I'm responsible for marketing a U.S. company's products into Europe, based in Brussels. Most of the job is involved in marketing communications. I interface with the sales managers in each individual country along with the European managing director in Brussels and the product development people and general management back in the U.S. Some of the things we get involved with are trade shows, advertising, and press relations. I have an assistant that helps with details.

About 10% of my time is devoted to product management. Most of the products that are sold in Europe are variants of those already created for the U.S. market so this part of the job isn't as important as it would be in the U.S. I talk to customers and sales managers and write up a PSPEC to give to the PM group back in the States.

I ended up living in a part of Brussels that is very difficult to access. As such it takes me more than an hour and a half each way to get to and from work.

The office environment is interesting because there are essentially two different cultures within Belgium – those who speak French and those who speak Flemish, a variation of the Dutch language. In addition, there are many foreign nationals living in Brussels since it is main capital for the European Union.