Arriving in Belgium

When we landed in Paris, we paced around the baggage claim area, waiting where they said Ginger would appear. After 45 minutes of anxiety, the elevator doors slid open and there she was, a panting and somewhat hysterical, wiggling Ginger peering out of her crate. When I opened her crate door she flung herself out and attempted to do laps around the baggage claim area. Once I caught hold of her, we were off to find our rental car, dog on leash, pushing way too much luggage through the airport. Ginger was running in one direction and the luggage cart in another.

After much good natured hand waving at the rental car desk it turns out that the term “reservation” does not mean guarantee. This all translated to “Howard now drives a stick shift from Paris to Brussels” after not driving one for 20 years. But monsieur, we had reserved an automatic transmission…now how do you say that in French? God only knows and it probably doesn’t matter anyway. By the time we reached Brussels, after numerous rest stops, Ginger was snoozing on the back seat, ready to start her new adventure.

We arrived to our house in the lovely hamlet of Braine-L’Aleud, 15 minutes south of Brussels to no phone, no DSL, no air shipment (sheets and towels) and no hot water and it was a couple of days before a big holiday. Keep breathing. We can always stay in a hotel (and we did). In true Belgian style though, even though we didn’t have the essentials, a big, wonderful bottle of champagne and a bouquet of flowers was waiting on our front porch. By the next day we had all the basics, due to our incredible relocation person, Yolande!

The second day in our house our land lady and her husband stopped by. We are graced with absolutely lovely landlords. He doesn’t speak much English at all but she is fluent. He is Greek and she is Belgian. She is an architect and has designed lots of houses in the area, including ours. They both have a cute glint in their eyes and we’re already quite fond of them. We are enjoying our house but with a small amount of rental furniture in it only, even our foot steps echo. September 4th we’ll get our furniture and we are looking forward to making this more of a home at that point.