Life in Belgium? Here's some insights
Basically life differs from where you live: on the countryside or more in an urban context, you live in a house or in a flat, you live alone or with your family, you work in a big company or a smaller one, etc etc
So in a nutshell: almost impossible to describe ‘typical life in Belgium’. What we could describe however is some things you will experience about working in Belgium (independent of the above reflections):
- Depending on the company’s policy, the industry and other parameters (but you could assume in most cases) you have floating hours to start and end work (let’s say between 8 & 10 in the morning and then between 16 & 18 in the evening)
- More and more companies choose to balance working from home and working in the company’s location; impossible to indicate what %, but their numbers are growing; this is mostly approved for functions where working on your own doesn’t have too big of an impact on a project or working on your own from home adds value; another element that influences the increase is the ever growing traffic jams; Belgium has a dense road network and there are a lot of people who still drive alone in the car every morning and evening with the logical traffic jams as the proof
- More and more companies understand the value of creating and upholding an exciting company culture; they invest continuously in building the reputation of the company in order to attract the best candidates and to make sure that the employees stay; this is done in multiple ways: the most obvious are team incentive days, additional financial benefits, (joint) sports activities, horizontal organization, …; people want to be appreciated for the value they bring to the company(‘s profit) and that is key in recruiting nowadays
- Work plays an important part of life in Belgium; most people are proud to work where they are; the younger generations need to feel that they matter and are listened to; they want to genuinely participate; this is most relevant for private owned companies; in public. Organizations this plays less of a role
- When you are not at work there are hundreds of ways to enjoy life: individual, with the family or with friends. Belgium has the largest number of cultural festivals per capita in the world (most renown is Gentse Feesten); we have some of the most notorious music festivals (Tomorrowland, Rock Werchter); all of the world music stars perform either in Antwerpen Sportpaleis or in Vorst Nationaal; every city has its own events, its own markets; if that is not enough there is the coast line with sandy beaches (±65km long) where on sunny days families flock together to enjoy cooling off
- There is a wide variety of social gatherings for individuals and families where you can connect; this happens on street level (eg sometimes a street is closed and tables are put outside to all have breakfast together), city level (eg at the beginning of the year the city invites its inhabitants to join for a New Year’s drink) but also hundreds of organizations are active with a social purpose, there are the thousands of sports clubs (football, tennis, hockey, …)
- The country is vibrant with activity so as soon as the sun starts shining you will find a lot of people in the streets, on the terraces having a drink, walking in one of the National parks, enjoying the Ardennes with its hundreds of square kilometers of forest, biking around through the Vlaamse Ardennen (known as main stage for the cyclists in a number of renown cycling tours), …
- In their free time a lot of people also enjoy going to a museum and we do have a number of great ones: BOZAR in Brussels is the largest and the most diverse with attention for painting, modern arts, theatre, music etc; each city has a place where art lovers can gather, whether it is a museum or an opera or other
- Each Province has a ‘Provinciaal Domein’ which is in fact a large area where you can take your family and/or friends for a walk, sit by a riverside, enjoy pick-nick, play with the kids, walk in nature
We can go on for hours and hours. There is a saying that if you are out of work (which we known you won’t be!) and you want to live life at its best, each day you can find a place in Belgium, a restaurant in Belgium, an event in Belgium, … that you never been or attended before. So in a nutshell: life in Belgium is hard work yes, but a lot of PLAY!
To end some (funny) things you really should know about Belgium:
? Belgium is the country with the biggest quantity of castles per square kilometer in the world
? The most translated books in the world, after the Bible, are those about Inspector Maigret by Georges Simenon from Liège
? Brussels International Airport is the world’s largest chocolate selling points
? Gent hosts the biggest cultural festival in Europe, the Gentse Feesten
? Belgium produces over 220,000 tonnes of chocolate each year
? Brussels sprouts have been grown in Belgium for over 400 years
? The Belgian city of Spa had the first casino in Europe
? Belgium has the densest rail network in the world with 4,078 kilometers of track
? Belgian households have the highest percentage of cable TV in the world, at 97%
? The first natural-color picture in National Geographic Magazine was of a flower garden in Ghent. This was in July 1914. The photo was printed on page 49.