A day in the life… of a stagiaire in the rain

Today is not one of those days when you wake up early, have a leisurely shower and choose your clothes with time and care before having a nice breakfast and still making it to work before nine o’clock. No, today you hit snooze on the alarm clock for the third time at 8:30am and need to run to catch your bus after a five-minute shower.

What is up with buses in Brussels? When you don’t need one, there are plenty, but the minute you do, there’s no sign of one! You really need to factor in a six-minute window around the scheduled time (three minutes early or three minutes late). Eventually you catch a bus and are on your way. Waking up was harder than usual, not only because it’s the first day back after the weekend but because today, for the first time in almost two months, it’s raining in Brussels.

Brussels in the rain is much like other European capitals; people walk fast, head down, umbrella up, ruminating on unpleasant thoughts. No more lunches at Parc du Cinquentenaire, no more fresh soup from EXKi or freshly made sandwiches from DG Budget. Today the air smells like a wet dog, or, just occasionally, like wet grass (having just passed Square Ambiorix). The cobblestones are even more dangerous than usual, not to mention the sea of umbrellas trying not to bump into each other. Today is not a smile-at-the-world kind of day. Today the ground is wet and people in the Commission are dressed in black.

Sure there are some Belgian schoolgirls in the street without umbrellas and wearing shorts (holidays being so far away they probably want to get a nice cold so they can stay home). Some people try to call on the sun to make more than a fleeting appearance by insisting on wearing summer clothes and pastel colours. Overall though the nice spring that we had so far seems to have made its exit.

This made me wonder whether the weather we’ve had is normal for Brussels. We always hear about rainy Brussels and know of previous stagiaires complaining about the weather. In November 2010 nearly two inches of rain fell on Brussels, causing major flooding and some accidents. Could this happen to us? I was surprised to learn that it rains less on average per month in March, April and May than in June and July, July actually being the rainiest month for Brussels. But let’s not be pessimistic. We have global warming and this is the EU year of volunteering. So let’s volunteer our faith and lungs, be glad it’s spring, and repeat after me: Sun! Come back!

Lucile Chneiweiss,
SEC GEN