Maintaining diplomacy during Eurovision

Not that this is turning into some kind of guide to food in Brussels but I'm happy to report the culinary part of this experience is getting increasingly more rewarding.

The rule is: supermarket food = bad, restaurant food = good.

If you're in Grand Place, the most touristy area of Brussels, there is a Thai place worth checking out in the Saint Gery area, just north of the main square, called 'Fanny Thai'. Don't worry I'm not trying to send you into any dodgy red light area, it really does good food. Generally Grand Place is a bustling place and there are plenty of cool hang outs.

The other cool destination seems to be Place Chatelain, located in Louise, which again has plenty of relaxed bars and restaurants to keep you busy. Try Mama Roman, an Italian pizzeria, and definitely try their buffala mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes slice.

Anyway that's enough about food. Last Friday night was my first proper stagiaire party, eight hundred people rammed inside Autoworld next to Parc Cinquantaire. You would think they might have discounted drinks for us trainees but instead we were forced to pay seven Euros just for a mixer.

My mistake was to walk in, see two Polish girls from my football team that I play with on Wednesdays, be the true English gentleman, and offer them and their friends drinks. Needless to say it was my last round of the night. The frolics didn't finish until the sun came out, which was the same theme the following night at Ethnic bar in Louise (fast becoming my favourite part of Brussels), where two American girls on vacation, friends of another stagiaire, paid witness to an act of gratification between two lovers that would get you arrested in any part of England.

I don't think it is a general phenomenon in Brussels, probably just a spontaneous reaction to the 'I'm so excited' song that was playing, although some people have already black markered it into their diaries to return there same time next week.

Work has been getting busier with my boss involving me more and more. It really depends on where you are placed as to how much responsibility you have, but you can always ask for more, they are more than willing to give it.

Finally the real weather is turning up here, so an umbrella becomes part of your anatomy every time you step out of your apartment. The worst thing is the humidity, although not approach Amazonian standards, is definitely on the muggy side of life and doesn't make metro travelling that pleasant, although it's about thousand times more comfortable than rush hour London, and they even have music on the platforms, normally a mixture of pop and classical.

Now that is one thing they should adopt in the English capital, but seeing as they haven't even got AC I expect asking for a sound system would be like asking for a Brit to take the Eurovision song contest seriously.

Talking of Eurovision, it was unfortunately the case that some groups of stagiaires had the audacity to hold a Eurovision evening, crowded round the box, glued to proceedings, almost verging on outbreaks of tears after the final results. I shouldn't name any names but the Greeks felt particularly hard done by as apparently they had sent their 'best' singer to take part, and still managed to come third, which probably doesn't say too much about the quality of their audio talents, although I managed to retain my Eurocratic diplomacy and refrain from saying that out loud, lest I be disinvited from the forthcoming Greek party.

I read the next day that Wogan can no longer tolerate all of the chicanery and bloc voting that goes on and will henceforth refuse to comment on proceedings, which drew a huge amount of joy from myself, something which was not understood by my Wogan-less Euro colleagues. I look forward to seeing the BBC take this international talent contest more seriously in the future, and getting Zippy and Bungle do the commentary. 'Oh Geoffreyyy!'

Poor food and breaking your personal smoking ban...

They could have at least built the political heart of Europe in a place with decent food. Ok, in the spirit of Eurocratic diplomacy, I’ll take that back, except that so far apart from a couple of notable exceptions the cuisine has not been the highlight, although the beer menu is making up for it, strawberry beer in a bottle and the popular ‘Maes’ (pronounced Mass) being the current flavours of the week for me.
Don’t get me started on the cereals though: what looked enticing from the packet, ‘Croq Miel’ turned out to be a homeless man’s version of Corn Pops. This has led me to consuming an inordinate amount of fruit, as well as Actimels, in order to compensate for a lack of proper ‘petit dejeuner’: there must be so much ‘good bacteria’ in my gut that they will be out campaigning for human rights and dancing with Hare Krishnas soon.
So far I can rely on two things. One, that no matter what day of the week it is, Benny Hill will be on Channel 8 at some point in the evening, dubbed by probably the same guy that dubs Homer Simpson and, two, that I will find a way to embarrass myself in French class. This time, while playing a game of trying to describe a word to a classmate who would then attempt to guess what the word was, which was etre amoureux (to be in love), I mixed up the words for girlfriend (petite amie) with little girl (petite fille), insisting to him that he was etre amoureux ‘avec la petite fille’.
Work has become busy very quickly. The start of the week was quiet with people returning from a long weekend due to public holidays, but if you happen to be a stagiaire with a boss loaded with responsibility then you have every chance to get involved. Some if it has been particularly interesting and painful simultaneously, like trying to summarise three hundred pages of environmental conventions, but you get a feel for the kind of trade measures and compliance mechanisms that exist at the European level by doing it. I had my first meeting at the European Parliament last week, in a conference involving NGOs, European MEPs and other Commission members. It was certainly a room full of passionate people, who all want to influence Commission policy and put their issues on the political agenda. So if you represent the Commission, they all want to hear what you have to say.
In order to become a proper EU civil servant, a functionnaire, you have to go through a year or two’s worth of exams (the concours), so you’ve got to be committed. Some people find contracting work while they take the exams, and if they pass them they make the ‘reserve list’, which enables them to apply for listed vacancies at the Commission. Right now I’m weighing up my options, and it’s a bit early to tell if it’s something I definitely want to do. Not to say that I haven’t been enjoying the trainee’s lifestyle, in attendance of another drinks party on Wednesday in Place Jourdain, a very lively area with a number of shishah bars open until 5am. Unfortunately, some of my more conscientious colleagues decided to postpone that particular visit. I must have had some dodgy food that night as I woke up at 5.30am with a slight stomach upset. Preferring if necessary to vomit in the street rather than my bathroom, I ventured outside of my apartment building wearing nothing but my old man style pyjamas. Wretching with no results leaning next to a small tree, I looked up to see a taxi pulled up with a bejewelled woman in leather stepping out, entering my building and leaving an overbearing trail of perfume behind her. I’m not sure what we made of each other, but at least the rest of the neighbourhood was asleep. After finally going back to sleep I woke up smelling cigarettes everywhere. Noticing the balcony door open I was about to go out and start cursing whoever was out there having an early morning smoke, before I suddenly realised I had broken my six month absence from Marlboro Lights the night before. Well, that’s what happens when you hang around with young Spaniards…

Sib Hayer in Brussels

Welcome to my first weekly blog from Brussels. Let me briefly explain what I’m doing here. Basically I’m a stagiaire, a trainee, at the European Commission. Bi-annually, for five months, around 600 young Europeans are selected to work in one the 22 (?) departments here and in Luxembourg. The application process is not too cumbersome: you apply on-line, listing your three preferred departments to work for (bearing in mind that most departments will probably only consider you if you selected them as your top choice), and then hope to be selected for entry into the ‘Blue Book’, of which around only one in four applicants succeed. At that point, your name will be passed around each department, and you hope to be called for a telephone interview, which if you do well in will hopefully result in the offer of a traineeship. I had my interview after someone had withdrawn from the placement, in the Trade department, so was quite lucky. There are 17 trainees in total within the department, selected from an original applicant list of 2000.
That’s the background, so what’s it like being here, and what’s Brussels like? It’s been a while since Europe was headline news in the UK as a result of the focus on local elections and taxation issues, apart from possibly the record ruling by the Commission to fine Microsoft $1 billion for anti-competitive practices last week. But that ruling just illustrates how important Europe is, as a regional entity, as a trading bloc and as a political project.
The great thing is how involved you can get as a trainee, which is as much as you want really, and I’ve only been here a week. The exposure to high level dialogue is phenomenal, and if political stuff really turns you on then you feel like you’re in the right place.
Fortunately my apartment is about two minutes from the office, in the Schuman area, which is a lot of the EU buildings are. Schuman is a relaxed place, almost as relaxed as the pace of the escalators which ascend from its Metro station. It’s quiet at the weekend but after work on the weekdays it’s full of Eurocrats and tourists alike enjoying a casual beer, the choice of which is unprecedented worldwide. It’s fairly easy to get around, and it’s the only Belgian city where signs legally have to be displayed in French and Flemish simultaneously.
This week has just been about settling in and acclimatising. I started French lessons on Monday, where fortunately I am not the least clued-up individual, although I did manage to insinuate that the word ‘turc’ was some kind of animal. Fortunately there were no Turks in the class to take offense and take me outside for extra-curricular guillotine practice. I found a ‘charcuterie’ (meat shop, I remembered from GCSE French) which also displayed itself a ‘slagerie’ (which I couldn’t recall), so I quickly walked on by in pursuit of groceries elsewhere. Moby turned up out of the blue on Wednesday for a free concert somewhere in the city but by the time any of us had heard about it while we were playing football it was all over. On Thursday one of my colleagues and I found a fantastic restaurant at 66 Rue Defarqz, in the Louise area, a husband and wife operation (which almost makes you feel that you are walking into somebody’s kitchen, and they even know when the toilet is occupied) that serves three delicate servings of French and international food and a delicious tarte citron all for around ten euros.
As it’s a long weekend I’ve had the chance to watch some telly, which shows programmes in a variety of languages. Currently I’m enjoying listening to dire attempts to dub Homer Simpson and Scooby Doo in French and the Coco Pops advert in Dutch (somehow the jingle still manages to be catchy). I’m off on a treasure hunt now, one of the many events organised by the stagiaire committee, and it’s the perfect weather for it. I tried to tell my colleagues I brought this amazing sunshine with me, but when I told them I’m from the UK they just laughed in my face for some reason.