If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium - 5/20/08

As promised, here is my weekly installment of "If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium."  Okay, it's a day early this week since I'm traveling to Helsinki, Finland Monday night for a 2 day conference and won't have internet access on Tuesday.  The conference will primarily go over much of the same information on REACH that I already know.  However, it will be the first opportunity to meet all of the key people that will run the new chemicals agency, the European Chemicals Agency (acronym, ECHA). [For those who don't know, REACH is the new chemical control law in the EU and the main reason that I have relocated to Brussels for the next 3 years.  I wrote an article about REACH back in February.]  I'll be sure to get a few photos of Helsinki for a future article.

I also took a few photos of Paris on my 1-day hop over there for a meeting this past Friday.  I'll post those with an article shortly, probably next week.

Today's topic is "Welcome to Belgium - It's Move In Day!"  Yes, after 2+ weeks here my furniture shipped from Washington DC on April 3rd finally arrived.  So last Wednesday morning my furniture looked like this:

Now for those who don't know, European elevators (lifts) are not particularly large (the one in the "hotel" I had been living in was so small that it barely fit me and one bag).  The one in my apartment is a bit larger, but not really designed for moving furniture.  So the tradition is to use an external lift to raise everything from the street and in through the apartment windows.  Luckily my apartment is on the first floor (which is the second floor in the US) and I have a very large glass double door that opens so it all came up and went in easily.  Here's the lift they used:

And my mattress (everything went into a box):

Four guys worked efficiently and quickly got everything stacked and my furniture all put back together.  Of course there are a few boxes still to unpack.

And a few more boxes in the guest room/office:

And a few more:

One funny story happened during the move.  The movers spoke Dutch (or Flemish) to each other and barely spoke any English, so there were a lot of hand signals between me and them.  At one point there was a knock on the door and one of my new neighbors wanted to ask if I had seen a shoe that had been lost by his daughter out back - somehow it had come up from below and landed on my terrace.  He spoke French and no English.  My French is good for a few words but I had no idea what he was trying to ask me.  So I had him tell one of the movers (who spoke fluent French as well as Dutch), who was able to communicate to me in a mix of English and French something about a shoe.  Luckily I had found the shoe earlier that morning so as soon as I understood "shoe" I knew what he wanted.

All of this, of course, confirms what I had already found out, which is that the little French I know is pretty much useless in conversation, though I can read and say a few words.  So I'm definitely going to have to step up my French learning pace to be able to communicate with everyone.  It's the least I can do since most professionals here speak at least three and up to 5 languages fluently.  But the shopkeepers and locals tend to not know English quite as well (or prefer not to use it if they do) so I need to get up to speed fast.  After all, it is their country...I should speak their language(s).

Okay, that's enough for now.  Next week I'll report on my trip to Paris and possibly also Helsinki (though I may save that for later).

Thanks again for stopping by for a little taste of Brussels. [Which reminds me that I have been asked to do one of these weekly pieces on Belgian food and another on the people.  I definitely will cover those topics soon.]