Belgium Weekender 3

As anyone can easily guess, food is surely a problem for a vegetarian in most of the places in Europe. I am talking of real starving, starving for most of your taste buds :). If you are in your apartment, you can cook something, which can keep you happy. Anyway, it is good that I got used to Cornflakes, and that too with cold milk. Else I would have only had one option of bread with jam/butter.

But my lunch at office is a problem. Mostly I imagine as if I am having Veg:Biriyani or aviyal, and eat up the only vegetable salad available, which tastes almost grass. But there also I opt some bread, butter and banana with some chocolates, which keeps me happy at the end of the meal.

Night again, we will have cooked food with the limited varieties available. I have not fully explored the Indian stores, but have heard that nothing much is available here – like our pickles, or powders etc. So it is mostly rationing with what is been brought from India. I repent on the pickles I lost to security in Frankfurt airport :(. I couldn’t find pizza bases here; they have only ready to make pizzas, done with cheese and toppings! It irritates, really!

I am so much explaining it because I use to have a better food available in Sydney. I was feeling there, it is not as good as London. Now I am in a place, which is hardly a three hours journey from London, and it is all a different story here! Funny World!

Now, about the Traveller’s cheques: They are changed on a commission in most parts of the World, but you will have at least one option to convert them without commission. It may either crediting to your bank account or crediting at the counter belonging to the issuing company.

Here nothing works out! It varies from 5% at the airport to 1.75% at a place, which opens Mon-Fri 10-4:30 :). The normal other places charges from 3 to 4.5%. I at last made up my mind to pay 3% for converting some of my TCs with minimal loss of time at office.

Commune reporting is another drama I had to go through if I come here with a work permit (to be done in 8 days of landing in Belgium). I reported to the local commune (like a panchayat office, gave my details of residence, got my work permit verified. Then, they initiated a process charging me around € 23,00 (it varies from place to place in Belgium – from €5 to €40). That process includes police verification and will issue a white card in 3-4 weeks if all goes fine. There were some rumours that I need a permanent address to register here (that is I have to be part of the housing lease; or the lease should be in my name). As the lease is minimum for 6 months, I have look for costly options like Business apartments which signs lease for a month at a higher rent. My application was accepted with no question on whether I am in the lease agreement, it depends on the person sitting there. Till I have a white card, I have to carry my passport always as my ID. The fun part of my particular case is, I will have to cancel it by the time it is issued :D, as I will be here.

Commune has more powers than I thought, when I realised many things later. All work permits are issued in the Schengen Visa stamped will be for 3 months. The white card issued for an extended period serves as a Visa after that! So local commune can decide on whether a person can stay in their country or not!

Tailpiece1:- Tap water is not suitable for drinking – calcium contents they say. So we have to buy water bottles for drinking, though we use tap water for cooking. The bad part is, water is available only in bottle (max 1.5 litres) and no cans! We have a big box in each floor of our office to collect the bottle caps (I don’t know why not bottles). That is sold to raise money, which the firm donates to an orphanage!

Tailpiece2:-

Astrix: It is only afternoon and you are taking supper now ? Then when will you take lunch ?

Belgian: Immediately after the breakfast !!!
(taken from Astrix in Belgium)

Belgium Weekender 2

The weather here also is similar to London for its uncertainty. The day will sunny and all of a sudden it becomes cloudy and rains! So better always keep an umbrella and be ready for the rain anytime. And when it rains, I am seeing a lot of snails on the roads and the pathways, sadly half of them crushed to paste :(.

My first day to office, I partially made up for the loss with taxi. There are no counters or ticket machine in Evere station; it is so small. The train will have one conductor who will be walking across the train to check your passes and give tickets, like UK trains. It is not a tough job to walk across 3-4 compartments (that’s all this train consists of) and check the passes, and issue tickets to one or two people. Even in the peak hours, it will have very less people. The whole train will contain less than 10 passengers by the time it reaches Halle. The conductor didn’t come, and my first Belgian train travel became a ticket-less travel! There are no checks at the stations. Evere station doesn’t even have a single employee, not even a sweeper!

Applied for a train pass at Halle station, you have to come out of the station for the counter. Sham helped me with his memory on what he filled in a few months ago, as the form was in Dutch (I assume it is Dutch). For unclear ones, we cleared them with the person at the counter, who speaks English like an outline story. We mentioned that the pass is needed for bus and train, and he noted that also down. It came around €84 for a month which was much less than what Sham paid a few days ago. Then we tried to check why it is, and realised on comparison that the pass doesn’t include travel in Metro trains and buses running in and around the city (like Evere). I can only use it in the train to Halle and the buses in Halle! It is all so confusing; I have to take another so-called jump card for using in the city transports. The card is issued for 10 jumps costing around €11.

Now, what is a jump? Whatever trains, trams or buses I take in one hour will be counted as one jump. So if I have to go to a place taking a bus and then a train and it took me 20 minutes to reach there, finish my work and make it back to my destination with my last boarding within the next 40 mins, I will only be using one jump!

But that was all theory; I was initially not fully clear on its usage and successfully showed the pass in a wrong bus (it needs to be showed to the driver, not the scanner. As except for what is included in the pass printed, it is the same pass) and later when I learnt it; I was more confident that I can use it comfortably, I did it some more times when Sham was warning me I have to pay €50 if caught. I was just showing off my frustration in my helplessness to understand their system and was planning to explain it clearly if caught (surely was keeping a €50 note in my purse always). I stopped it when I got through the frustration, and did stop before I was fined :). Now Sham travels with me much more relaxed :). But I am also relaxed on being able to fully make up for my loss with the taxi.


Office is different from my previous offices, onsite or offshore. They are made of many cabins, and some are big to contain 10 people and some for one person. I am sharing my cabin with 2 others, looks far better in terms of non-distracted work. I have to swipe to enter as any other offices, but here the system updates my entry and everyone (including Chennai office) can see if I am in or not. The card’s use doesn’t end there. If I fire a print out in the central printer, I have to swipe my card to get my printout. It is security for me, none will see my documents, and traceability for the management.


Tailpiece:-
There is a solution I found here to make sure the buses doesn’t start before time from their starting point. There is a digital board kept at the station, which displays the time, then a random number. This random number changes every minute. The driver have to note the number at the time he has started from that point and report it as a part of his trip sheet. The route supervisor checks this number with what would have displayed for that time and confirm if the bus has not started before time. We could use this for our clock rooms, which is there to avoid over speeding.

Belgium Weekender 1

I was looking at the map in the corner of the street. The good news is that it is in three languages, and the bad news is that none of the three is English! It is not just the map, but most of the pointers, train timings, announcements are non-English. As long as it is not English, whether it is in three languages or ten, it doesn't make much difference :)

I am in Brussels, capital of the Kingdom of Belgium. I am doing many things first time in my life. This is the first country I am visiting which:

-doesn't have English as one of the official languages
-have driving on the right side of the road( on safer side I look at both side before crossing, wherever I cross); and
-was never a British colony ( and so, casual in office daily, and all non British ways which are again new to me)

It was a peaceful flight till Frankfurt where I had to leave my pickle bottles at one of the security checks because no bottles allowed in hand baggage having more than 100gm contents. The airport people spoke English, but most of the traveller's didn't. Again, the airport was big enough (much bigger than the other hubs I have seen, Dubai or Singapore) that I was walking a lot inside through no-activity areas, which was the right way to the gates, but it looks like I am walking to Brussels :))!

Landing in Brussels, my walk started straightaway. I was just wondering why someone should make such a huge airport to leave it so vacant, just to make sure that anyone landing there will walk 1km for baggage claim and another 500m for the 'uitgang', I mean the Exit!

I had trusted all taxis abroad so much, and this short guy exploited it well. For a charge of €22,00, he made it €25,00 with tip, and then vanished with €30,00 for dropping me in his jet black Mercedes so professionally!!!

I checked in to my apartment, I am fourth person in that two bedroom flat. It was spacious except for funny observations. In the place where we have a shoe rack - just as you enter - lies in the only wardrobe of the apartment!

I had landed on a Sunday, and shops including supermarkets will be open on Sunday!

I am staying in Everé, a suburb of Brussels (which means around 8kms from the centre of the city) and have to travel further another 20kms to reach the office. Going to office means, 15mins brisk walk to Everé station, catch a train to Halle (peak frequency is 3 trains per hour!), 35 mins train travel (it stops at a station and changes its direction and all - so much drama), and at last a 25 mins walk to office (I would be mostly be sleepy getting down after that slow train and so no brisk walk). So if I start at 7:40 and everything goes fine, I will swipe the card registering my entry at the gates at 8:58.

The best thing in the journey is the green part of the walk; and with the temperature also in tolerable limits (without a sweater), the walks are pretty refreshing. The walk from Halle is through a riverside for 300m, with houses on one side and trees on the other.

So my normal day starts around 6:30 and it will be 8 by the time I come back home if I get out at 6 from office. The days are longer now, the Sun sets only after 9.

Just waiting for the first weekend to come, many more things to do during my 6 weeks - commune reporting and getting the white card, changing my traveller’s cheques (normal commission ranges from 3 to 5 %) etc.

Let me take a week and will explain what they are.