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!