Is It Safe To Travel To Brussels After The Terrorist Attacks?

It would have been hard to miss the news, but there was a pretty widespread terrorist attack in Brussels earlier today.  ISIS has taken credit for the attacks just days after one of the people behind the terrorist attacks in Paris was captured in Brussels.

It appears to be a horrible situation, with dozens of people dead and passengers being held in a hangar at the airport while authorities deal with the aftermath.

This leads many to ask whether it’s safe to travel to Brussels right now.

It’s a scary time, for sure.  It was just a couple of months ago that I was openly asking whether it was safe to go to Istanbul after a terrorist attack in one of the main tourist areas.  Ultimately, I made the decision not to go.  If I was single (and without kids), I likely wouldn’t have had any issue going to Istanbul.  But, given my family and the relative nervousness of my wife, I made the decision to stay home.

Brussels is not the type of place I would have associated with terror in the past.  When you consider the attacks in Paris, Istanbul and other well-populated areas, the new reality is that there probably aren’t places we can label “safe from terrorism”.  Maybe we never could have before, it just seems more widespread today.

When I asked the question about Istanbul, many folks were quick to point out that the terrorists win when we stay home.  That the best way to fight terror is not to change our behavior.  And, that the likelihood of another attack in Brussels after this recent tragedy is low enough that it should be a safe place.

Those are brave statements to make and they’re likely correct.  But, there’s a difference between saying we should travel to an area and actually doing so.  I don’t want to live my life under a rock, and yet I remember walking around lower Manhattan shortly after 9/11.  People were absolutely not back to “life as usual”, nor were tourists.

In my opinion, this is a process.  Some folks, the bravest among us, will go about life like nothing happened.  Others will stay away for a long time.  The rest of us?  We’ll be vigilant, careful and considerate.  We’ll likely give “suspicious” boxes, places and people a second look.  And, in the end, like will return to normal.

Or, a new kind of normal.  Where we’re a bit less trusting than we were yesterday.  I don’t think the old normal is coming back.  We’re adapting to the new normal and trying to maintain some semblance of a time where we thought “our town” or “our favorite destination” wasn’t at risk.  Let’s hope the collective anxiousness of society helps us be vigilant, helping to prevent the next attack, while not over-reaching to a new normal where we don’t have the freedom we once had.

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