So, if you are follower of my blog posts you already know that I moved to Belgium, to the beautiful, calm and ”flemish” city of Gent. However decisions come in our life and some of them should be considered even when there is no “easy second alternative”, people who know me know that this is the first time I take a decision like this and would like to keep this decision open so you can understand why I did what I did.. and I also want to keep this posted so later, in 6, 12, 24 months I can remember it.
=======The beginning=======
I arrived to Gent, Belgium on Feb 27th during the morning, I was extremely excited of living again outside, knowing another culture, another continent, working in company that despite the fact is a company not so big in terms of number of employees like my previous job it has great challenges.
I spent my first weekend trying to take photos and knowing a bit more about the city, my parents had been here for vacations 2 or 3 times before, so I ”knew” the city in someway and also by photos you find around internet.. I was mentally prepared for the shock but never though it was going to be so big.
The city of those who never been there is kinda if not fully medieval, has confluence with two beautiful rivers that go inside the city (and you can take a boat trip!): Scheldt and Lys. It has a beautiful area (although all of them are): the “Graslei” from where you can see the 3 famous towers of Gent, when you stand up in one of the bridges of Graslei is somewhat a friend said: “a visual orgasm”.
I could not write more about the city since it’s so beautiful that I can’t get the words to describe it, so if you want to know more about it, check Wikipedia and photos via Picasa or Flickr 
The people in Gent are extremely friendly, who are reading this post from Mexico is like that, it’s like going out with your friends. People don’t act different with foreign or flemish people.. however they know how to detect the difference if you don’t speak dutch 
. They always receive you with a big smile.
I’ve been living in Mexico (since I’m from there), United States in some states and even in Canada for vacations and in Gent is the first time I found certain match of people who are similar to us, mexicans. They take the life as it comes, they make jokes (of any kind), love having parties every day and love drinking, so the few times I went out I was feeling like “home”. They are extremely friendly and supportive.
At work I’m also wordless, it was only 5-6 weeks so technically I could not learn new things but I learned how great people are, the dedicated and relaxed they are. In some other companies people go to their jobs at 8am and leave at 5pm, it’s a routine that sooner or later you will hate if not you already did before joining the company. At Netlog it’s different since that doesn’t exist, is someway the new companies are: take your time, do your job, improve stuff and have fun while doing it.
However till this line most of you might be thinking why I did what I did (quit), well, I already told you what Gent and Belgium is for everyone, but now I’ll tell you certain things that were smashing my head everyday and everyday it was getting worse.
======Language======
Gent is in the flemish part of Belgium, that means that the official language here is Dutch (not Deutsch), if you ever come here as a tourist you wont have any problem: you will love it, I’m not sure if it’s the first, second or third touristic place in Belgium and in the top-5 of all europe: everyone understands english. If you ever come here to study (more than 3 months) surely you also wont have so big problems, probably your courses will be in dutch so maybe you might want to check and learn it before. But if you are going to come to live here you might find things a little weird in yourself.
Staying in a place where you don’t know the official language can be complicated since as I said, one thing is for example going inside a restaurant and not understand what others say and do it 1-2 times, and other other is to repeat it everyday: at work, at the market, at a government office, at a pub, etc. For someone who is from Mexico (I think most of you will share my opinion) and not understanding what others say is crazy, we love to hear other people conversations and usually give our ideas and opinions, if we don’t understand the language of a conversation it will be very very painful.
At work is something similar, there are times where you suppose the others are having a problem with X issue and you might have the solution for it but you don’t know what’s really happening, everyone coming inside and talking and don’t knowing what is it about starts getting crazy after a few days.
And this is nothing against Belgium or any other country with a foreign language, this same thing would happen if you go to Russia (even from Belgium to Russia), to Spain, to India, etc. If you plan to live you need to adapt to the languages there, there’s no other option.
======Government======
I hope that with this message I wont be kicked later of Belgium 
but this is something I talked with some pals in Gent and they agreed with me. This was not really part of my decision, but helped me how things are.
One who comes from Mexico expects that the new country has the best government ever existed, no bureaucracy, security, clean politicians, good change of political ideas, and specially if you come to Belgium with the high reputation (and after all it deserves it) in North America.
But hell, there are things you can’t understand:
– When you come to Belgium with a visa for longer than 90-days or to work you need to register yourself at the City Department (for mexicans, in Gent is something like palacio municipal). I believe this is the same for belgian citizens.
– After you present yourself you need to wait for the police who will check you are really living in your address, the nice thing is that you don’t know when they are going to visit and supposing you are working, how come you are going to manage that?
– Once the police makes sure you are are really living in the city and in the address you said you need to go again to the city department to ask for a resident permit that you need to renew in the first four months if I remember correctly, then you need to renew it after 6 or 12 months. This process of getting the residence permit takes like 2 months.
Once you stay in Belgium with your visa you are supposed to not go outside (and sounds crazy since you are in the EU and no one will ask for you identity, but who want to take the risk).
The funny thing here is with the point 2. At the company there was an event in Austria that I finally could travel, a great guy (my ex-boss) helped me to manage this since I did not have the residence permit cause I was still at point “pre-2″ (1 was done, but 2 was not started yet). My surprise with help of him was that there was no scheduled date (or even on the list) to have the visit and certify I was living in the apartment, we (actually he) needed to ask for a visit.
These are things you can expect in a country where there’s no full government or people do whatever they want, but no in Belgium. You expect that everything will work in order: after step 1, follows step 2, then step 3, but that you will ever need to manage the things by yourself or run from one government office to another.
In situations like this, with bureaucracy and lack of dutch together makes life a little more hard.
======System Administration======
So many years I’ve been doing web development and system administration, in my last job I was fully a system administrator, perhaps doing some development but was for automating system tasks.
Now I know that although development is one of my favorite tasks I’m looking for a job/company that will let me mix both: doing some system administration and as well some development, or vice-versa.
======Conclusion======
So, based in the previous topics I concluded that:
* There was a huge communication barrier. My plan in Belgium was to stay more time (even 2 years) however the situation of not having “real and long” conversation was really shocking me every day.
* Learning Dutch was an option, but people who speak it will know what I’m saying: is not a language you can learn to have a “real and long” conversation in less than 5 months. Learning dutch is a really attractive option to do “before” you move to Belgium or Netherlands, not to learn it while you stay there (probably if you have the basic stuff, but not zero idea of it), imho.
* My plan as I said was to stay in Belgium for 2 years and in the meanwhile know other parts of Europe, but traveling is not free, it costs money and paying rent, services, health (sport), etc requires also money, so my idea of traveling was very reduced. One thing is to plan a travel as a tourist with a budget you have and the other is to live for a long term and earn it.
* In our lifes the years count, every year that comes makes you older (yes, really) and although living outside and in Gent is really attractive, not having real and long communication was making me feel I was not really planning my life for the next day, week, month or even years, living without plans kills me.
* Although I’m not that extroverted person but neither a completely introverted person, not having real conversations was pushing and depressing me sometimes.
* I had some conversations about different topics of my previous professional and personal life, there were times I was asking myself what I was really doing and I couldn’t never get an answer.
* I’m not the person that moves from a job to another just to let the unemployed people get a job, I’m not that charitable person. However there are people in Belgium and in parts of Europe that could really take advantage of the things I was having, even if they don’t speak dutch they are most near their homes than myself (a flight takes around 13 hours), so it took me hard time to decide to “move away” and let other possible people join.
As you can see my decision was really personal, the real problem was the language, not having real and long conversations is not what I’m looking in the following years, I had that time before and definitely not having a life is not for me now-days.
Because of all my conclusion I decided to quit the job and return home (Mexico).
======What’s next?======
Right now I’m not sure where I will be working or living the next months, I can stay in Mexico if there’s a nice job offer of a kind of company where I worked before (Google and then Netlog) but I admit that the challenges in most companies here in Mexico are not really exciting right now.
Because of this I will check again job offers in USA (California or NY) and Canada (Toronto or Vancouver sound good). I’ll start doing some research in the next week since today and tomorrow Friday 9th I’ll be taking short vacations but if in the meanwhile you have a possible offer or position, mail (pablo@pablo.com.mx) it to me!
Also I want to note something. If you get to this blog post cause you are willing or have an offer to work at Netlog, I strongly suggest you to take it, the company is really valuable and you will have fun with all the people there, there are no professional reasons to don’t take it.