Returning Nemo, day three: Brussels - Périgueux

To suggest that I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning might be something of an exaggeration, but two very good nights' sleep later, I was up and verging on raring to go.

But first I had to make some noise, as my late return last night – and congenital laziness – left me needing to pack my bag this morning. Trying to get that tactical backpack out of the slightly-too-small metal locker at about 5.20am in just the glow of my phone was an excruciating challenge. I never know which is preferable in mixed company: one short, loud yank that risks jolting people from their slumber, or a succession of gentle tugs, slowly angering those trying to sleep around you.

I went for the second option, keen not to rouse my fellow non-snorers, and it seemed to go on forever to the point that really I should have just announced loudly "sorry" and concentrated the noise-making into one blast and been done with it. Once I had finally extracted everything from my locker, I decamped to the bathroom to pack, but even that required multiple making-it-worse tiptoe trips back and forth. With that completed I still had plenty of time to check out and get to the station for my train.

Early-morning Brussels is quite pretty, and the Grand-Place was still lit up from the night before but empty save for some binmen, and a couple of car-loads of police keeping an eager eye on some straggling party-goers still hard at it (those were the days) and the stages set up for the jazz. I set across it to find the Manneken Pis which was attracting photographers (and puppets) even at 5.40am, and took the opportunity to tick off a few more murals before making my way to the station for sometime approximating six o'clock.

There was practically nobody else in the station when I arrived, so it was nice to walk about and feel important as if it were all mine.

The station building is relatively modern. While people had been thinking about putting a third railway station in Brussels since the end of the 19th century, it didn't open until 1952, and in its style is restrained and functional, with architecture and art liberally scattered about. There is a large entrance hall with a grand staircase down to the platform access overlooked by a mezzanine gallery, as well as memorials to those who worked on the railways and died during two world wars. It's astonishing how big it feels when there's almost nobody else in it.

I bought coffee and a pain au chocolat (not its real name) from someone who denied my joke asking whether a chocolatine would cost extra. I consumed breakfast wearily on platform four while waiting for the 6:32 Intercity to Kortrijk/Courtrai with only a few other early-morning people.

The train came. We got on it. I shared first class with the train manager, who seemed remarkably jovial for the time of day.

Outside the train the weather was rather dreary but I tried to make the most of it and put my phone on to charge as it had somehow not managed to last night. Occasionally, when there was something nice going on, I ventured it out through the sliding window and took action shots of our iron horse whooshing past greenness. In Kortrijk, there was time between trains for a quick power-walk to the nearest street art and back again, before the 8:14 to Lille Flandres.

Ideally I'd have taken a TGV from Brussels to Lille or even Paris, but they were showing full when I tried to book far too late in the day, and then the TGVs from Lille to Paris Nord didn't really work comfortably enough for my liking to get me to the 12:28 from Paris Austerlitz to Limoges. This is why I spent just over two hours on a rammed TER getting more and more worked up by people's luggage occupying seats. It was a busy train.

There was a particular young couple who had dismissed people from their table of four – il y a quelqu'un – even while we were still sitting in Lille Flandres. They laughed about it a couple of times as our journey progressed, and it was after an announcement asking us to make sure our bags were not on seats because of the number of people that I started twitching.

I nearly said something at one point when they turned a lady with no bags away, but it was when a strapping man with bags came needing plenty of space to sit that I pounced. Monsieur Egoïste was away somewhere else at this point, so Madame Chargée des Bagages was in charge of dispensing their lack of common courtesy.

"Il y a quelqu'un," she said. "Je suis désolée, monsieur."

I couldn't hold it in any more and let out my best French "mais franche-ment".

People looked. I fixed her in my "I travel with my own slippers" death stare. She went beetroot. I felt alive, like a puppet on a train. "She's lying," I said in my bestest français sidéré. "Nobody is sitting there." More people looked. I gave it Eurovision flourish. "Apart from the bag which she's too lazy to put in the rack above her seat herself." People looked at her bag. Madame la Méchante tried to smile. "Installez-vous, Monsieur," I said.

The woman next to me, who too had been turned away while we were still in Lille, suddenly woke up to express her profound displeasure at having been turned away earlier. Monsieur de Merdasse came back from the toilets and looked surprised that he could no longer stretch his legs under the vacant seat next to the vacant occupier. Monsieur Ample, now quite at home in his seat and trying out the armrests, offered some words of help.

"Would you like me to put your bag on the rack for you, Madame?".

She flustered a response that it was kind of him but declined and held it on her lap for the rest of the journey, hopefully in significant discomfort. Monsieur too rearranged his bags and then squeezed himself into the seat opposite Mme Chagrinée who was now feigning a sudoku, a shared activity that continued in delightfully brittle silence for the remaining hour or so.

When we arrived in Paris the nice man told me how much he had enjoyed his comfy journey and gave me a smile and thanks for finding him somewhere to sit. M. and Mme Rienàfoutre sat staring at their table in silent rumination while everybody else got off. When the French unite in communal pettiness, they are a truly magnificent people; each bade them pointedly French saccharine au revoirs of rancour.

Perhaps as payment for my kindness, the SNCF had decided there would be no coach five as first class today and instead of being in a nice big comfy coach, we were all in a not uncomfy second class coach. This was not too much of an issue as it was still technically coach five so only people with reservations for coach five could sit in it, meaning most people had two seats each. I caught up on some sleep because I've been down this line many times before, occasionally waking up to think that next time I should probably sit on the left side of the train going south. Between Les Aubrais and La Souterraine they appear to have cut down a lot of trees, leading to some quite pretty views.

The food trolley arrived about thirty minutes before Limoges, but I had already consumed a "sandwich" from the Relay in Austerlitz. Instead, at Limoges, I inserted a no-stresso espresso and a chocolate bar to keep me alive until Périgueux, another journey which seems to have benefited in prettiness from the removal of trees. There, I had time to snag a quick baguette from a superette before the final leg home.

The bus was driven by someone keen to get home for dinner. I was left at the bus stop wondering why, why can't this moment last forevermore? The walk home was sunny.

My travel itch has been vigorously scratched, but I'm left wanting just a little bit – ooh, aah – a little bit more.