

Ask me: A webdeveloper from Belgium - kamme

I've been watching HN for quite some time now and I see more and more 'coffee shops say no to laptop users' and it strikes me that here, in Belgium, we have no such thing. Or not that I know of anyway.
That inspired me to create this. Are there any questions you, HN readers, would like to ask about life in Europe/Belgium? Of course any question is welcome and I'll do my best to give a unbiased opinion, but don't feel offended if I feel a question is inappropriate. This is just a wild idea, if this is not appropriate for HN for some reason, feel free to tell me why.
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pasbesoin
When you say "we have no such thing", I want to assume you mean "here's your
hat, what's your hurry" service ;-) (meaning, proscribing lingering), as
opposed to no wifi in cafes. Is that what you mean?

Although politics have been overplaying here on HN, lately, I am curious
whatever became of the concern that was reported a year or two (or three?) ago
that Belgium was "falling apart".

With regard to a question perhaps of more interest to the HN crowd, I'm
curious what the startup and small (tech) business culture is like in your
country. I have a friend who now lives on the outskirts of Ghent, and a time
or two I've wondered what I would find if things ever went beyond friends and
I considered moving over there. I realize that's a pretty broad question, but
my own thoughts have not been too specific.

If this isn't the best fare for HN, I'm happy to move it to email.

~~~
kamme
First of all, we have coffee places, just like in the US. But as far as I
know, we tend not to bring our laptop along. I certainly never did it and I
never saw it either. I must admit I'd rather read a book then take my laptop
along...

Now, about the politics, yes it's true there where a lot of political problems
concerning the separation of Belgium into 2 separate countries. Today (almost)
nothing has changed. The issues the news reported about back then are still
not 'solved'. It's just old news for the media and the people got tired of it
so nothing happens anymore. But to give my personal opinion, there never was
any problem. To me all the fuss was just to get some media attention for the
elections back then and things got a bit out of control. The big problem
should be between flanders and walloon, the 2 big parts of the country. But
many of my colleagues are walloon and I have absolutely no problem with them
at all, why should I? So my opinion about the whole issue is: it was just some
publicity stunt. Sure we hear all the time there are 'issues' and flanders is
giving (some politicians even call it wasting) a large sum of money to the
walloon but I see it in a bigger picture. And as far as I know, that's the
main issue about politics.

The last answer, the startup culture. To be honest, as I see it, there are 2
big cities with startups at the moment in flanders: Antwerp and Ghent. You
also have Brussels but it's really expensive to live there, if you want to
live in a 'better part' of the city. Starting up is not so hard, just get a
BTW number (it's a special tax number), fill in some papers and you are
working for yourself. The thing is, taxes are rather high so you tend to have
less money left. Of course you have an upside too, if you should fail, you can
apply for unemployment benefits and even take courses for free (they even pay
you to do it in some instances). The typical startup here is different in the
sense that here you don't make a web application that attracts a lot of
people/investors, you make applications for clients. A group of people I
worked with recently started their own little company ( <http://1md.be/> ) and
as you can see they follow that principle. I guess Belgium is just too small
to do it the US way, it's even worse if you know websites from flanders who
are immensely popular are not popular at all in walloon and the other way
around. So in conclusion, I don't think we have the same startup environment
as 'you guys'. If you should move only for that, I think you're in for a bit
of a disappointment. Of course that's from my point of view!

Hope this answers your questions, if not let me know!

