Sunday, October 30, 2005
Transport, Garbage and Strikes
Now that I am settled in it is time to figure out the cycling situation in this city. There are bikes everywhere, but where do I find my own? Well that is not obvious but I have a couple leads now (pdf) . I also have a source to learn the road rules too. I knew this would be important because I have to learn how to deal with intersections, STOP signs do not exist here. Though there are street lights at large intersections for some control, most intersections are uncontrolled yields. Even with the chaos, no one wears helmets. I attribute that to excellent driving skills, but cab rides are still scary.
Garbage collection is a mystery we need to work on solving. The bagging system seems straight forward - city provided (at a cost) bags for each type of waste/recycling - but we manageto not do it completely correct; and the pick up system baffles us. They collect waste/recycling on every day but the scheduled days.
Some people have noticed that there was a large strike in Belgium on Friday, thanks for the emails. But this seems to be a common Friday afternoon pastime here. This particular Friday strike hit the news because it went into Saturday AND included the metro. Usually the metro continues running in these general strikes cause, you know, how else do you get to your protest/party?
This made we wonder about productivity. Paper work/bureaucracy is slow; you would think they still use quill, ink and blotter down at city hall. But according to a 1998 German study, Belgians are the most productive workers in the wealthy world. I would like to know what the Germans consider working though, these people are drinking beer in cafes during their 10am breaks. Belgian's beer of choice during these 10am breaks seems to be Jupiler, equivalent to Black Label in Canada.
View from our balcony. If Maes was a beer I liked, our apartment location would be golden.
Went to a movie last night and found out that all movies are subtitled with both French and Flemish. Makes for a lot of writing on the screen.
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Garbage collection is a mystery we need to work on solving. The bagging system seems straight forward - city provided (at a cost) bags for each type of waste/recycling - but we manageto not do it completely correct; and the pick up system baffles us. They collect waste/recycling on every day but the scheduled days.
Some people have noticed that there was a large strike in Belgium on Friday, thanks for the emails. But this seems to be a common Friday afternoon pastime here. This particular Friday strike hit the news because it went into Saturday AND included the metro. Usually the metro continues running in these general strikes cause, you know, how else do you get to your protest/party?
This made we wonder about productivity. Paper work/bureaucracy is slow; you would think they still use quill, ink and blotter down at city hall. But according to a 1998 German study, Belgians are the most productive workers in the wealthy world. I would like to know what the Germans consider working though, these people are drinking beer in cafes during their 10am breaks. Belgian's beer of choice during these 10am breaks seems to be Jupiler, equivalent to Black Label in Canada.
View from our balcony. If Maes was a beer I liked, our apartment location would be golden.Went to a movie last night and found out that all movies are subtitled with both French and Flemish. Makes for a lot of writing on the screen.
# posted by Us : 12:24 p.m.
Hangman
