Beyond the expat life…

What happens outside the “bubble”? Well, many things as it seems. There is a whole part of Brussels left uncovered. You’ve seen in our previous posts the “decheterie”, the workers, tool shops. Now it is time to see the scrap metal collectors. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a scrap metal collection site before, and I’ve become quickly   very excited.  

I took a day off work to be of help. I was hoping to do just the direction setting.  It turned out, we did all of the heavy lifting as well.

One could easily wonder what type of metal you can collect from a house. Well, it seems that   a lot, when you consider that old houses had steel radiators (14 or so, each weighing close to 60-70kg), meters upon meters of pipes, electric wires, lead pipes.  Luckily our undertakers – seeing us struggling through the mess of pipes, radiators, wires, cookers, metal doors – proved rather proactive and gave us a helping hand. After 2 intense hours of loading the car, we were finally ready to go towards metal collection site.

 

this is how 1,2 tonnes of metal looks like

So what does this place look like?

Imagine a big parking lot without cars, divided on various piles of metal. One can virtually get rid of everything that remotely contains metal. After a quick weigh in (with me in the car) we were pointed in by a bored looking guy to the biggest pile of the whole lot. After being told off by a guy with a massive dangling crane (apparently we took his spot), we were left to our own means. Trying to get rid of one tone of metal as quickly as we can was the challenge of the hour. It seems that even outside the bubble, lunch is a serious business. However, much earlier than any southern European would seem remotely acceptable. All of the loading and paying had to be done before 12, otherwise we’d miss this, and had to loiter around for another hour or so.

this our van being weighted.

massive pile of ... metal

this is our door, and the crane kept being dangled over our heads. health and safety took to a different level.

We were hoping of being welcomed by an army of people to help us unload the 1tonne of metal we managed to collect in our modest abode.  As it turns out, you make the mess, you dump the mess! No such luxury as we had hoped and we had to manage it ourselves.

Of course, we missed the tight deadline, came close though. Managed to weigh the car again (empty) the guy did the calculation, however, the guy decided he's hungry and told us to come back for our money afterwards. So waiting it was. Lunch break there was rather quick it seems – only half an hour. Maybe this is something we could bring back to the “bubble”.

As it turns out, getting rid of metal can be very rewarding. We made a bit of money in the process, and they still owe us some money for the copper. While this is cash in hand type of business, only copper is being paid by bank transfer. 

Success of the day: getting rid of the previous owner’s cooker. Most likely with the dead rat still in. So I think we’ve “cheated” a bit on the weight, but hey, who could possibly mess with a dead rat?

PS. if any of our friends is by any chance interested in where this place actually is, we'd be happy to share their contacts. Not because we've been overly joyed with their service, but this is the only place we've visited.