Today I went for a bike lesson. I’ve been riding a bike for about 48 years, so you may wonder why.

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Well, I’ve ridden in parks, along the beach, in the woods, and on lovely leafy deserted Uruguayan avenues, but never in the city. And Brussels traffic is scary.

I’ve decided I need to buy a bike, because our new flat is just a teeny bit further than walking distance from shops, a post office, the pool and so on. And it’s right beside the Forêt de Soignes, an 11,000-acre beech and oak forest which needs to be explored (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonian_Forest).

So I went to the bike rental shop where we got bikes on no car day, to see if I could buy a bike. Nope, because they only sell bikes in January. Sounds crazy, but it isn’t really – they sell off the bikes they rent out when they’re a year old, and this lot will be a year old in January. However, I found that they had special ladies’ cycling classes called ‘A vélo, mesdames’ (Let’s bike, ladies!) and I signed up.

On car-free Sunday a month ago, I fell off my rented bike because the front wheel got caught in a tramline. Okay, I was multitasking – taking a photo – at the same time, but I got a bit of a fright (visions of a tram hurtling towards me and those signs that say ‘Trams have Precedence, even over Pedestrians’ – and no doubt precedence over cyclists lying on the tramline over the twisted wreckage of their rented bike). So I figured a few cycling lessons to learn to cope would not go amiss. And it may be a good way to meet a few locals, too. I was to go to the beginners’ class at ten o’clock on Monday morning to get assessed.

So off I went today. There were six wannabe cyclists, a journalist from ‘Elle’ magazine, and the teacher, who gave each of us a bike and fluorescent leg bands, and got us to walk our bikes five minutes down the street to the Royal Park. The others were pretty much real beginners. Two were fairly steady, one wobbly, and the other two not quite up yet. The latter had to roll down a gentle slope lifting their feet every now and then to get their balance, while the rest of us rode around the park. I was soon told to slalom through the trees and change gears up and down little mounds. Then the ‘riders’ had two little excursions into the Big Busy Streets, down Rue de la Loi past all the European Institutions, across crossroads, onto and off pavements, and overtaking stationary lorries, with Carmen, the teacher, riding beside Soraya who was a bit nervous, holding onto her shoulder.

I learnt some amazing things: like cyclists are allowed to cycle the wrong way down one-way streets. And there’s a shop near the university where you can buy re-hashed bikes very cheaply.

Now what I love about Brussels is that people rarely ask where you’re from or what you’re doing in Brussels. It’s a wonderful place for blending in. Today, I was the one who was interested. After all, as I said, this was meant to be an occasion for meeting locals, and it soon became pretty evident that there weren’t many locals in the group. I asked, and it turned out that my fellow cyclists were from Kosovo, Benin, Congo, Algeria, and Lebanon. The Algerian said ‘I was brought up in France and my husband is Greek and I’m not sure what my mother tongue is’, so I felt totally reassured. The teacher was Spanish. The Elle journalist (the only Belgian in the group) didn’t bat an eyelid: this seemed all absolutely normal to her.

What we had in common was that we all spoke French and wanted to have fun cycling in the city. And this wasn’t an expat group: just the most obvious place in Brussels to find bikes and bike lessons (http://www.provelo.org/). I made some friends, and Mimi and I are off in a couple of days to buy re-hashed bikes. And I will make more friends (will let you know where they’re from), because I have been promoted to the Wednesday group!

P.S. It cost me 5 Euros (just over 4 pounds) to become a member of the group, and each two-hour lesson costs 5 Euros. Not bad.