Moving to Brussels - any advice gratefully received

[And_his_buzzer_goes]

Belgian here.

Let me start with some correcting:

I’d rather put it this way: Belgium consists of two halves; the Dutch speaking Flanders and the French speaking Wallonia. Brussels is a French speaking enclave in Flanders.

As I understand it, by national law, all public signage (road signs, train station or airport info, etc.) must be printed in both French & Flemish throughout all of Belgium.

Belgian is officially a trilingual country : dutch/french/german, with dutch and french being the biggest groups.

So the area in the north is flanders where the official language is flemish, a sister language of dutch.

The south is wallonia, with walloon (french) as the official language.

Lastly there’s a small area in the east, bordering Germany, where german is the official language.

Brussels is the capital, located in flanders, but as a compromise bilingual dutch/french. Though in practice more french is spoken.

So in every area signage and official communication is the be done in the official language for that area. Which does lead to trouble as there’s sometimes some overlap and some people tend to be very picky because of historical baggage.

Anyway, don’t let that scare you as we are a gateway country in europe, so you can get by with english just fine. But I do urge you to make an effort to express atleast some basics in one of our native languages.

I live nearby Ghent, halfway between Brussels and the coast (Bruges), which also is a nice city to visit. Do swing by if you’re ever in the neighborhood.

Is there any other stuff you’re curious about ?

[Floater]

[nitpick]
There is no language called Flemish, it’s Dutch.
[/nitpick]

[Chefguy]

@Floater

[nitpick]
There is no language called Flemish, it’s Dutch.
[/nitpick]

More properly called a dialect, I would think.

[Neevil]

@And_his_buzzer_goes

Is there any other stuff you’re curious about ?

Many, many things! But I won’t bother you with things I can find out with the help
of a google search. This thread has been great for ‘insider’ tips from those who have lived in Brussels/other areas of Belgium. That’s what I was hoping for, must sees and dos from those in the know.

One thing I’m not clear on from my search is the age at which kids start education, preschool in particular. I’ve read about ‘maternelle’ starting at 2.5, is this something all kids do more or less and is it likely I’m going to find it hard to get a place, long waiting lists/having to register years in advance, are these issues?

Thanks!

[VinylTurnip]

@Leaffan

Check out the sprouts.

As I recall, that slur lost out to “miserable fat Belgian bastards.”

My only advice is this: if you develop a craving for Vegemite, try to locate a heavy-muscled baker and ask him if he speaks-a your language.

[Scoobysnax]

@Neevil

One thing I’m not clear on from my search is the age at which kids start education, preschool in particular. I’ve read about ‘maternelle’ starting at 2.5, is this something all kids do more or less and is it likely I’m going to find it hard to get a place, long waiting lists/having to register years in advance, are these issues?

Thanks!

If you can convince your husband’s work to pay for it, I would highly recommend the International School of Brussels. Nursery school and pre kindergarten are 13,800 and 15,350 euro/yr, respectively. So I would not recommend paying for it yourself.

http://www.isb.be/page.cfm?p=1826

[Neevil]

@Scoobysnax

If you can convince your husband’s work to pay for it, I would highly recommend the International School of Brussels. Nursery school and pre kindergarten are 13,800 and 15,350 euro/yr, respectively. So I would not recommend paying for it yourself.

http://www.isb.be/page.cfm?p=1826

Looks very interesting but it wouldn’t be covered by his workplace and I doubt it would be feasible for us on our own. Those are pretty hefty fees. I’ll have to do a lot more research on the education side of things it seems.

[Chefguy]

@Neevil

Looks very interesting but it wouldn’t be covered by his workplace and I doubt it would be feasible for us on our own. Those are pretty hefty fees. I’ll have to do a lot more research on the education side of things it seems.

There’s also Brussels American School. Two of my kids graduated from there. I would suspect it’s only for American military and diplomatic brats, but you could check it out.