Yesterday I felt broken and beaten by this new country of mine: Belgium. For the first time in my otherwise spoiled life, I really feel like I have to struggle both at work and at home. Looking at my situation closely however, things really are pretty good: I just have never had to work very hard for anything before.
As of this weekend, we are finally settled down in our new apartment. We have not only a couch, a television, and proper closets, but we finally have a wired internet connection to make use of. We’ve mastered the combination oven/microwave unit, and for the most part figured out where and what everything is in the grocery store. I have come to terms with my new past-time: the 4 hour daily commute, but only because it is temporary. The problem yesterday was the realization that it is slightly less temporary than planned.
Everything in Belgium is slower, though one must make an exception for how they run their trivia games at the bar. Dinner often takes two hours, though I have yet to learn how to properly eat slowly. It took us 5 weeks for our internet connection to be enabled, though it is not unheard of it taking two months to get a phone line hooked up. While we applied for residency in January, the earliest appointment for turning in the residency application was not available until March 23rd.
License Transfer: Catch 22
I had planned to wait until March 23rd to buy a motorcycle, as it fits in nicely with both the reception of my annual bonus and acquiring formal residency. This was mostly a financial decision, as insurance as a non-resident is quite expensive, and limited to 60 days. However, I have now been informed of an interesting catch that would make Yossarian jump up and down.
- I can legally drive in Belgium on a US/International Drivers License
- Once I recieve my residency card (4 weeks after your application), I can no longer legally drive.
- With a residency card, I can transfer my US license to a Belgian one.
- Transferring a US license takes 6-10 weeks, and requires you to hand in your US license
- You cannot drive during this time period.
While I can buy a motorbike two weeks from now, I will have to let buy overpriced insurance, and then let it sit in the garage for 6-10 weeks while they investigate my driving record in the United States. In the big picture, it’s not a very long time to wait. The difference is that I believed I would only have to deal with this commute for another two weeks, whereas in reality it would appear that I will have to wait until June.
Isolation
To live in a foreign country is to know a special kind of isolation. It is one thing to visit a place and not know the language, but on a day to day basis, it eats away at you. When people ask you a question at the train station (which they seem to do quite a bit here), it really bothers me as a know-it-all to not be able to answer them. A third of these questions are in Dutch, which I can slightly understand, and the rest are in French, which I understand less of than I thought I would.
At work, we speak English, but the isolation I know there stems not from a language barrier, but that of a knowledge barrier. I am the only software developer in my office, and the only member of my team in this timezone. The ability to bounce ideas off of people sitting next to you is a gift that cannot be understated.
Timezones are a sense of isolation I thought I knew well from living in Sweden while my friends were in the United States. It gets even worse working for a multi-national company, where you are trying to coordinate your daily activity with people who are just starting to get into work while you are eager to get out of work. The most difficult challenge is that my meetings generally run after the last train to my home runs, which means I don’t get home until 9:15pm on those days. This combination of factors makes me feel like I have plateaued in my learning here, but it is mostly due to me not putting forth the proper amount of effort to rise above these difficulties.
Thankfully, due to the various meetup groups and my wife, I get to spend my weekends generally having a good time. This weekend I was able to go bowling with Dallas’s friends, and went on a 15km hike with the Brussels A Club. The weekends are what keep me going here.
In Closing…
Belgium has been a most excellent teacher of patience. In keeping with my buddhist philosophies, I have been trying to examine the positive side of every challenge. My commute has afforded me an opportunity to stay in shape, and to stay well read. I have had the time to read Heinlein, Pratchett, Heller, Booker T. Washington, and the great WEB Dubois, where I read this quote that really resonated with me:
…before the Temple of Knowledge swing the Gates of Toil.
While I think it would be an insult to compare my current state of being with the struggle of the Negro in the early 1900′s, I found it inspirational nonetheless. While I no longer have time or ability for my two favorite hobbies (motorcycles and open-source software), I know that I am learning. I know that though I struggle at both work at home, that the best things in life never come easy.
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