Die Belg bezoek het vaderland. – This Belgian visits his land of birth.

I’ve struggled with writing this piece. My problem has been trying to put a positive spin on this story. This of course wouldn’t be truthful story then, would it? The truth is I don’t need to add spin to it because it’s my experience. This wasn’t helped much by various blogs and posts advertising how wonderful my land of birth is once I arrived back in Belgium. It only went to perpetuating the feeling that I was somehow wicked and wrong to feel that resentment. It takes a massive amount of motivation to make someone change their circumstances as my little family has. I turned down two offers of an increase and an offer of my dream position in the company before they accepted the reality that I was leaving. We sold our dream house. It took us approximately two years to find our home and we sold it because we were motivated enough (in a completely negative sense) to disassemble our lives, sell everything we could, give the rest away and flee. So there we go. I was forced, through circumstance, to return briefly to my land of birth. The circumstance being the happy union of my little brother and the girl he loves. Horrors – I had to leave Belgium and I wasn’t particularly happy about it. I wasn’t looking forward to this brief excursion for two reasons.

  1. My wife (due to some crazy Belgian red-tape) is not allowed to leave Belgian territory whilst applying for her residency.
  2.  I simply wasn’t looking forward to returning to a land I fled.

Continue reading Die Belg bezoek het vaderland. – This Belgian visits his land of birth.

Belgians are Organized – Belgen zijn Georganiseerd.

Belgen zijn georganiseerd – this means they’re organized and do not like chaos. In practice this means they cannot handle change in routine. Even a little disruption in the normal schedule and Belgians find themselves lost.

A few months ago the road was being worked on at the train station and the busses were being re-routed to other temporary stops around the station. The poor Belgians were so put out. Even though the road was closed off with really big and obvious red and white barriers with flashing orange lights on top, the Belgians would still congregate at these bus stops. They stood there and eyeballed the busses as they rode past the barriers of the road closure, some shrugging in disbelief and others grumbling to whoever would listen. Not one of them would look about to see if there was a notice or some sort of alternative or instruction. Continue reading Belgians are Organized – Belgen zijn Georganiseerd.

How to be Belgian – Introduction.

If you’ve ever moved to a foreign country, or plan to perhaps you can relate, or learn from what I’m doing and experiencing.
I’m a foreigner in Belgium. Well no, that’s not entirely true. Here, let me explain…
I’m technically half a Belgian (from my mother’s side) but this comes with it’s own set of problems. Being born in South Africa makes me a South African but being born of a Belgian mother makes me Belgian. My grandmother, Méme, used to say that if any of us returned to Belgium we would live out the rest of our lives as foreigners, never really fitting in or accepted by Belgian neighbours as Belgian. Continue reading How to be Belgian – Introduction.