Something reminded me of when I first moved to Brussels
Walking from the communal kitchen back to my apartment, I glanced out a window and saw a couple that I recognised out on the street. I’ll call them John and Jane here. I hadn’t seen them in a year and nine months. They were looking up at the window where I was standing.
When I first moved to Brussels, I went into a bar and asked for work. I was told that one of the barmen was going home to Ireland in a week’s time and I could replace him. That was John.
As well as getting a job in the bar, I got a room above the bar. 15 square metres. I decided I’d take it for the first two or three weeks until I found something better. A year and nine months later, as I write this, I’m still in that same room.
In my first week, there were a lot of parties to celebrate it being John’s last week in Brussels, so I got to know a lot of people.
With no income, I had exaggerated my bar experience when I was looking for work. Two weeks after I started the job, I was let go. I had made a few mistakes which were trivial, but they exposed that I was new to some of this. A barman friend had advised me to exagerate my experience. He said that’s how people become barmen. Being let go after two weeks was ok. I had gained two weeks wages, two weeks experience, an apartment, and I had gotten to know some people.
I had brought my savings with me when I moved to Brussels, but that wasn’t much, so I had to keep my living costs very low because I didn’t know how long I would be without income. This meant that I had to stop drinking in the bars, so I mostly lost contact with the people I had gotten to know. My diet was based on sardines and mixed nuts. Some days I also had fruit juice, some days I got a kebab.
When I finally got another income, doing some work as a painter, I never wanted to eat sardines ever again.
My apartment contained a bed, a fridge, a shower, a sink, and it had a balcony. There was no table, so at dinner time I would put a plank of wood on the bed. When I had a guest, we would sit either side of the corner of the bed.
Eventually I found a table. Later, I acquired a microwave that someone was throwing out.
Living cheaply doesn’t bother me. It gives me more control over my life.
During this period, I was campaigning in my spare time to prevent a European Union directive from making software ideas patentable. I had no computer, so I did this work in Internet cafes.
There’s one main wall inside my apartment, the planning of which makes me laugh. On one side is the bed, the window, and the only light. On the other is the sink, the mirror, and the shower – all in constant darkness.
My third job was in another bar. My two weeks experience was enough to keep me from making silly mistakes, so this job was pretty secure.
Seeing John and Jane out the window was weird. I would have liked to say hi and tell them about what happened to everyone they knew – where they moved on to, who replaced them, etc. But, I was in the middle of doing something and at that moment, and I couldn’t remember Jane’s name. That would have been embarrassing since she left Brussels after John and I had known her well. While I tried to remember her name, they finished looking at the building and walked on. I remembered her name later.
They had been looking directly up at the window where I was standing. By the look on their faces, I think they saw my figure behind the window, but they didn’t recognise that it was me.
I now wish I’d gone down and said hi anyway, but I didn’t, and that’s life.
I should be moving to a new apartment quite soon and I’ll miss this place. The window wall is 1.9 arm-spans long, and the other wall is 2.4 arm-spans, which I calculate to make the apartment 15 square metres in total.
