No cars allowed. Photo taken from Flickr @John & Mel Kots

Although started in the 90s, the initiative was later on established at an international level by the European Commission and became part of a bigger yearly project, European Mobility Week. With more and more cities adhering to this concept, the initiative has spread all over, reaching 2017 cities this year. To my astonishment, when surfing a bit on the web the other days, I have found out that Oradea, my hometown in Romania, is also a part of this movement, with a part of the city closed to traffic.

On car free Sunday, as cars were banned from the city, people have conquered the streets. Only lost tourists or some ignorant drivers ventured on the streets, looking like hated creatures disturbing the peace during a perfect day in an almost reborn city. Needless to say I am exaggerating, but I felt a complete exaltation seeing crowds of people zooming around the long boulevards with their bikes and replacing the loud whirring noises made by cars with a joyful, much friendlier buzz of people on the streets.

It was the one time in this year that I had no problems breathing the air of Rue de la Loi (Map) - one of the most jam packed and polluted streets in Brussels – a CO2 sponge, as it is sometimes called…. Apparently pollution levels on this street were brought down up to ten times when compared with a regular day thanks to this. And indeed, it felt as if a huge vacuum absorbed for a short while the horrible smell of the cars – usually quite of a pet peeve, I can assure you. By the way, I once heard that the average life expectancy of people living in the EU’s polluted areas is reduced by around two years due to this.

Photo taken from http://psychoadvertising.wordpress.com/

As for the day, besides biking, there were other events around Brussels. I particularly enjoyed the bio gourmand market in Sablon Square, where farmers from Lot, a beautiful region in France, gathered around and enriched locals with some healthy food and some great French wine. As I was enjoying the friendly atmosphere, my mind slipped away to Food Inc. I don’t know how many of you have seen this documentary that sneaks in and unveils America’s corporate controlled food industry (it was nominated for Oscar in 2010 and won some 3 prizes the same year), but I will be extremely honest: the movie takes a part of your joy away, makes you feel a small, very small pebble in the ocean,  but in the same time, makes you slightly more aware of yourself and your surroundings. Just like car free days and the statistics collected after it…

However, it seems quite promising that such a considerable number of people (or should I call them pebbles?) are enjoying a car free day and that events like this one or similar ones get more and more people aware of the need to cut pollution and switch or at least, alternate, to a friendlier means of transport.

Sometimes stressful, rarely frantic but always home feeling, Brussels is packed with bikers and bike friendly inhabitants. I dare say then, why couldn’t this yet a yearly car free day become a monthly event?

I’ve started to explore the beauties and pitfalls of Molière’s language as well, but in the beginning I had to rely on my Dutch to find my way in the maze of Belgian bureaucracy. I did it with pleasure.

Getting registered in the city council, opening a bank account, get cable/internet installed in your apartment are just a few items on the list of chores a newcomer has to go through.

The Brussels capital region is by law bilingual (French and Dutch), but predominantly French speaking. This bilingual status means that all signs, street names are in two languages and that staff in the public administration, the police and hospitals should be able to communicate in both languages. This is not always the case.

My theory was that if I use Dutch and not English to deal with the authorities, they simply cannot ignore me. They didn’t. But some of them surely broke out in a sweat while they were trying to answer my questions or ask something. A bank clerk once even apologized for his poor Dutch. A French-speaking police officer did the same when he could not draw up a two-line document in Dutch stating that I am a registered resident of the city.

Other authorities took linguistic aspects fully into consideration and worked with military precision. After my first year here I received a hefty envelope from the tax authority with all kinds of forms in it. Everything was in French, by default. I sent them an e-mail in Dutch explaining that this is not going to work. A few days later I received another hefty envelope with the same forms. This time everything was in Dutch.

Stories and anecdotes are galore about Dutch language use and abuse in Brussels including ludicrously translated restaurant menus and the golden rule that if you speak neither Dutch or French, always go for Dutch when you call a customer service line. Chances are higher that you’ll get someone on the other end of the line who speaks English. But then bear the consequences. You will probably get all your correspondence from that company in Dutch in the future.

This can be a cardinal issue. The language of telephone bills has been recently a subject of a parliamentary question in the Belgian chamber of representatives. A member wanted to find out what the approximate percentage of Dutch speaking Belgians in the capital was. He thought that the percentage of phone bills sent out in Dutch would be a good and reliable indicator.

The telecom company concerned sends out 7% of its bills in Dutch in Brussels, answered the minister in charge. But this would then include those who once out of necessity opted for the Dutch menu when they called the customer service line. According to a study published last year, the proportion of Dutch speaking Belgians in the capital is even lower, 5,3% (55 000 people). French speaking Belgians make up 66,5% of the population, the rest is foreigners.

A handful of these foreigners are the Brussels-based correspondents and journalists. They report not only about EU affairs but also keep an eye on what is going on in Belgium. But who are these people and what sources they rely on when they write their stories about Belgium? Katrien Maerivoet, a university student, tried to profile them in her dissertation. She interviewed 20 of the 829 foreign correspondents who were officially based in Brussels in 2009.

Only two out of her interviewees claimed that they spoke Dutch: a journalist from the Netherlands and a Belorussian correspondent living in Flanders. Although we don’t know how the rest of the correspondents would have answered to this question, the proportion is indicative.

Do foreign correspondents then exclusively rely on the francophone Belgian media to follow Belgian current affairs? Many would say yes. This may also explain why Flanders Today, an English weekly (the online version is also available in French) reporting on current Flemish affairs was brought into life a few years ago. Surprisingly though, many correspondents said that they didn’t speak French either as they took it for granted that everyone in Belgium speaks English.

Language use remains a very sensitive and often political issue in several parts of Europe. Brussels and its immediate surroundings (this is another story) is one of these places. But what I’ve always found amusing in Brussels is that whenever I’ve done a Dutch or French course there were surely a few Belgians in my group. Last Monday, one of them said that she signed up for the French course so that she would feel “a bit more Belgian”. It was good to hear her say that.

I had my first peek at the sleek tower of Brussels’ Hôtel de Ville from the doorstep of the city’s central train station, teeming, it seemed to me, with unsavoury characters which could have easily escaped from one of the adult-only comics sold in the station’s news shop.

Barely 18, I was going through that inevitable rite of passage for any would-be traveller, a rail tour of Europe, with just enough money to afford a dorm bed every night, but with just enough courage and youthful carelessness to crash under the stars (and an occasional raindrop) when I felt like it. You could say I am no stranger to French beaches from Côte d’Azur to Normandy.

It was mid-1990s and I was passing through Brussels on my way from swanky Paris to free-wheeling Amsterdam. The city didn’t make much of an impression on me. Crowds were squeezing into the Grande Place, it smelt of French fries and stale piss and you had to be very careful about animal excrements littering the streets. Paris, I thought to myself, but without the Eiffel tower.

Fast forward seven years or so. It’s a freezing, rainy afternoon as our plane touches the tarmac at Charleroi airport. Coming from Ireland’s west coast (Limerick, to be precise), the weather isn’t really something that bothers a bunch of MA in European integration students on their way to Brussels. Conversations mainly revolve around differences between Irish stouts and Belgian lady beers, as the Irish contingent in our expedition pejoratively calls them.

For me, however, this Brussels trip was less about beers and more about a decision to go all out for a career in European institutions. Maybe it was the audacious architecture of Berlaymont, stories galore about the sweet life of eurocrats or just the appealing smell of power in the halls of European Parliament  – from then on Brussels had a special place in my career plans, if not exactly in my heart.

Sure enough, three years later I was back again, this time as a stagiaire at the European Commission’s DG Trade. Strangely, I didn’t find it hard to survive on a paltry salary EU institutions give to their trainees. A studio, small but warm, in the heart of Ixelles, just across the street from pumping music of Matonge bars, was really all I needed to plunge headlong into the raw vigour that brews in Brussels’ bowels, a long way from glitzy EU palaces.

A studio, small but warm, in the heart of Ixelles, just across the street from pumping music of Matonge bars, was really all I needed to plunge headlong into the raw vigour that brews in Brussels’ bowels, a long way from glitzy EU palaces.

You might expect that this experience only further cemented my resolve to go to Brussels and have a real European career. But this is not what happened. I came back to Slovenia not only with two successfully passed competitions under my belt, but also with a thirst to see the world up close, to experience it the way I experienced Brussels, living where other people live, eating what other people eat and having a blast where other people have a blast.

Almost immediately after my return, I and my girlfriend started planning a long sabbatical in South America. Not only did my exploratory six weeks in Colombia not quench my thirst for travelling, they only enflamed it. Then, just at the end of a long Indian summer last year, as I was browsing airline websites for cheap tickets to Bogota, Buenos Aires and La Paz, an email from the Parliament arrived …

As I look through the window of my office on Rue Montoyer, my view blocked by the EP’s imposing Willy Brandt building, I am thinking about what might have happened had I not seized the opportunity to go back to Brussels. There’s the city’s raw vigour again, its broad avenues, houses packed tightly together on rolling little hills, people from all over the world speaking in tongues you don’t understand – now that I think of it, it really reminds one of Tangiers, as my girlfriend noticed when she first arrived here.

As for the vistas of other continents, they will have to wait – although on a sunny day like this, I can still hear the alluring whisper of lands unvisited.

Open days are always a great time – you can visit the buildings, meet the political groups, discuss with civil servants. You can learn more about the European Parliament and catch some behind the scenes (and the screen in our case) pieces of information. If you haven’t tried the live translation booth, you can’t really say you understand the challenge of multilinguism.

Open Day on May, 8th in Brussels.

The EP Web team will be on the third floor of the main building. We will hold a live-chat on our Facebook page with Belgian Green and Vice-President of Parliament, Isabelle Durant, starting at 1630.

We expect you. Oh, and if you’re in Luxembourg or in Strasbourg, there are Open days as well. Check this page for all details.

Do we want to stay isolated at the top of the EP ivory tower in Brussels? Or do we want to be open to Europe? Photo by Annette Poro on Flickr

When I applied for a competition three years ago, I was just finishing my studies, searching for a job in France. I had no connection in Brussels, no idea about how it is to work for the European institutions. The competition was a great opportunity, a big adventure for me. Month after month, it became more and more real. The final result gave me the chance to come to Brussels. Otherwise, I would probably have never come. I would have stayed at a local level, communicating for municipalities or regional authorities (an extremely interesting job, which was very complementary what I now do in Brussels).

The only thing I would like to wish to people is to take the opportunity, to go ahead and to enjoy the same experience. Europe needs young, creative and dynamic people. Europe needs people from all over its territory, not only from Brussels. And Europe is there for citizens, Europe should base on its citizens. EU institutions should be open institutions, accessible to everyone. Brussels shouldn’t be too far away in the heads of millions of citizens who could have the skills and the desire to work for the institutions!

Europe needs people from all over its territory.

I see the open competitions as the lung of the European institutions. They have – in my opinion – two aims.

The first one is to recruit specialists from different sectors. A lot of them are already in Brussels, working in or around the institutions. EU needs their skills, their commitment and their knowledge of its functioning and issues.

The second one is to attract citizens from the four corners of Europe. If we want institutions not in their ivory tower, closer to the people, if we want to destroy the bad image of “those in Brussels”, if we want to go to the citizen, we should first open our doors to them.

The European institutions have been too much separated from Europe in the last decades. Let’s hope it will change. Is the reform of the EPSO system (which organizes the competitions) a step in the right direction? I don’t know. Wait and see, and good luck to all the competitors!

At one point Belgians and other friends appeared but lion’s share of my friends were still about to pass by in my work corridors.

Coming to Brussels I knew no one, except someone I studied with and who was also working in the parliament. I started going out with very nice colleagues: easy-going, intelligent and open-minded. Lots to talk about. But you don’t really socialise with your colleagues, do you? Maybe in a coffee break but not after work?

At least that I used to think in Estonia where I found it too private to ask a colleague if she had a partner or not, not talking about asking how she spent her summer holiday! I was used to having a very clear line between work and life. There is work, there is life, not much in-between.

Here everything is different. In the first months I found myself mingling max 1 km from the European Parliament, sometimes even worse, inside the building! And of course, with my colleagues who introduced me to more colleagues and more colleagues. Even if they were from some other EU institution, I still felt they were my colleagues. It’s all one EU crowd working together in the adopted city.

At one point Belgians and other friends appeared but lion’s share of my friends were still about to pass by in my work corridors.

I must admit it was a bit scary to mix “business interests” with private life. Why should I challenge my friendships like that?! What comes if there is a conflict? Or maybe there will be a conflict only because of that – we are friends and we are colleagues?

I don’t know how you deal with it but at one point I just gave up “the Estonian thing” and talked openly with colleagues about my family back home and even introduced them my boyfriend at the time. Today, after few years working here, some of my very best friends are sitting just few meters of me in the neighbouring offices and it feels just alright.

The question in an email from a friend’s friend made me remember my own first couple of months in Brussels and my first mistakes in this town. Because, working at WebComm Unit at EP in Brussels involves dealing with a lot of practical issues, one of them being getting somewhere to live. So I found my self writing an e-mail in return which turned out to look like a guide “This is how you do it”.

Don't forget to take an extra look at the ceiling @ Ben McLeod on Flickr

This friend’s friend is just one of many many trainees, or so called stagiaires which is the French word often used, who come every autumn and every spring to start a five months’ period of traineeship in the European Institutions. They will probably all have to go through it, the mistakes, the searching, and the walking up and down the streets with a map. (Of course they will also experience all the good stuff but that is a whole other story).

Anyway so I figure, I tell you (potential future stagiaires) what I told my friend’s friend. Don’t do what I did: I had booked an apartment in Etterbeek, close to the EU-area, which I had found over the Internet and had paid the “guaranty”, one months rent. I arrived in Brussels and went to the apartment but found out that the apartment was a disaster. So I spent a couple of days trying to convince myself that this wasn’t that bad, after all. But one morning when I had my breakfast the ceiling started to leak – the neighbour above had her shower. Well, I decided to get moving. The landlord reluctantly gave me back some of the “guaranty”, and probably quickly put the item out for rent at the Internet again, claiming that this was a “charming apartment”.

So, save your self some trouble. Get here to Brussels, book a hotel or a youth hostel or if you are lucky – stay at a friend’s place for a week or two. Get a map, look at different websites such as www.xpats.com and on the intranet of the Commission and Parliament, ask around and start visiting apartments and rooms. And – don’t forget to take an extra look at the ceiling…