Week 2 April 20-26

We spent a good part of last Sunday trying to figure out the best criteria for making our apartment selection.  We also spent a lot of time trying to remember which of the 15 places was which (we had to come up with nicknames like "pink walls","too much marble","modern cave","the one where she lost her keys").  The crucial factors of location, the amount of natural light, and the size of the kitchen ended up swinging one apartment to the top of the list.  It is new construction in an old building that was formerly a "House of Justice."  The renovations have preserved the original materials and designs for the street-facing facade and many interior accents.  We really enjoy the character of the chevron pattern wood flooring.

Living Room with cool floor

Kitchen (that tiny open cabinet below the oven is our refrigerator AND freezer)

Entrance of apartment building

We are hopeful we will get to move in soon!  We say hopeful, because it is quite a process.  Just as in the US, you sign a lease, but a typical lease in Belgium is for 9 years!  Strangely, 9 year leases carry less financial penalties for breaking the contract early (intuitive right?).  Also you have to pay a security deposit.  However, instead of paying this amount straight to the landlord and hoping you get it back at the end of your lease, you are required to open a "blocked" escrow account.  You may be able to withdraw that blocked amount in the future if the apartment is in good order when you leave. The decision around how much of that amount you get back is dependent upon a certified independent inspector, that you and the landlord mutually agree upon, completing a thorough inspection (including pictures) of the entire apartment when you move in and when you leave and comparing the results for any damages.  Of course, there is all the normal applying for renter's insurance, setting up utilities and cable/internet to keep us busy as well.

Back to banking. Our relocation folks setup a local account for us, but in order to complete the process we had to attend an appointment in person to verify the account and receive debit cards.  All fairly standard process until we got to setting up online banking.  We thought "ok internet banking... we have seen that before.....setup a username and password...and done."  Not so fast.  Any time you want to log into your account, you have to insert your debit card into a special card reader (gift for opening an account), type in the randomized code from the website, enter your own super secret pin, which generates another randomized code on the card reader, which you enter on the website. It certainly makes our funds back home in the US feel a bit less secure....

Fancy card reader

While all that kept us busy during the week, we relaxed a bit over the weekend by visiting the city of Leuven and attending a beer festival there. The city was beautiful, the beer was great, the chocolate was tasty (there is chocolate at every event in Belgium and this chocolate had beer in it!), and the food was delicious.  It turns out beer festivals are pretty much the same the world over, but we will say that Belgians are professionals in this matter.  Many families (including kids) looked to have setup shop for the entire day (11am-11pm) with plenty of nuts, crackers, cheese, fruits, and board games to hold them over.

Cheers

Church in Leuven

Leuven Town Hall

First train ride in Belgium!

We couldn't forget to tempt people to visit by talking about our food adventures for the week!  We had DELICIOUS pizza at Orso Pizzeria, the wine was good too!  We have already tried many waffle shops so Molly ventured into a cupcake shop, supposedly rare in Belgium.  She accidentally walked out with 4 and was regretting the impulsive decision until we tried them!  Sooo good and we didn't even try any with Belgian chocolate in them!

Pizza!

Beer, of course!

How could I not buy these!?

Raspberry, Oreo (they have those here), Apple honey and Dulce de Leche

Jessica! TACO MIX!

Building Graffiti 

Apparently you can't pee here... Everywhere else is ok???

BIKES! Everywhere!

Church in Turnhout (the city Tyler works in)

Turnhout

Next week comes our first Belgian 'bank holiday' and hopefully a move to our new apartment!

Week 1 April 10-18

Our first week in Belgium was quite a success! Tyler has started work, and Molly has started exploring our new city.  We have mastered the grocery store and the laundromat! Tyler has mastered the art of driving stick and we now have our car (a little big for Europe but we're getting used to it).

Dean (CEO) Welcomes Tyler

Random ferris wheel (now gone)

We live here! Grote Market

Cathedral of our Lady

Centraal Station (train station)

 Belgium has street side food stands called a Frituur.  Their main dish is frites (french fries) with sauce (usually mayonnaise).  But they fry just about anything.  They have a deli case full of items and you just pick and they fry.  We have taken it upon ourselves to try everything so we can give the best recommendations when we have visitors.  So far we have tried frites (of course!), a fried kabob, and Bitterballen (a type of fried meatball).

Frituur (Yes, they will fry everything in that case!)

Beer, Fries and Bitterballen

 We also visited Bella Patio for pizza and salad.  The best part about eating at an Italian restaurant here is the bread and butter and olives.  They bring delicious bread, garlicy butter and a bowl of olives before your meal, awesome.  Also, the menus were on iPads!  A great idea except we had to wait because there were only a limited number of menus.

Bread, butter, olives and of course beer!

iPad menu!

Friday was booked for our apartment search!  We had spoken with our relocation specialist earlier in the week about our preferences and budget, and we figured we would get to see about 8 places (4 each in the two neighborhoods we had settled on).  Friday morning, when she picked us up, she let us know that we were going to see 15 apartments!  Apparently the housing market moves fast in Antwerp.  We parked in the city center, and we were essentially on foot for the rest of the day.  Of course there had to be some adventures and quirks to complete the experience. The first Real Estate agent got us off to a good start by showing us two very nice apartments in a great location. We quickly moved the next meeting point, met the second Real Estate agent outside, exchanged pleasantries, and started to head through the front door.  Oops!  She had grabbed the wrong key for this apartment and had left all her other keys locked inside.  Oh yeah, and she was supposed to show us 6 more places.....bumbumbummmm. Our relo specialist started dialing like mad to re-arrange our entire day's schedule.  She saved the day of course, and we had very little waiting time.  Language often played a comedic role when we inquired about anything and everything we didn't understand, which was a lot.  When getting an explanation about the origins of "The Bird Market" (a weekend street market), we were told it was originally a site for selling pet animals such as "puppy dogs and puppy cats."  We also learned about a certain cultural community in town that often wears "wiches" on their heads (in took us until the end of the day to realize the fact that the Dutch "g" and "ch" make similar sounds had caused an interesting sounding translation). All told, we saw 15 apartments, walked close to 7.5 miles, and had no idea which place to pick! Stayed tuned for the big apartment decision next week......

You gotta pedal to charge your phone

Waffles!

Getting to Belgium- April 8-9

As Tyler was spending his first two weeks on the job in Belgium, Molly headed to Knoxville for a few weeks of visiting with friends and family and of course getting the final things ready.  With side trips to Cincinnati, McMinnville and Nashville, it was a full two weeks.  When Tyler returned, we shipped his passport to New York and began the wait... except FedEx SUCKS and did not get our overnight guaranteed package there overnight... it took 2 days. THANKS!  We finally got the passports and visas back the following Saturday and we were booked on a flight that Wednesday.  We made stops at all our favorite restaurants (more Mexican) and visited with some of our close friends in the meantime... NOW it's everyone's turn to come see us :)

With our lives packed up into 4 suitcases, 2 carry-ons and 2 backpacks, we were ready.  BTW, we mastered the pack and every bag came in at 49.5 lbs of the allowable 50! Huzzah!  Our flight was scheduled to leave Knoxville at about 2:30 PM on Wednesday.  The relocation people had made the flight arrangements and they only gave us a little over an hour for layover in Dulles... SO since Tyler is a part of this trip (for those who don't know about every other trip he takes doesn't go smoothly) we had a delay.  We had hopes that we would make it and hoof it to the gate JUST in time.  We boarded, pulled away from the gate and sat.  Then the pilot proceeded to inform us that air traffic control had given them a longer route than they had planned so we needed more fuel, so back into the gate we went and our hopes of making our flight evaporated.  I am not sure HOW we didn't have enough fuel. What if we had had to circle the airport a few times, or fly to another airport for some reason... YOU NEED EXTRA FUEL. (This is the second time in as many months that Tyler has returned to the gate for gas)  Anyway... we landed 5 minutes after our next flight had closed the doors so to customer service we went.  They put us on a flight out of Dulles later that night with a connection in Frankfurt, not great but at least we would still make it there by Thursday.  Well, 15 minutes before boarding the flight was suddenly cancelled for mechanical reasons.  Sucks but also glad not to have been on a plane with problems!  Back to customer service we go... Phone calls and line standing and a LONG exchange with the Lufthansa desk agents (because of course it was their first day on a new system) and we were on a plane to Munich with Lufthansa (originally supposed to be on United).  AND our luggage... No where to be found when we finally get to Brussels... of course.  I have always felt losing my luggage was the end of the world because I feel like everything I own is in there... well this time that was pretty literal!  Luckily two days later and two trips back to the airport and all bags were accounted for.

Everything we own!

Apparently it takes this many boarding passes for one person to get to Belgium

New York City- March 15-16

The next mini adventure before departing for Belgium was New York City.  We had to go there to get our Visa's for Belgium.  Each Belgian consulate in the US has certain states it is responsible for, Ohio belongs to NYC, so off we went.  Well, actually, it took much preparation because every document that has ever been created for us was required for the application. An FBI background check (note: Molly stinks at doing fingerprints), birth certificates, marriage certificate and a ton of documents pertaining to Tyler's employment in Belgium.  That seems easy enough, until you find out these documents have to be sent to the state department for a special seal of approval (an Apostille).  Not a quick, easy or cheap task!

Our appointment was on Monday so we flew in on Sunday morning.  It was a quick trip because Tyler had to be in Belgium by Tuesday.  We made use of the time we had and made a visit to the 9/11 memorial and museum.  Neither of us had been to NYC since any of the work had been completed at Ground Zero.  I don't think either of us expected to be as moved as we were.  The museum was done very respectfully, and we were very happy we spent the time and money to go, with that being said, it was also a very heavy day.  We finished late and headed to a Mexican restaurant for dinner (we have been eating Mexican food as much as humanly possible because it will not be readily available in Europe and if anyone has seen Molly in front of a basket of chips, you know this will be difficult.)

No trip to New York is complete without pizza

Subway selfie

One World Trade Center

9/11 Memorial Fountains

Chips and Salsa!

And Enchiladas

Our appointment with the Embassy was Monday morning, we had spent countless hours making sure we had everything right so we wouldn't have a wasted trip.  Failure #1: We only made one appointment since Molly was a dependent of Tyler, this makes sense...NO you must have individual appointments... OOPS! Luckily the woman at the embassy allowed us to have our second appointment after helping others.  Failure #2: We had the wrong insurance form for Molly.  Again, luckily the Embassy lady was super nice and said we could e-mail it to her! Failure #3: Since Tyler was going to Belgium, he could not leave his passport, we had been told this would be fine... and it was... sort of.  We would have to mail it back to get the Visa put in it.  Therefore, when he got back from Belgium, the passport would have to be mailed to NYC, the visa added and then everything (including both passports with Visas included) would be mailed back... Oh and the woman we dealt with at the embassy was going on Holiday so we would have to count on her colleague to do all of this.  Note: Everyone in Belgium is constantly on holiday, getting ready to go on holiday, or just getting back from holiday. It's a great way to live!

After the appointment, we were both starving. We headed for Shake Shack, the In-n-out/Five Guys, of New York for burgers and a milkshake.  Delicious! With full bellies, we headed for a walk in Central Park before we both had to start our treks to the airport (Tyler to JFK and Molly to Newark).

Shake Shack

Central Park

We then parted ways for Tyler to go start his job in Belgium and start getting our new life in action!  We had a great yet brief trip to New York.  I (Molly) love New York and it was great to visit again.  I haven't been very many times in my adult life but I still love the adventure just as much as I did when I was a kid (even though some family reading this will say I hated going there).  I am grateful to my dad for teaching us as kids how to navigate the subway because it served me well on this trip and most likely will in the future.