A curious Swede in Brussels

Week 2 Moving in

It has been a very hectic week. Real estate’s agencies have been filling my mailbox with everything they have, although I explicitly told them what I was looking for. Quite early, we found a beautiful flat, a spacious duplex in Etterbeek. This area is very nice and quiet residential area (as far as we know).

It is close to Place Jourdan, but not too close, so you avoid the pommes frites “fragrance” that is covering the area. I come back to Maison Antoine  and his frites later.

You can never imagine what happened recently guess what; Belgian beer (Westvleteren 12) lost its number one position in the international beer ranking.  Topping the list is a Swedish beer from Närke of all places.

Read more: http://www.ratebeer.com/RateBeerBest/bestbeers_012011.asp

Part Two: getting settled

Finally we could move out from the hotel and into what now will be our home over the next year.  We found it by coincidence when we were looking at some other apartments in the Ixelles area and went into a small real estate agency at Avenue Louise.

Our landlord owns a couple of other houses in the area and was happy to find a new tenant quite quickly. Although he preferred a lease for two years we agreed on one year. After that it went quite smooth. Two month deposit locked in a special deposit account in my name and one month rent in advance plus the consumption fees and I got the keys. Friday we found our way to IKEA (where else) and got all the basic stuff like bed linen, towels, some blankets etc. It is nice to have new, not used things when you move into a furnished apartment. The IKEA experience was like always crowded, but organized as all the other shops and we easily found what we were looking for. The lunch there was surprisingly awful and disappointing. The Swedish food section by the way includes IKEA snaps!

On Saturday we had the mandatory inventory prepared by an independent consultant. It was a quick procedure done by a nice guy who actually spent 3 months in Landskrona, Sweden of all places (I grew up there). It is a small world.

Close by our apartment is a Lidl and a Colruyt, a German and a Belgian discount chain of supermarkets, conveniently for our basic daily needs. Pricing is lower for beer and wine of course, but also for meat. Other items are more expensive. We bought some steaks that were very tender and of high quality.

In the area there are many small stores and lots of pharmacies for some reason. In Sweden pharmacies have now been privatized so we will most likely also have more of them, I guess.

Last week we participated in our first Belgian hash. For those who don’t know what this is check out their homepage http://www.bmph3.com/ or our Swedish site http://www.hash.se/ .

The track started at Square de Meeûse, right outside the Swedish Permanent Representation to EU. What a coincidence! It turned out that one of the hashers was working there. The route was quite long around 12K, but offered a nice sight-seeing run through the center of Brussels. It included one mandatory beer stop!  We also did a FA at Manneken Pis together with all tourists (FA=Father Abraham)

Afterwards we had the traditional circle with beer and singing. Hashers are in general nice people. This is perfect when you come to a new place and need some help. Usually they are expats whom have been working in the city for a couple of years and knows their way around.

So what else, some sightseeing were done, like Grand Place (Grote Markt), which is a beautiful old square and a World Heritage site (UNESCO). It is 68×110 m big and surrounded by old beautiful buildings like the City Town Hall. The hall was built during the first half of 1400 with a 96 m tall tower, which can be seen all over Brussels. The square is a typical old open-air market place from 11^th century, which later grew into what is now Brussels.

The beer tasting continued this week. This time with another trappist beer Westmalle dubbel, although very dark brown it is surprisingly light in its taste with a creamy head. It has a second fermentation in the bottle. The taste is somewhat dry but in a pleasant way.

Coming weeks:

• Working in Brussels
• EU
• Pommes Frites, what is it all about, really?
• Parking
• More hashing
• In search for the best beer (an ongoing quest for the perfect pint)
• Moules and other seafood
• Is Brussels a green city?

Facts of the week;

Drink; Trappist Westmalle dubbel (7%) dark brown beer

Food; A beef (tournedos), high quality meat is served here

Location; Our neighborhood Place Jourdan, a place to whiff!

Point Of Interest: The grandeur of Grand Place!

Week 1 a curious Swede arrives to Brussels

After a 12 hour quite uneventful journey we arrived to the capital of EU late Thursday evening. However there are some fringe benefits attached to a drive like this through parts of Europe, like a visit to the Border Shop. Unfortunately, with a car loaded up to the roof, it was not so much space left, another time maybe.

We (me and my spouse) hit the evening traffic in the right direction so we managed, with the help of Garmin, to find the direct route to our hotel quite easily. We passed the EU buildings along Rue de la Loi or Wetstraat. Brussels is bilingual, as all of you probably know French and Dutch. With a population of 1,8 million it is the biggest city in Belgium. Brussels is today mostly French speaking but that was not the case 200 years ago when Dutch was primarily spoken. There are three federal regions in Belgium, Brussels being one of them; the others are Flanders and Wallonia. The EU invasion and the vast amounts of huge constructions have had quite a disturbing effect on Brussels skyline. The mix of new modern office buildings together with older architecture is not always so pleasant to look at. Brusselization it is called after the 60/70’s brutal exploration of downtown Brussels.

In these weekly reports, I will try to give you a feeling of how an expat life could look like including, the ups and downs that comes with the territory.

So it will include food and beer of course, but also some ideas on what you can experience during a visit to the center of EU. Our interest is also closely related to nature and therefore we will explore everything green here. All the surroundings will be explored as well and give you suggestions for week-end trips. Maybe a guidebook will come out of this, who knows.

Part One: where to live?

There are quite a lot to choose between, but a 2-bedroom apartment is not so easy to find. This because the houses here are quite narrow, around three windows wide which equals about six m. So you can understand, there is not so much space left for a second bedroom. Reason being that before EU came to Brussels the city was quite poor and people couldn’t afford building big houses. One guy I met today bought his town house 20 years ago for 80,000€. Today it is worth well over 1 million- I will come back to this guy later.

There are 19 municipalities in Brussels and we have decided, with some help, to look for an apartment in the Ixelles area. This is quite close to the EU community, which makes it convenient for me to walk to business meetings.

Internet search and contact with some real estate agencies was the first assignment on Friday. We also decided to walk around and get the feeling for the community, the restaurants’, shops and bars.

Ten years ago we lived abroad in London among other places, where it was much more expensive than Brussels, almost the double. People however, are now taking advantage of the fact that 27 EU member states are sending people down on a regular base. This creates a huge demand for accommodation short/long term of course. The business is following as well, like Business Security, creating a huge opportunity for all the basic needs for these people and organizations. The city is a big melting pot with some similarities to New York. I said some. New York is still one of my favorite cities. Brussels has a long way to go, but you never know what will become of this big experiment called EU.

We are staying at the Thon Parnasse, which is an apartment hotel just opposite the EU parliament. In addition there is a train station, Luxembourg outside, that has trains going in and out of the city. There is as well an underground network to explore, however the nearest station is a bit further away.

A walk downtown to Manneken Pis was on the agenda. This little bronze statue by Jerome Duquesnoy was put in place for almost 400 years ago.

Just opposite we stumbled into a “real” Belgian beer place Poechenellekelder where I had my first Trappist beer, during this trip, a Rochefort 6.

It is quite nice with a soft taste and not too heavy or too strong. I will get back to this “monky” business with the beer later.

I almost forgot of course a Belgian Waffle was tested, very nice.

Okay folks, that is all for this time. There will be more to come. Watch this space!

Anders

Next week:

Did we find an apartment?

What is the hash like in Brussels?

Coming weeks:

In search for the perfect beer

Pommes frites, what is it all about really

Brussels – a green city?

Facts of the week;

Drink; Trappistes Rochefort 6 (7,5%) brown beer

Food; Belgian waffles (of course)

Location; Poechenellekelder (5 Rue du Chêne/Eikstraat) is a good start to explore Belgian beers . Check the walls and ceiling decorations, can’t be described must be experienced.

Point Of Interest: Manneken Pis (You must have seen it)