 "Europe on vacation")
We began our European lives just as continental Europe was gearing up for what the Belgians (or at least the French-speaking amongst them) called 'Les Grand Vacances'. This was a staggeringly long period between July and August when large parts of the continent, and certainly Brussels, came to a halt, with everyone from European Union civil servants to primary school teachers heading off on a grand vacation, clasping suntan lotion and beach towels.
It was not a good time to be attempting to settle in. Every time I tried to get hold of a gardener, plumber, or chauffagiste, to lure them to our newly rented home with offers of large sums of money, my efforts would meet with a hollow laugh.
Me calling a gardener recommended by a friend: 'Hello, any chance you could come over tomorrow to take a look at our garden? It needs mowing and weeding and the hedge needs urgent pruning.'
The gardener, cackling in amusement: 'Tomorrow? No, madame, it is impossible.' Me making a second, less ambitious, attempt: 'OK, how about next week?'
The gardener with a sniffy mix of pity and contempt: 'But, madame, I am fully booked for the next month. If you still wish it, I can try and make it after the vacances. I think I have a vacancy on September 24.'
We were speaking in May.
And so it went. It took us four months to buy a car - the sales staff we made initial contact with at various car dealerships invariably having vanished on vacation when we tried to call them a second time. This was more problematic than one might imagine as it became tougher and tougher to get around the city, with public buses having halved their frequency following a special grand vacances schedule as we approached July.
In (my husband) Julio's European Commission dining hall we were bemused to see a little tableaux of a beach scene set up in the centre of the cafeteria, complete with an inviting-looking cocktail glass decked out with a pair of sunglasses. It was like a shrine to the God of vacances. Indeed, I was increasingly convinced of the religious overtones to vacations in Belgium, where many seemed to hold holidays as the raison d'être for work, and even life itself.
What I found more difficult to understand was the strange disconnect between the offer of money and the provision of services I so regularly encountered in Brussels. Plumbers were simply not interested in interrupting their weekends in order to come and help you out with a leaking faucet, even at 50-100 euro a pop. It just didn't seem to be worth it to them.
Anecdotes to support this point were bountiful. A British friend told me of the time he offered a delivery man from an IKEA store an extra 50 euro to help carry some furniture into his home.
Initially reluctant, the man eventually agreed and told my friend to go inside the house to wait. My friend obliged. When several minutes had passed with no sign of the furniture, he went back out, to discover that the delivery man had driven off, leaving all the furniture on the road, and so without the extra 50 euro.
Many Europeans I talked to about what, to me, was a peculiar lack of interest in making more money when the opportunity presented itself, confirmed my observation with pride. 'Yes,' they would say smugly. 'Money is not everything to us.' Time spent with family, eating a hearty lunch, indulging in hobbies like gardening, and of course enjoying vacations: these were the important things in life, I was instructed. Not just making money.
* * *
This should have been unsurprising because much of what passed as 'business' in some European countries hardly deserved that label. There were times I felt the world had got its labelling mixed up and I had not left communist China for capitalist Europe but capitalist China for a very socialist Europe.
In our first week in Brussels, Julio set off to the neighbourhood supermarket to procure a pair of house slippers. Having failed to locate any, he looked around for store staff who might be able to help. Finding human beings to talk to in Europe was never easy in these circumstances, with customers being furnished with their own portable scanners with which to tot up their bills, and fully automated checkout counters fast replacing people. But with some persistence, he finally tracked down a lone, uniformed youth limply stacking boxes in a corner.
| EUROPEANS OF ASIA |
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As the only journalist representing an Indian newspaper in Brussels, I spent many a day speeding between offices in the Indian embassy in Brussels and the various directorates at the European Commission. I soon began to feel I was developing a strange form of tinnitus-the same sentences echoed in my ear, with phrases like the inability to deliver 'meaningful outcomes', and the failure to develop 'clear negotiating mandates'. It struck me with some force how in many ways the Chinese were the Americans of Asia, while the Indians were the Europeans. As players on the international stage, the United States and China are both goal-oriented and able to act decisively in their national interest. Despite the existence of internal divisions, they are coherent entities that speak with a unified voice. Backed by hard power, their strategic planners take a long-term view of evolving rivalries and alliances. In contrast, the Indians, like their European counterparts, are notable for the glacial pace of their decision-making. Constrained by the workings of coalition politics, both the twenty-seven-member EU and India valorize plurality and argumentation over actual outcomes and performance. They often appear unable to articulate a clear vision of their core interests, with internal factiousness hijacking unified, long-term agendas. Unlike the Unites States and ironically, 'communist' China, the political mainstream in both Europe and India is Leftish and characterized by a distrust of unfettered markets. |
'Excuse me, but do you know where I can find some slippers?' Julio asked, instinctively adopting an apologetic tone, given the youth's less-than-enthusiastic expression. 'But, monsieur, it is June,' came the mystifying reply. 'Um, that's true,' agreed Julio, miffed but still hopeful. The box stacker sighed in despair and shook his head with irritation at being expected to provide further explanation. 'But this is not the season. Slippers are only available from September.'
The bizarre seasonality of slippers aside, it was the attitude of the salesman that was the real jolt for someone newly moved from China. And there seemed to be no escape from it. A few days later, we went shopping for a pushchair for Ishaan (my son) in one of Brussels' more upscale baby shops. When we asked a sales assistant to explain the relative merits of the final two models we had narrowed down our choice to, she told us it was a quarter to six in the evening and the store was closing. The store, in fact, closed at six. She could have helped sell a 600-euro pram. We were in culture shock.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been that surprised. I'd already got an inkling of the attitude to customers common in Belgium from my very first French lesson. Chapter One of my newly acquired textbook ended with a 'dialogue' titled 'Une cliente difficile', a difficult customer. Here is a translation in English:
The waiter: Bonjour, madame. Your menu! Let me suggest the rabbit in mustard.
Virginie (the eponymous difficult customer): No, thank you, I am a vegetarian.
The waiter: Ah . . . Alors, we also have grilled salmon with rice.
Virginie: Ah, non! I would like only vegetables.
The waiter: Only vegetables? Fine, here's a plate of crudites (sliced raw vegetables).
Virginie: Actually, I'd like some cooked vegetables.
The waiter: Cooked vegetables? Here are some French fries.
Virginie: But, those are awful!
The waiter: Ah, bon . . . a plate of rice with green beans?
Virginie: Yes, that's great. But please no butter on the vegetables.
The waiter: No butter? I see . . . Ah, difficult customers!
My French book was to prove an excellent preparation for life in Europe, in more ways than one. The bit about the cliente difficile was followed by a lengthy section on vacances, teaching me valuable vocabulary like 'le pont', literally 'the bridge' which referred to the practice of taking an extra day off to make a truly long weekend in the event of a public holiday falling on a Thursday or a Tuesday, i.e., 'bridging' the gap between the public holiday and the weekend.
It didn't take long in Brussels before one became rather intimate with strikes. Public transport officials in particular seemed to enjoy going on strike every so often for reasons that were often obscure. One particularly disruptive wildcat strike was eventually explained as a response to an attack on a metro driver by a passenger the night before. It later transpired that it was in fact the driver who had begun the punch-up because he hadn't liked the 'aggressive' tone in which the passenger had asked him a question. So, it wasn't only waiters who found their customers difficile.
* * *
Strikes were a defining feature of the years I spent in Europe. Everyone from taxi drivers to dairy farmers was up in arms 'against' the crisis, quivering with talk of injustice. But I couldn't help notice that these strikers were, in fact, part of the global labour elite. For workers in most other parts of the world the injustice was how unfairly advantaged their European counterparts were.
The privileges of this global elite amongst the working classes were sometimes protected at absurd lengths. In France, thanks to union pressure, the number of taxi operating licences that the state grants per year had actually diminished since 1931, despite the population having grown by more than 50 per cent. There were 20,155 taxis in Paris in 1931, 14,300 in 1967, 14,900 in 2003 and 15,300 in 2007.
But for me, nothing seemed to exemplify European socialism more than the regulations governing retail in Belgium. These were the most complicated in Europe, even pipping France to the post.
I began by dashing off an email to the Directorate-General for Regulation and Organization of the Market (no, I am not making up the name), asking for an opportunity to learn more about all the regulating and organizing of the market they did.
A week later I was seated in the aforementioned directorate before a panel of five earnest young government officials armed with pages of notes. This is what I learnt: In Belgium, shops can only legally go on 'sale' twice a year, in January and July; it is only during these periods that shops may sell goods at below cost or 'extremely reduced' profit; and for six weeks before the sales period, shops may not advertise price reductions.
Although offering discounts (as long as these do not amount to a loss) was legal at other times of the year, for a month before the biannual sales, textiles, shoes and leather products were not to be discounted at all. Moreover, the sales were reserved for the 'seasonal renewal' of stock, so products deemed non-seasonal could not be included in the sale. Sofas, for example, were considered seasonal but antiques were not.
To implement all of this, 200-odd inspectors from the directorate wandered around the country inspecting, while 'many' complaints regarding non-compliance were also phoned in.
The rationale behind this mountain of red tape was the protection of SMEs, which it was believed would go bankrupt were big retail allowed to dump in an unrestrained manner.
Decades of zealous regulation were, however, drawing to a partial close, thanks to the diktats of the European Union. In April 2009, the European Court of Justice ruled that the Belgian prohibition on 'combined offers' was incompatible with European directives and must be changed.
A 'combined offer' is one where the acquisition of products or services is tied to the acquisition of another product or service, for example, the common ploy of 'buy one and get one free'.
'Now because of the EU we must allow this,' sighed one young bureaucrat, visibly distraught. But she collected herself quickly and moved on to detailing the next regulation pertaining to the operation of public phone booths and cyber cafes. 'We are quite strict about their opening hours. They must shut at 8 p.m.' 'Er, why?' I asked, although by now nothing much surprised me. 'Why? Well, to protect the public tranquility,' she answered, eyebrows knitted into a frown at my lack of perspicacity.
PUNJABI PARMESAN: DISPATCHES FROM A EUROPE IN CRISIS
Author: Pallavi Aiyar
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Pages: xxvi + 318
Price: Rs 599
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India
