I got to first see Starset when they collaborated with Hyde in 2018, and then D****e talked me into attending their concert in Antwerp in 2023. I decided I liked them, so when they announced a European tour with another stop in Belgium, I resolved to go attend that concert. To be honest, I had bought flights for this trip before fitting the Türkiye circuit, I never expected two multi-day trips so close to each other when I planned for this.

The concert was on Tuesday the 22nd of October, at Trix, the same venue in Antwerp it had been in 2023. That was awesome, because Trix is in a sort of community centre, with cafeteria, toilets and a roof over your head, great for the Belgian weather. My first idea was getting a flight on Monday the 21st, but it turned out that flying on Sunday the 20th was much cheaper, even considering an extra overnight stay.

I drew a plan. On the 22nd, I would arrive in Brussels via Brussels Airport in a red-eye flight. There, I would visit a bunch of places I missed last time, most related to Art Nouveau. When everything closed, I would take a train to Bruges and have a walk to see the lit monuments. The next morning, I would see Bruges, then head off to Antwerp, where I would stay the other two nights. In the early morning of the 23rd, I was to take a train back to Brussels, and in the early evening leave though Brussels South Charleroi Airport. It mostly worked out, in the end, despite the weather not agreeing and me catching a really bad cold. Oh, and changing a whole day’s worth of my plans a couple of days beforehand.

I bought a bunch of online train tickets for the itinerary – Airport to Brussels, Brussels to Bruges, Bruges to Antwerp, and Antwerp to Bruges, which were conveniently stored in my phone. I also got the bus ticket from Brussels to Charleroi. I checked the train lines, the underground, and made all my planning decisions. I booked my parking – or so I thought, there was a problem with it, but I got it sorted before leaving. I was all set, the only thing left was the Art Nouveau pass, but I did not want to do that until I was there, so I could make reservations for the sites according to how long it took me to visit them, and how the underground connections were.

And then, a couple of days before leaving – Wednesday the 16th I think – I was rewatching the fantasy series Supernatural. Despite its… questionable writing after season five, it’s a comfort thing. Back during the pandemic, I was following a lot of the actors in it, but as Twitter became X, I kind of stopped paying attention. One of the characters in Supernatural is the angel Castiel, played by actor Misha Collins. Castiel might be one of my favourite characters, not only of this show, but from television in general (again, despite questionable writing decisions). He has a heavy plot line in season 6, and after finishing an episode, I thought something along “Oh I wonder what Misha’s doing now,” and I went to on social media to check. And I found that he… was going to something called Hero Comic Con in Brussels, the 19th and 20th of October.

And then I decided to attend Heroes Comic Con, rearrange all my plans, because if destiny is pulling such a stunt, who am I to ignore the stars aligning?