It’s been a busy few months, which for the most part were spent helping to organise a conference and all the associated chaos therein. There were no major disasters, fortunately. The exhibition stand didn’t fall on anyone, nobody got agressive during the debate and there were no paper-cut injuries from delegates rushing to pick up [...]
Also filed in Accommodation, Belgium, Brussels, Cats, Enthusiasm, Moving In, New appartment, People, Relatives, Staying In, Swearing, Tea, Tradition, appartment, family, fear, furnishings, lunatics
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Here are some fine examples of the sort of sentences you can find in EU press releases which might leave you unconvinced that, as the EU’s communications chief Margot Wallström puts it, “communicating with the citizens of the European Union has been a primary concern for this Commission from the very start.” It’s not hard [...]
Also filed in Ambiguity, Berlaymont, Brussels, Confusion, Conversation, EU, EU publications, European commission, Future of EU, Government, Music, People, Questions, Words
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An appropriate end to my first year in Brussels, marked in the same way it began with a party hosted by the Welsh assembly to mark St David’s Day. After twelve months here, it seems fitting to embark on my first serious move to new accommodation, and this weekend Zoë and I installed ourselves [...]
Also filed in Ambiguity, Bags on heads, Banners, Berlaymont, Brussels, Confusion, Consumers, Dentist, EU initiatives, Electricity, European commission, Forgetting, Four in the morning, Holiday, Human rights, Interrogation, Maglena Kuneva, More than meets the eye, New appartment, Operation, Painful, Power cuts, Root canal, Shop assistant, St Davids Day, Sunday, Sunday shopping, Welsh assembly
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Maybe someone just got out of bed the wrong side that morning. On reflection, though, it was worth the verbal abuse for the unforgettable taste of those chips. I’d stood in the queue, in the freezing cold, for the best part of 25 minutes, this had to be something special. The woman being served in [...]
Also filed in Appetite, Arrogance, Belgium, Brussels, Chips, Demands, Fritemobile, Frites, Hot and Bothered, Manners, Place Flagey, Queues, Schoolchildren, Sheepishness, Sunny weather, Temper, Weekend, Wrong Side of Bed
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Ah, the chaos of Christmas. It’s going to be good to go back to Wales for a short while, though. It’s been an intense couple of months, I’m slowly getting used to the fast-paced and often unpredictable nature of my work (today, for example, I was still in the office at 8pm writing up a [...]
Also filed in Barmaids, Beer, Belgium, Brass band, Brussels, Christmas, Jogging, Lack of government, Locals, Marché, More than meets the eye, Press, Stavros Dimas, aviation emissions
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