Everyone in Brussels drives. Gas is expensive (though diesel is cheaper). Public transport is good (not excellent) and relatively cheap. Parking and traffic are a nightmare. Brussels is not a city built around the car. Still, everyone drives.

Expats here for short term stays bring their cars. Our eco-friendly, left-leaning, downtown-dwelling landlords have a car. When people give you directions somewhere, they tell you how to drive there and are surprised when you say you’re on foot. We are an anomaly.

We’ve signed up for a prenatal class with the BCT in Brussels. The course takes place in the suburb of Terverun and starts next week. We were given instructions to get there – by car. This apparently poses no problem for the others on the course, but getting there on public transport for 7:30pm on a weekday will take us well over an hour and requires a tram, a subway and a regional (not city) bus. A taxi would cost €40 + each way. I decided to look into car sharing.

Cambio, a Belgian car sharing company, seemed like a great option. Affordable, efficient and easy-to-use, it’s the best way to have a car at our disposal without the hassle/expense of actually owning one. I tried to sign up. Hitch (because there’s always one): you need a European driver’s license to participate. As Canadians, how do we get one? We’re taken right back to the bureaucratic bazarre of Belgium, with a few Canadian idiosyncrasies thrown in for good measure.

Apparently, in 2006 (as DFAIT is proud to announce) Belgium signed a reciprocal agreement with Canada allowing drivers to have their licenses recognized and exchanged upon relocation to the new country. Luck!? Maybe. There are two potential glitches:

(1) You have to go to the commune. Not again! Trepidation sets in. But DFAIT promises it’s easy. All you need is your residence card (still waiting for that – and likely will be for months), your Canadian drivers’ license (no problem) and a letter from your provincial ministry of transport saying when you passed your test (there’s a Canadian phone number to call to get one. I’m skeptical). However…

(2) … since driver licensing is under provincial jurisdiction in Canada, the Belgian minister has only gotten around to signing the agreement with Alberta, Quebec and Ontario. So if you acquired your license in any other province, tough luck. Our ministry of transport letter would have to come from Manitoba since we both passed our tests there. Because Manitoba’s minister of transport isn’t in on the deal, we technically don’t qualify for the Belgium-Canada reciprocal agreement.

There’s a glimmer of hope, though. Given our experience at the commune so far, we can hope the employee has had his café and croissant – and that he isn’t all that familiar with Belgian-Canadian drivers’ license exchanges to recognize our lack of documentation. I bet that if I bring a copy of my passport, three ID photos and euros in cash, he’ll ignore the missing letter.

In the meantime, we’ll take a tram, a metro and regional bus to the prenatal class next week and hope for a ride home.