Never having considered myself a materialist, and Belgium not lacking for anything in particular, I am struck at how much of the things I am missing most are just that – things. Items that I never particularly considered essential, until now. Here, beer replaces the cracker or juice samples you can try at the supermarket on Saturdays. Heck, you can even drink the beer you bought from the vending machine as you guard over your unmentionables at the laundromat. But Dryel? They don’t have that. Sulfate-free shampoos? Forget it. Missing natural product lines like Burt’s Bees, Organix, Dr. Bronner’s, Traditional Medicinals, Tom’s or Method? Go back to Norcal, hippie. Luckily, I did finally find a “bio” store to tide me over (yay for Yogi teas!), but the selection is a tiny fraction of what I had access to at my neighborhood cooperative, Other Avenues. If Belgian progressives walked into a Whole Foods, they’d probably think they’d died and gone to heaven.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for being irritated by the superficial. Products can have a profound impact on society and, with a background in economics, maybe I am more fond than most of innovations that save time. There’s even a feminist streak in there somewhere, since The Economist was pondering how division of labor at home affects take home pay. Another study estimated that in 1900, a woman spent 58 hours per week on household chores. By 1975, this fell to 18 hours.

Inefficiencies in the public sector are a frustration most can identify with – consider the DMV or post office. Yet, both are being forced to change their ways and become more customer friendly compared to a decade ago. Here? Not so sure. Garbage bags are piled out on the sidewalks on collection day, to be picked up one by one by garbage workers. No mechanized garbage trucks with arms, no cans to tidily hide the garbage bags away. As for the post office, not only did they fail to deliver my heavy box of books … I had to pay them a hefty sum for the privilege of picking it up from the nearest branch. Neither of these inconveniences was unknown to me given previous trips, yet I keep hoping for positive change. Especially since my native Poland, labelled a third world country just two decades ago, had more hygienic garbage disposal customs even when I was a wee one.

To be fair, there are similar trifles I simply do not miss at all about California. Shoddy, energy inefficient buildings where you constantly have to run central heating. Our obsession with carpets. Instead, I’ll take proper insulation, radiators and flooring any day from a place that understands seasons. And so I say, with the requisite Bruxellois good humor, vive la difference!