The Weather

The weather always seems to be one of those 'safe' topics that people talk about with one another.  When all else fails, talk about the weather and you know you at least have 3-5 minutes of conversation.  Until recently, the weather was never something that I put that much weight on.  As we New Yorkers know, it's generally cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  Aside from majojr catastrophes, we can always count on rain, snow, hail and sleet coming and going at normal intervals per season.

Belgium, it seems, does not agree.  What I have learned from my (short) stay in Belgium is that the normal rules don't apply here.  The weather is typically in the 60's in the summer with tons of rain.  Last week I counted seven people on the street wearing boots and tons more wearing tights. Not sure what I was thinking when I packed for here. Yesterday was the first hot day here - with temperatures hitting the 90's, but I was told that by tonight we are again down to the 60's. 

So now that I got that out of the way, I guess I can move on to other topics. Currently, I'm in search for an apartment.  The search has not been going that well (i.e. I didn't find one yet).  It seems that most places don't want just a summer sublet - they are looking for a longer term. I have a potential place I'm hopefully going to look at tomorrow. It seems that someone is converting their office building into apartments - I'll let you all know how that goes.  I might have also stumbled upon a site that is designed for short term rentals, but I emailed them yesterday and still haven't heard back.  

Sad to say that there are a lot of scammers out there too.  There were around six apartments that I sent inquiries on and each one sent back pictures of places that were definitely too good to be true.  Some of the pictures were tiny and too low res for it to be real, some pictures were of these massive kitchens that are just not possible in studio apartments.  One guy even sent the same pictures as someone else. Each one sends pretty much the same email verbatim and they all have the same story of not being in Belgium, but wanting to sublet.  I can't see the apartment before agreeing and I have to give a 500 euro deposit. At least they should be more creative when scamming. 

The word of the day is au revoir, which is French for Goodbye.  In Flemish that's afscheid. 

Week One

I never thought I'd be the type of person who writes a blog and I certainly never thought that I'd move to Belgium.  I guess I'm 0 for 2 on predicting what I'm going to do next.

Week one here has definitely been an interesting experience, one quite different then I imagined. So far it's been pretty much the same every day - getting up, going to work, some sort of evening activity, then back to the apartment to sleep.

I just spent my first Shabbat in Brussels. Shabbat here ended this week at 11:11 PM.  It typically doesn't start to get dark till around 10:30 here.  I imagine there are a lot of confused kids in the summer time wondering why they are going to sleep when it is still light outside.

Friday night, the local students and young professionals get together for Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv at one of the Jewish Center buildings. It is mostly people that are unaffiliated, so there is a lot of page number calling and explanation of what we are doing.  Following dinner, the group goes to the home of the head of the organization that I'm working for (also the people that I'm staying by while looking for an apartment). This week there were about 30 people eating dinner together.

Shabbat day all of the religious Chabad families go to shul together and have a kiddush lunch following davening.  This week one of the congregants was the guest speaker.  She spoke about an editorial that she published through the BBC about the pogrom that occurred 70 years ago in Baghdad, killing 150 Jews living there on June 1, 1941.  They call it the Iraqi Kristallnacht.  There was one story she told us about a survivor she interviewed who was 11 at the time. It seems that his whole family was killed during this massacre.  This boy vowed after that to kill any muslim that came in his way. A few years later when the boy was 15, he heard someone drowning in a river screaming for help.  The boy helped this man live.  He was distraught for breaking his vow and went to the town Rabbi who told him that you can't make a vow to kill, you can only make a vow to save.  This little boys whole attitude changed and he grew up to become a doctor, living in Manhattan.  He now treats Iraqi patients who were wounded by explosions for free and was returned to Iraq at the behest of the Iraqi government to be an advisor.   If you want to read the article here is a link: http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/35611

In general, I'm not sure what to write here or what you guys want to read, so all suggestions are welcome.

Gut Vach and Have a Great Week.