I Live In Br… oh this is getting old now!

What a long time—an inexcusably long time—it has been since I last posted something on here. I suppose I should write another of those, “I Live In …” posts, since I managed to add a fourth entry to the list of countries I’ve lived in, with a move to Brussels last week. I managed to make it exactly one year in the Netherlands, mainly due to pushing everything to do with the move to the last possible minute to get more thesis writing time. Thankfully though, the thesis is in and graded, I’m about to cease being a student (last time I wasn’t enrolled somewhere was my gap year, four years ago, scary!), and I can settle in to attempting to grasp at a career in EU politics, with only the harshest of job markets to hinder me.

I have to say that Brussels is not somewhere to judge by first impressions; to do that would lead to only the very worst image of the city. Even though I’m used to the far from perfect image that the city presents to visitors, I am always surprised that the city still feels happy to have the red light district (complete with girls in windows), and a series of collapsing buildings, as the first things that anyone sees on arrival. Second and third impressions don’t help much for someone grown accustomed to Holland, but once you start to form the fourth and subsequent impressions, Brussels becomes a lot more pleasant. I’ve been attempting to cycle around the city over the past few days, to get a feel for the layout, and some much needed fresh air, and I even managed to find an Ikea on a metro line, so the settling in is—thus far—going well.

The fact that I’m no longer studying, and that the first job I’ll be doing shouldn’t eat up too much of my free time, has also given me a chance to reassess all the stuff I commit to doing. I sometimes get the feeling that I’m not really able to do everything as well as I really could, and I won’t go into the detail of all the posts I hold, but suffice to say, I’m resigning one of them, in the theory that I can do less, better.

And with that little window into my life posted, I think I’ll go and see how my other blog is doing. Hopefully it won’t be as long before the next post finds its way up here again.