ThaNerd

Belgium for Americans

This guide will tell any north-american life form anything he has to know about visiting Belgium.

Scales

Scales are different in Belgium and USA. Things are most often smaller in Belgium as compared with same things in USA. To mask differences, authorities set in place another set of measure units. Below is a table of conversion.

–tableau–

For your comfort, below is a little calculation tool which will help you converting the different measures.

Gadget by LabPixies.com

Driving

There are sensible differences between how you drive in USA and how you drive in Belgium. The most obvious is the size of vehicles. Most vehicles are smaller. This tendancy has a reason. Roads are also lesser wide. So do park places.

Features in cars

Air conditionning

Most cars come without air conditioning, in Belgium. The temperatures are so low in general that you seldom need air conditionning. During warm season (which is approximately 2 weeks long), most people can usually cope with it just wearing a t-shirt.

Automatic transmission

Most cars come without automatic transmission. Instead, we have manual transmission. It’s a bit hard to get used to it, and can be boring in traffic jams. However, it has a nice feature allowing one to instantly burn the tires.

Right turn on red

This american rule is not valid in Belgium. And as a matter of fact, it’s neither valid in any European country. If you see a red light, stop your vehicle and wait. No matter if you turn left, turn right, or go straight.

Speed limits

Speed limits are quite simple. 50km/h within agglomerations (understand in town), 90km/h out of agglomerations, and 120km/h on roads where there are more than two lanes in either ways, AND where the ways are physically separated by anything that’ll forbid going to the opposite way. Any changes in these speed limits are indicated by specific signals. Basically, white circles rounded with a red border, with the speed limit written in black.

Signals

Most traffic signals are obvious. Some are a little cumbersome. For example, the next signal:

It doesn’t mean the obvious drunk drivers ahead, but slippy road section.

Food

Belgian food is not very different to American food. Except, once again, about the size of servings.

Restaurants

We have restaurants for most foods of the world. You’ll find Belgian, Italian, Greek, Chinese and French restaurants almost anywhere. Of course there are other restaurants, but well, it’s no use citing them all.

Appetitizers are named “Entrées”. The main meal is named “Plat principal”, Deserts are Desserts, and an alternative to Deserts is the cheeses.

Some restaurants will offer an alcohol at the end of the dinning.

About paying, tips are optional. However, not giving one is often considered lame. There is no rule on the amount to give. Most often, people give between 1�?� and 3�?�.

Delivery food

You can be delivered pizzas almost whenever you want. Some other types of food can be delivered, but sometimes hard to find. We have some well known American delivery services, such as Domino Pizza and Pizza Hut.

Junk food

We have our Mac Donalds here. But no Burger Kings. Alternatively, we also have “Quick”,which is more well known and generally better appreciated than Mac Donalds.

Shopping

Prices and taxes

The tax on about everything is of 21% of the price of the item. Only rare, daily use items have a tax of 6%. Among which, bread, butter, and potatoes.

In all shops, the price tags already include the tax. What you see is what you pay. You don’t have to calculate the prices for items “tax included”.

Malls

In large cities like Brussels, Liège, Charleroi, Namur, Antwerpen and more, we have some malls. Our malls are generally smaller than American malls. Instead, we have some commercial streets (Rue Neuve in Brussels is a good example) and commercial areas (which are a bit like malls, but the different shops are not in the same big building, but in several different buildings next to each other.

Big names

For electronics, music and videos, we have Media Markt, well known for having the cheapest prices, but not always the greatest ranges of choice. Alternatively, there is Vanden Borre, Selexion, and some others.

For daily goods, we have several chains of supermarkets.

Carrefour, which is in middle range for prices, hand have the most wide choice
Delhaize, which is well known for their choices of wines, and for having higher quality foods. Their prices are a little bit higher compared to others.
Colruyt, known to have always the cheapest prices on everything, but the counterpart is that they often repack items together so that you have to buy larger quantities to benefit the best prices.

Weather

In Belgium, the rain is present almost 2 days out of three. They are however lighter than compared to what happends in USA.

Temperature ranges from -5�?°C in winter to about +30�?°C in summer. But the warmest days are rare. In spring and autumn, the temperatures are around 10�?°C.