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Comment by lucumo | Hacker News Reader

Every year I'm surprised at how badly maintained both ULB and Brussels as a whole is. Everything is filthy, vandalized and broken. Is it like that everywhere in Belgium? Or is just Brussels?

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Before FOSDEM I did some walking around Brussels and came across the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) campus which I'm not sure is connected to ULB but it seemed to be in even worse shape. I loved it because the campus felt a bit like a dystopian cyberpunk world. That being said I'm currently attending Cfgmgmtcamp in Ghent at the HoGent university campus and It's in a beautiful well maintained building. Maybe it's also slowly decaying :)

VUB and ULB split in 1970 to be Dutch-speaking and French-speaking respectively.

Maintaining stuff is not sexy. Look around. People prefer to tear things down and rebuild it or buy new stuff instead of repairing.

This, and a lack of funding.

Brussels has never been stellarly cared for but it was not like that a couple of decades ago.

Brussels in general for sure, there are nice areas but it's a decaying city with no real solutions.

Having said that, it adds to the charm of universities and I guess you have older and newer campus buildings in every school.

I think the winter period has also a tendency to show the how gray Belgium really is. In the summer the ULB campus is much nicer in my opinion.

It reminded me of the UK.

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