Brussels Travel Forum

Hi everyone!

I was thinking of traveling to the Maasmechelen Village on Friday or Sunday next week. This will be my first trip to Belgium, so I have no experience there yet.

What I wanted to ask was how can I get to this outlet village from Brussels using public transport? Which will be the shortest route? And, if known, how much would it cost for me to go there?

The only route I could find for now was train travel from Brussels to Hasselt and take a bus to the village there. But the whole journey will take more than 2 hours. Seems to be very long.

Can I get there via Brussels airport? I know it is about 80 km from there. I was thinking of train to the airport from Brussels Central Station. But I do not know whether there is any public transport available to the Maasmechelen Village.

Please advise.
Many thanks!

Train to Genk and then Bus from there is indeed the only way to get there via public transport. Total time is two hours.
A detour via the airport won't speed things up. (Why would you expect this to be faster?) The website www.nmbs.be will give you the fastes available public transport.

I have only driven by it, but don't think there's any more convenient connection than the one you found out just there. Errrrrrm... of course it is fine to visit an outlet village, but you might be disappointed there. There is another bigger one near Roermond in NL (north of Maastricht), that might be within your reach. Quite frankly and without any offense intended, especially if this is your fist time to Belgium, I really wouldn't bother visiting any of these outlets. I have been to the Roermond one twice and it was a total flop. Make sure you see Brussels thoroughly, and do visit the obvious cities -- they are definitely worth it. Even a visit to Hasselt (which is one of the smaller and less visited cities) is quite likely better than going to that dreadful outlet place. I found that all that was interesting and available in normal sizes and of good quality was to be found equally cheap in normal German high street stores and even more cheaper through internet places like www.dressforless.de

Thank you for help!

I will search for the transport on the website given.

Unfortunately, I have no chance to go to the German shops. If I had, I would definitely do this without losing time on my vocation:) As well as can't I buy clothes from German internet shops. I live in Finland and shipping from Germany is not that cheap:) So it makes no difference either buying in German e-shop or in Helsinki mall.

I am planning to spend 3-4 days in Brussels, 1 day dedicate to visiting of an outlet village, and 1 day travel to Brugges. I hope this vocation will be a pleasant one!

But dressforless.de delivers everywhere within the EU for reasonable rates:

http://www.dress-for-less.de/tmpl/en/se/terms.tmpl?nav=cos;se_ref=%2Ftmpl%2Fen%2Fhome.tmpl;id=1o-YhTCDldjU3fbYdC5vrY;st=Home-en-Service-Versand

You should really visit Ghent or Brugge and if that is too far, I'd include Antwerp, Mechelen or Leuven... Moreover, Antwerp has great shopping, the "best in the west" and it is probably still cheaper there than in Finland.

It seems to me that everywhere in Europe is cheaper than here in Finland:)

I will definitely go to some Belgian cities. Now working on my travel plan to Brugge. Later on today I will see what else we could visit.

Thank you!

BTW you are right speaking of reasonable prices at dressforless.de

Already there!