RobL's world of wonder

Travelling Again!

You have to be careful what you wish for as I have recently found out when the question of working in the EU came up at a recent office meeting.  The last time I worked abroad was about three years ago in Brussels and our ‘Belgian connection’ came up trumps again when yours truly was asked to go to the land of paté and pine trees once more.  This time it was to carry out due diligence building inspections of some distribution logistics premises (what used to be known as warehouses!!)
 
All of this fell in the week of the Whitsun Bank Holiday and meant travelling up to Bristol the Monday evening to catch ‘the red eye flight’ at 6.50am the next morning.  The good bit is you at least get in to Brussels reasonably early (though the queue for a taxi was horrendous taking about half an hour!) and then to cap it all the taxi driver didn’t know where I was going and had to keep referring to a map!  Whatever happened to ‘the knowledge’?  Well at least it was a nearly new and leather lined Mercedes which is just as well as we nearly had an altercation with a very large Belgian lorry, I could see what was going on from the back so I wonder about the capabilities of the driver.  He did seem to huff and puff a bit when I asked for a receipt and he didn’t get a tip!!!!  Never mind eh?
 
While I was away the UK weather was apparently really good, yeah cheers, apart from the occasional sunny spell it poured with rain and was cold while I was there.  Anyway all necessary surveying was done, including on day 2 four buildings (at the town of Genk, close to the Dutch border) ranging in size from 10,000sq.m to a thumping great 100,000sq.m.  I was informed on arrival that despite having allocated two days to this I only had the Wednesday and please could I press on somewhat!  No pressure then!?!  Well quite a bit of shoe leather and some 560 photos later all done, though I did spend some time back at the hotel writing up!  The big warehouse had a huge car park almost full of 2000 new Ford C-max cars (the factory is nearby).  Nice looking car but apparently some of the factory staff would be bringing diagnostic equipment to the site in the next few days as they ALL have a computer fault to be fixed, ouch!!
 
The attitude to public transport and for that matter to ‘foreigners’ is different over there,

1. the trains run on time
   
2. people accept that you may need some help to get where you are going despite not speaking the language.

For some funny reason the Belgians (and the Dutch) don’t start to talk louder and ‘over enunciate’ when you don’t understand them!!  Bit different to the British approach to foreign visitors then? 
 
A funny thing happened on the way back from Genk!!  I was all set to get a cab but the local M&E engineer a large man with an equally grandé name offered to give me a lift.  The morning taxi ride had taken about 15 minutes so after a half hour and despite the fact that we were still passing signs for Genk I tried to point out (in menu Italian!) that I wanted Genk centre, some slight panic later he turned the BMW around and back we went, turns out he was taking me to Brussels.  If I do much more of this sort of thing I’d better have a crack at learning French again!!
 
As I write this I am sat upstairs on a double deck railway train travelling quickly, comfortably and fairly quietly through part of the Ardennes Forest heading back to Brussels.  The one unfortunate thing with working somewhere different is that there is seldom the time to see a great deal of the country, that said however its raining again so a walk in the forest may not be such a good idea.  Apparently there is some more survey work coming up so looks like I’ll be back this way sometime soon.  It’d be nice to get an assignment somewhere sunny though…..,