Ma Famille Belge

There’s jazz piano music playing in the background. The French, the German and the Irish are bantering with the French flatmate’s mother who arrived as a surprise last night. Glasses of wine are being passed round. The German has just discovered the French flatmates speak some German. Suddenly there’s a flood of German, French and English flying around the room intermixed with hearty laughter. Welcome to the dream flat: my reality.

When I came over to look for flats in late February, I was torn about what I wanted for living arrangements. Having lived solo in Japan for 2 years, I wondered if I could actually deal with other people or if I’d lost that ability. However, I was also aware of how international Brussels is and as a friend had described to me, “it’s Erasmus take 2”. It was an opportunity to meet lots of internationals and bask in the never-ending mix of background, culture and language. In the end, I decided to move into a 6-person flat purely based on how close it was to my workplace in Schuman.

When I moved in, there were 2.
Three Germans later, there are 6.

“We measure how long we’ve been here by the number of Germans” my Irish flatmate Louise explained to me on my first weekend in Brussels.

It wasn’t long before the reality of this initially odd statement kicked in. As a German trainee with DPA – the Deutsch Press Agency – one month of your two year traineeship is spent at the IPA – International Press Agency – in Brussels. Our landlord has an agreement with the DPA whereby each of their trainees live in a room in his house during this one-month stay in Belgium. This same house is where Ross, Louise, Jo, Marine and myself now abide.

First there was Sebastian. Then there was Teresa. And now there is Marco. Although the rotating Germans change the make-up of the flat on a monthly basis, there’s a small sense of continuity as they all know each other and go on to work alongside each other in Berlin when they return to Germany.

3 Germans in, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people. Not only do we get on, but we spend a lot of time together; “family time” as German number 2 Teresa named it. Home isn’t just somewhere to sleep; it’s somewhere I want to be.

          

          

          

Lame Ise Rubble

“Have you seen Les Miserables?” I asked my flatmates as we sat in Le Pantin, one of the top 100 cafes in the world according to one source,  last Friday evening. My German and French flatmates stared back at me with blank expressions. “Les Miserables? You know, the movie? Everyone’s seen it?” I persevered. The blank faces remained expressionless. After several minutes of frustrated repetition on my part, my English flatmate returned to the table and “translated”. The French flatmate’s face was instantly transformed. “Oh, you mean Les Miseraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaable!!!!!!!” she exclaimed at which point her and the German flatmate dissolved into laughter as they realised what I’d been trying to say. “You said Lame Ise Rubble! Hahaha!” This quickly became the most quoted phrase of the night…

Fortunately, the French aspect of my Brussels experience hasn’t been all quite this traumatic. Infact, I haven’t even seen Les Miserables so maybe that’s actually the problem, rather than my dodgy, Invernesian-twanged version of le français.

As part of my job, I’m given weekly French lessons which snazzily works out as being one-on-one language tutoring as I have by far, the lowest level of French in my workplace. My first class occurred on my first day of work and I remember being amazed at how much French my teacher Thierry managed to extract from my very Japanesified brain. I’d studied French at school but not since I was 18 and even then, what I had studied had involved a lot of memorisation and very little real-life practical usage. However, it goes to show how effective learning is when you’re younger because it really sticks with you for life. But several weeks on, I still find myself having language battles in my brain as Japanese and French fight for the spotlight. I was telling Thierry about the bargainous strawberries that I’d bought at the market on Sunday and I told him they were “san euro”. Oooh expensive, was Thierry’s response. I was confused. “No, san euro” I repeated, holding up my three fingers, brownie-promise style. Looking at my hand symbol, Thierry responded “Trois?”. I looked at my hand and then realised my mistake. San is Japanese for 3. He thought I was saying cinq (5). My brain is a mess.

Outside of these one hour weekly classes, there isn’t much opportunity to speak French. English remains the dominant, common language of my Brussels world and it amazes me on a daily basis how fluently my fellow Europeans speak my native language. However, the recent arrival of two new French flatmates should hopefully encourage me to use my French in real life situations. After two years of Japanese-language exposure, it will be interesting to see how the battle of the brains plays out. My initial dream of becoming fluent in both in five months is perhaps unrealistic but progress is definitely being made, at least in one of them…

An Easter Benelux

I do love living in continental Europe. The constant buzz of passionate language; people sitting outside cafés drinking coffees and beers even when it’s freezing mcjeezing; being able to travel so cheaply and easily between a large number of countries without having to change money, change adaptors… Don’t get me wrong, I quite like being from the unique, awkward, isolated islands of the British Isles but this continental Europe lark always makes a welcome change.

This Easter weekend I went on a very last minute trip to the Netherlands, aka Dutchlands. For a mere €40 return, my friend and fellow intern Carole and I travelled from Brussels to Utrecht Centraal – the transport capital of the Netherlands, and the city where I lived in 2007/2008 for my Erasmus year at university. I hadn’t been back to Utrecht since 2009 so I was excited to return and rejog/relive some of my Dutch memories. As was the case in 2009, there wasn’t a social network to be reunited with but I was able to meet up with a couple of Dutch friends and even a friend from Japan who has since moved to Utrecht.

The city had experienced some changes since my last visit. Most drastic of all was the fact that my student accommodation had been knocked down and is currently a building site awaiting the development of a new train station. The university library, which had been under construction when I had been there, is now finished and in delightful working order. The very top of the Dom, where my friend Donna so famously lost her earring in the slatted floorboards, has now been boarded up to avoid such dramatic incidents ever happening again. However, the Dom still stands proudly in the centre of the city. Albert Heijn remains the best supermarket in the world. Dutch guys are still distinctly Dutch because of the long-hair curtain-style thing they’ve got going on…

When we arrived in Utrecht, and  I caught my first glimpse of the Dom in real life, I had a sense of being “back home”. Contrastingly, as we arrived back in Brussels last night, I didn’t have that same feeling. I felt like I was returning to that place where I happen to live. It’s early days in Belgium and I have no doubt that that feeling will come, knowing how emotionally attached I get to anything and everything. But there’s not long to make that happen: one month down; only four left to go.