The service at this commune for foreigners gives you a very foul taste in your mouth .. which is all the more bitter when registering yourself here is one of the first things you must do arriving in Brussels.
I would like to first give a shout-out to two of the people who work at the foreigners desk who, after 3 years in Belgium, remain the most horrible people I've met.
First, to the Bud who absolutely refused to speak any English, stating very arrogantly and unapologetically that English was not an official language of Brussels, and would not slow down his French when he was asked, but who, on my last (of 6) visits to the commune when the happiness to finally be done with this horrible government service must have been shining in my eyes, began to flirt with me and tell me I could speak to him in English .. to put it nicely, he was incredibly unprofessional and disgraced his country's public service.
Secondly, to the little lady, who must have been a supervisor because she would leave her desk in the middle of her service with you (after you've waited 2 hours to finally get to speak to someone) to go and stand over the other workers desk for 5-10 minutes just watching what they were doing, laughing with them, going behind to joke with her other co-workers.. while you're just standing there trying not to let your frustration boil over and show on your face for fear that she might take it upon herself to tell you that you're missing something and need to come back. Thats because in my experience, there is no master checklist they use to determine if you're application is accepted .. some times they request a certain document and sometimes they dont .. even if you've already gone once and been given a list of what you need.. you just may find yourself with a worker who is having a bad day and decides shes going to require it. Well, with all that being said .. this woman who I tell myself MUST be a supervisor and therefore NEED to assist the other workers while she is helping you .. well she doesn't even give you the right information either! .. I asked her how long it would take to get my visa because I was interested in returning home (outside the EU) for Christmas and didnt want to be denied re-entry because I didnt have my visa renewed. She told me 1 month but she could mark it 'urgent' so it would take +/- 2 weeks. Well, a month came and passed, and I boarded my flight back home with no visa in hand. I called the official department for foreigners and was told by the man that my visa was not done, it takes longer than 1 month because I am from outside Europe, that the woman had no right to tell me it would take 2 weeks because there is literally no option to mark a file as urgent, and that he would not make an exception for me to process my visa urgently so that I could re-enter the country to write my exams (even though I was given misleading information from someone along their chain and had no reason to believe I was being mislead) because that would be 'unfair' to the other students in Belgium.
To say the least, the public service in Belgium is shameful. For the life of me I cannot understand why Belgian`s dont demand a change in the way things are done in the public service. My experiences at the commune left me in such shock, with so much frustration, and mostly CONFUSION about how a country like Belgium can be run so inefficiently, that I surely will never be able to separate it from my experience in Belgium. read more
