Hi there. I am a 34 year old woman living near Gent. I have been here for a few months and live with my boyfriend who is Flemish.

I have lots of great friends through him but would be really great to meet some English speaking people to meet up and chat and generally mull over life in Belgium!! I work for myself, and am based at home most of the time so it is a little isolating but I travel a lot overseas for business.

I have made a few friends here and it would just be nice to extend my social network a little as am missing my great friends back home.... you know how it is right? Anyway, hopefully there are some like-minded people out there and I look forward to hearing from you.

Hi! I am 31 years old and living in Lochristi, just outside of Gent. Been here a year as my husband came to work in Belgium. Where are you from? We are South African, and we have a great group of friends that live in Gent and speak English! They keep me sane!
You are welcome to meet up with us :-)
You can email me at tammyvisagie@yahoo.com
Have a good weekend.

Hi!
I started a group in gent for english speaking expats to get together. Its on Facebook, and its called "Gent Expats"- it has about 30 members. If you would like more info, send me a message!
Cheers,

Well well, I am in Lochristi too! How funny. Will send you an email and would be great to meet up...

thanks for getting in contact.

Diana

most of expats live in Brussels or Antwerpen region

I'm the one of the few living in Limburg, hehe

How is the expat group growing in Gent? Many folks?

As I work in Brussls but live near Gent it limits my contact opportunites and would be nice to have a beer or 2 with some English speakers.....


Mart

I'm not sure how I qualify as an english speaker: I'm from Italy, and while I'm speaking english all the time since I live in Gent, the average flemish speaks much better than me.
Anyway I'd like to meet some english speakers in the area.

Marcello

Hello, I will be travelling to brussels for four days to settle my child's school and to attend an interview. me and my child will relocate to brussels in two months time (more or less) and I hope to establish some network connection with those who are into multicultural meet up for a chat over drinks. I hope to meet friends prior to my trip to brussels on the 25th of this month.

Please PM me if interested.

In brussels region, the majority of the expats are French!!!

There are unbelievable many French living in Belgium. And for sure many of them don't like to communicate other languages rather than French.


And in Flemand region and certain big companies, English would be more likely to be the first language to communicate between expats.

Hmmm... Is Brussels no longer calling itself "The (self-styled) Capital of Europe?"


If it is, then surely a lot of those expats are 'locals'?

It used to amuse me that when you were in Brussels, most of the signs were in both French and Flemish - but as soon as you moved out of Brussels itself, the signs were in Flemish only.

I made the mistake of addressing a Belgian (in Flanders) in French and was told (somewhat frostily) "We do not speak French here, we speak very good English"

The expat language in Brussels is slowly moving from French to English I believe. People from the new EU countries often speak German and/or English. My feeling is that they generally do not like French being forced upon them. Look at the French classes with EU personnel in it, New EU countries peuple are taking level 1 or 2 for the gazillionth time!

It depends on how you defin the word ''expat''

The foreiners (non Belgian nationality, excluded students and illegal immigration) in Brussels are mainly three types

1) business people: they travell a lot back and forth to Brussels. So they do speak English normally but you can't call them expat. They even don't live in Brussels

2) diplomatic: 90% are foreigners from all over EU and the world. But they have their own network. I don't see they interact with other foreigners in Brussels very often.

3) foreign employees: yes, there are indeed Dutch, German, English, even American, Idian and Chinese working in Brussels. But they're in big companies. If you see all size of companies in Brussels, French definately present the majority of the percentage.

Brussels is more like ''political capital of EU''