A month as a digital nomad in Brussels
I spent a month working remotely from Brussels. It’s not the obvious digital-nomad city — no one puts it next to Lisbon or Bali — but it quietly works, and in some ways better than the hyped spots. Here’s the honest account.
Where I based myself
I stayed in Ixelles, and I’d recommend it to any remote worker. It’s residential, full of cafés and good food, walkable, well-connected, and far more local than the tourist centre (best neighbourhoods). Dansaert and Saint-Gilles would work just as well — all three have the right mix of café culture and everyday life.
The choice of neighbourhood matters enormously for a month-long stay in a way it doesn’t for a weekend. The tourist centre — the Grand-Place area, the Ilôt Sacré — is all right for two nights, but spending a month there would be grim: overpriced, touristy, disconnected from the city’s real life. Ixelles is the antidote: a genuinely residential inner-Brussels neighbourhood with African and Middle Eastern restaurants alongside Belgian brasseries, a strong café scene, the étangs (the ornamental lakes) for an evening walk, and students and professionals as your neighbours rather than hotel guests. Saint-Gilles to the west has similar energy with the added bonus of the Art Nouveau streets. Dansaert in the lower town is slightly more fashionable and slightly more expensive, but has excellent independent coffee and the best natural wine selection in the city.
Working from cafés
Brussels has a genuinely good specialty-coffee scene, mostly clustered in Dansaert, Ixelles and Saint-Gilles (breakfast & brunch). Wifi was reliable everywhere I tried, and the brunch culture means café-working over a flat white is completely normal. There are coworking spaces too if you want a desk and meeting rooms.
The café-working culture is real here in a way that it isn’t everywhere. Belgian cafés are used to people sitting for hours — it’s culturally expected, not frowned upon — and the wifi investment in specialty coffee shops reflects their understanding that the laptop-with-coffee customer is a reliable one. I found a few regulars in Ixelles that I returned to daily: a warm room, good music, fast wifi, decent coffee, and nobody watching the clock. The coworking spaces are there if you need a professional address or meeting facilities, but for most remote work, the cafés are more pleasant and considerably cheaper.
The cost
Cheaper than London or Paris, pricier than Eastern Europe — squarely mid-range. The big win: as a business city, weekend hotel/short-let rates dip, and everyday eating is affordable if you live on the classics and markets rather than restaurants every night.
Living costs for a month were manageable. Rent for a short-let apartment in Ixelles is significant but not Parisian; food costs depend heavily on where you eat. The Ixelles market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings does excellent produce and cheap prepared food. The Marolles flea market at Place du Jeu de Balle keeps Sundays interesting and occasionally yields something worth having. A neighbourhood friterie, a Turkish bakery, a Vietnamese canteen — the everyday eating ecosystem of Ixelles — kept the food budget comfortable. Restaurant eating every night would have changed that calculation entirely.
The killer feature: weekend escapes
This is where Brussels beats most nomad hubs. Sitting at the centre of Belgium’s rail network, every weekend was a different city — Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, all under an hour, no car, no planning (day trips). Within two hours I could be in Amsterdam, Paris or London. As a base for exploring Europe between work, it’s hard to beat.
After a month, I’d done day trips to Ghent (twice), Bruges, Antwerp and Leuven. I’d taken the Eurostar to London for a weekend. I’d been to Lille for a Saturday. None of this required advance booking for the Belgian trains or particular effort — the SNCB fare is fixed, you buy it on the app, you go. This weekend-escape potential is the thing that separates Brussels from most other digital-nomad cities: it’s a hub rather than an island, connected to a network of genuinely excellent destinations that you can explore on a reasonable schedule without ever feeling trapped in the same city.
The honest cons
- The weather. Grey and damp a lot of the time. You learn to love the indoor café-and-museum life (rainy day).
- It’s understated. Brussels doesn’t show off, so it can feel low-key if you want a buzzing scene. That’s a pro for focus, a con for FOMO.
- Bureaucracy and languages. Bilingual admin can be mildly confusing, though English is widely spoken.
The weather is the one thing I’d give anyone no false comfort about. Brussels is a genuinely grey city much of the time — Atlantic weather, low cloud, regular rain. The locals have developed an indoor culture — beer, chocolate, cafés, museums — in direct response to this, and it’s an excellent indoor culture. But if you came for sunshine and outdoor evenings, Brussels in April is not going to give you what you want. September and May are the sweet spots.
Practical notes for a longer stay
A few things that matter more for a month than for a weekend:
SIM card or eSIM: Belgian mobile coverage is good and the three main operators (Proximus, Base/Telenet, Orange) offer tourist or short-term SIMs. An eSIM from a provider like Airalo works fine and saves queuing at a phone shop on day one.
Short-let accommodation: Ixelles and Saint-Gilles have reasonable short-let availability on the usual platforms. The European Quarter is convenient for the transport connections but expensive and soulless for daily living. Avoid it for a month-long base. Schaerbeek and Laeken in the north are cheaper but further from the neighbourhoods you’ll want to spend time in.
Coworking: Several coworking spaces operate in the Dansaert/Centre area and in Ixelles, ranging from startup-focused to more traditional serviced offices. Most offer day passes as well as monthly memberships, which is useful if you only need a proper desk occasionally.
Healthcare: Belgium has a functioning public health system; EU citizens with a European Health Insurance Card can access it at reduced cost. Non-EU visitors should have travel insurance that covers medical costs. Pharmacies are easy to find and Belgian pharmacists are unusually helpful and knowledgeable for minor ailments.
Would I do it again?
Yes. Brussels is an underrated remote-work base: affordable-ish, walkable, great food and coffee, and unbeatable weekend connectivity. It rewards the kind of nomad who values a calm, liveable home base over a party scene. Live in Ixelles, work from cafés, and take a train somewhere new every weekend — that’s a very good month. Start with our neighbourhoods guide.
