy with the smartphone stands next to me and has found a historical description of the street. The Moroccan/Tunisian (?) guy is on my other side. And in the middle of this bustle when everyone is so seriously looking for Rue de l’Aqueduc I suddenly feel like ascending from the ground, looking at the situation from the above, observing people discussing the street, trying to find it on the smart-phone, making so much efforts, showing concerned faces while I do nothing. I suddenly can’t help, but utter an innocent grin. Everyone has been involved in the quest as if I was looking for a Queen’s Parade on that enigmatic, sounds-familiar-but-nobody-knows-where-it-is street. Finally, the directions come out of somewhere (and I don’t even remember where), but I assume it was the collaborative effect that brought the answer. I thank the people who were involved; my cavalier seems to feel more relieved than myself (as if it had become the concern of both of us). We get on the next street and voilà – it’s Rue de l’Aqueduc! The Morrocon/Tunisian (?) guy makes sure I will find the right number of the street and we part to disappear in different directions.