Brussels - Week 1 - Making Friends With Ducks

So, I live in Belgium now.

 

Let’s catch up: three weeks ago, I accepted an offer to work for a large international organisation in Brussels. I’ll be here until I go back to university in September, working in publishing reports on international politics, which is very much my jam.

 

Work is fun, people are nice, there’s a proper coffee machine with a milk-foamer, and I have a lovely view from the office. I am learning a lot of things. So far I have learnt that if you look at a page of text, and think it looks fine, you’re wrong. The text looks terrible. You need to move the text. There’s too many spaces between the characters. Or maybe not enough. The text is ‘loose’. This means something, apparently. I have started calling text ‘loose’ a lot, and I’m pretty sure if I keep using it I’ll eventually figure out what it means.

 

I have also learnt WAY more than I ever thought I would about the ups and downs of local conflicts in Tajikistan. Don’t even get me started on Tajikistan, we’ll be here for weeks.

 

The work offer happened pretty last-minute, so I didn’t even have time to find a place to rent. Fortunately, I stumbled arse-backwards into a housesitting position in a wooded, quiet suburb on the edge of Brussels, and will be here for the next few weeks until I find somewhere more permanent. I like it here, but I’m looking forward to moving somewhere a bit more central. I’m sure it’s a lovely place to raise small children, but the height of excitement here is going to Burger King.

 

Having said that, living in the middle of nowhere - and when I say ‘middle of nowhere’, I mean ‘a convenient thirty-minute tram ride to the city centre’ – does have its perks. I’ve lived in city centres for most of my adult life, and while you can’t deny the benefits of always being within walking distance of everything you need, it does get a bit tiring. Last weekend, I took a midday stroll through the MASSIVE local park, smiled at the many cheerful dog-walkers, and made friends with ducks. (I’ve only been here a week, I don’t have many other friends here yet). I’m also near the Flanders border, where mainly Francophone Brussels drifts into Dutch-speaking territory, so it’s fun to hear Dutch become more and more common the further east you walk. (Also, as it turns out, those ten years I spent learning French weren’t a total waste of time! Who knew!)

 

I can’t say I ever had desperate childhood dreams of living in Belgium, but now I’m here, I’ve been surprised by how much I like it. I’m aware that six months can sound like a lot but be very short in practice, so I’m going to try and make the best use of that time that I can. ‘Best use of my time’ here means speaking French, going to museums, and drinking large amounts of beer. My god, the beer. I had my first a few days ago, picked at random, and it smelled like a bouquet of fresh fruit and flowers.

 

Here’s to many more.