Travels | Belgium| My trip to Leuven and Newport in Belgium

November 17-30th, 2008

Well, it came with the territory as they say, that working with a Belgium NGO at some point would entail a trip to head office. So off I went on Nov 17th to Leuven and had one week of orientation with 3 other new guys (one who will be working in Indonesia, the other in Tanzania and one guy for Honduras). It was good to get to know the NGO, its history, its new restructuration process, its programs and most of all, its people! I found Leuven and Belgium to be lovely, with many historical buildings, clean streets and great tho expensive restaurants. I even went to Brussels for a day and had a wonderful time walking around, buying chocolate and seeing the sights. For the second week of my trip we were off to the seaside to Newport, and hit a nice snow storm on the way. We had 5 intensive days of workshop, so I can't say much about that part of the country but the sea was nice.

What a long journey tho to get from KTM to Bahrain - 6 hours, then on to London - 7 hours, and finally the last leg to Brussels - 1 hour. Not counting the airport wait, the time difference of 5 hours and the no-sleep on the plane. I was smashed when I arrived to claim my luggage. Only my suitcase did not come out on the carousel. So I had to report a missing luggage to British Airways, worried that all my expensive clothes had vanished and I would have nothing to wear. 8 hours later, after a few phones calls to see how the "search" was going, it finally arrived at my hotel. I was in the middle of savoring lovely lamp chops in a ratatouille of veggies, olives and romarin. Delicious. This gourmet dish came with... a bowl of French Fries. Not what we would do in Canada since fast food and gourmet don't come in the same meal, but very good indeed. A nice glass of Leffe beer, then Chimay beer, and I was in heaven. Tonight, a nearby café/restaurant where I had game meat stew (wild meat) with the dark Leffe and the dark Chimay. Delicious. But the bill - 20 Euros or 30$ Canadian! And this is not an expensive restaurant...Most people in these parts understand and speak English and French. But the menus in restaurants are all in Flemish/Dutch, so waiters need to translate everything for the wee French Canadian.

Oh, and yes, I was there for work too! I met the staff of Vredeseilanden and of course, they were all very friendly and young. But most of all, I find that they have a very similar organizational "culture" as CECI - they are reinventing themselves and how they approach development. They think more in a global approach, involving the Belgian public and consumers, working on building partnerships with organizations in the south, and playing a more facilitating role as opposed to implementing. So instead of coming into an NGO that says - this is how we do things and how we've been doing them for decades and how you must do things, the message is more - this is what we did, what we have decided to do and where we're going, with a lot of unkown, trials and "experiments". For the new kid on the block, this is very exciting to be a part of. And Leuven, the city where we are, is just lovely and I will post picture when I return to Nepal. But suffice it to say for now that it is clean, orderly and with many historical buildings. The city hall is just breathtaking, with sculpted turrets and figures all around.

The breakfast at the hotel was wonderful with a fresh crispy whole wheat bun with cream cheese, bacon, cheese and ham; with a bowl of cereals, a fruit yoghourt, juice, 2 capuccinos and a fruit. Yummm! And then at work we all order large sandwiches, ham and cheese with eggs and veggies. We are 4 new guys in the orientation, 3 of us who will be doing the same job of Chain Development in different countries. We heard the presenters often use the term Flanders or Belgium, and then finally asked what the difference is. We got a roundabout answer that left us still in the dark. Last night we went out and I had a nice grilled salmon. Much like Canada at this time of year, the days are very short with sunrise past 8 am and its gets dark before 5 pm. The weather is cool and this morning we even had hail. Today we finished our orientation so we have the weekend off. The shops in Leuven all seem to be boutiques with expensive stuff, mainly clothing. There seems to be no shops with cheap stuff, like our Dollar store. I have been trying to find a small sewing kit to repair a button on my jacket and an alarm clock, but I have not succeeded yet.

The saturday after my first week, I had the day off today so I decided to head to the big city of Brussels. I took the train in front of my hotel and within 20 minutes, I was there already. I found my way to the tourism office, and then to the big market square. Wow, the cobblestone narrow street have the charm of old Montreal, with nice shops and plenty chocolaterie along the way. I walked a lot taking in this new surrounding. Then I stopped for lunch at Place Ste-Catherine where where were many seafood restaurants. I had a lovely salmon soup with a 2-fish main course in a nice cream sauce, then ice cream for desert! Yummm! Then I walked all the way to the cathedral, took a picture, then went to the Museum of Fine Arts. I had seen in the tourist guide an exhibition on Cobra art which seemed colorful. I paid 12$ for this and found that I liked only the 2 paintings from the guide. The rest seemed to me pretty bad. The museum also had paintings of the 19th century - again quite boring except for a couple of pieces. Then I continued to walk to see the king's palace and central park, and still walked on to see the European Union Parliament. And through all this walking about, we had a pretty cold day with some rain, snow and even hail at moments. I loved it when it snowed because I haven't seen snow in over 4 years now. I misss it. Then finally, I finished with a little shopping at the famous Leonidas chocolaterie. I bought a few boxes for volunteers, babysitters, Rémi's school, teachers, work colleagues. And before you knew it, the bill came to 100$! I took the train back to Leuven and was glad for this exceptional day of discovery of Brussels.

The workshop was very intense so I had no time to go to the sea and see the town where we were. We left Leuven by chartered bus, and it was pretty darn cold. We were headed for the coast to a city called Newport, but on the way we hit a big snow storm which brought the highway to a stand still. That much snow is unusual for Belgium, so no one had winter tires to cope. Instead of taking us about 2 hours to reach destination, it took us 4. Bit by bit, I got to meet the participants who came from all over the world where VECO has a Chain Development program - Congo, Bénin, Uganda, Tanzania, Indonésia, Vietnam, Laos, Ecuador and Nicaragua. We had 3 days of presentations on Chain Development, the techniques for analysis and various cases already in progress in certain countries. We started each day at 9 am with a short 1 hour break for lunch, then continued until 6 pm. Then after dinner, we often had informal meetings or group activities, so the days were quite full. The last 2 days were on multi stakeholder process, so how to bring partners together around a table to discuss common objectives such as Chain Development. Again, intense yet informative presentations as well as group work. I got a chance to meet my SACD team from Vietnam and have discussions about the work that has been done already and their general impressions. On Wednesday evening we had a pottery activity where everyone made a work of art while having fun throwing clay at each other. I was more serious in the corner thinking of Rémi and making an elephant for him. Then Thursday we went bowling at a sportplex not too far away. All in all, I barely saw the sea by the time we left. I feel good about the 2 weeks I spent in Belgium which helped me to know the people of this new NGO and also better understand its philosophy and programs. I was ready to go home tho because I missed Rémi too much. On the last day I did some shopping and then I caught the train to the airport followed by 3 flights which finally got me home and back to Rémi...