Belgium and French

I spent a few days in Belgium last week. Most people here speak English and when they hear a foreign accent in French, a lot of times they switch into English. So it is much harder to practice French here than in for example France. Another problem I had, is that I haven't spoken French in a while and had come in fresh off of spending a lot of time in Spain learning Spanish. So at moments I wanted or even was speaking a mixture of Spanish and French. For example when buying a train ticket I almost ended up saying "por favor" instead of "s'il vous plait" and kept on producing big gaps of silence when speaking French as not to say anything in Spanish. I kept wanting to say the word "vale".