In some ways, nothing has changed.  I’m still the same me – back into my old clothes (just), eating the same foods, drinking the same (if not slightly more Belgian) beer, listening to the same music.  I still take the dog for a walk every morning and am back to cooking dinner (almost) every evening.  I still like going out for meals and sitting on patios in the sun (things we continue to manage despite the presence of baby).  I’m even reading again – although at a much slower and more interrupted pace.

But in many ways, everything has changed.  Nothing is about me anymore.  My life is so inherently connected to and dictated by Alice that not only has my routine been drastically affected but so to have my outlook on life, my priorities, my interests.  My needs are attended to only after hers are met.  I don’t miss work (yet).  I like spending time with other baby people.  My days are organized (mainly although not always exclusively) around what works for Alice.  Happily, she is easy going about this and is mostly content to come along for the ride, but we work together to make sure she eats and sleeps and gets changed when she needs to.  I am acutely aware of her daily changes and in tune with her shifting moods.  I worry less about myself and instead focus entirely on protecting and nurturing this little human who depends entirely on me.  I now understand the mother lion.  I feel a bit like one.

Despite fleeting moments of the formerly alluded to nostalgia for the bygone days of my youth – and mine and David’s life as a couple (it will be a while before we spontaneously go away for a weekend, or to the cinema for that matter) – I’m surprisingly content and relaxed about this new priority.  I feel strangely proud of things like Alice’s weight gain, and the fact that she’s rolling over a month ahead of schedule.

Three months have flown by.  I worried at first that she was growing up too quickly (regret at not being able to tell her age in weeks anymore), but each new stage is better than the last.  I don’t know how long this will last (through adolescence?), but in the meantime, I’ll coo and get excited about burps.

We are all home now, settling into our new routine (learning to sleep less and do laundry more) and getting to know each other. Alice eats, sleeps and poops like a champion and seems to like her new home.

View photos at here.

First, being pregnant has been a surprisingly enjoyable experience. Despite standard annoyances, the nine months has passed well. The notion that my body has the ability to grow a human is mind-boggling. It’s been fun to watch the growth from the outside with occasional grainy snapshots of what it looks like inside. I’ve been mostly energized by the process and have felt surprisingly calm, optimistic and relaxed not just about gestating but about life in general. And despite some fleeting moments of melancholic longing for the soon-to-be bygone days of my youth – and mine and David’s carefree days à deux – I feel more than ready to meet this kid.

And it is a kid now, fully capable of existing ex-utero, and basically just along for the free ride as far as I can tell. As I approach the 39-week mark and my belly skin stretches to impossible dimensions, I am increasingly convinced that this is the biggest baby ever and wonder a) how it can still be comfortable in there and b) how I’m ever going to get it out. And then once it’s out, what I’m going to do with it from now on… Yes, from now on. This struck me in an interesting way after David and I finally bought a crib last weekend. I was putting a sheet on the mattress and it felt a little like I was setting up a bed for a visitor. But this one’s never leaving. Odd. We’re two now but at some point in the next week or so we’ll turn into three. Just like that. Amazing.

Having a baby in Belgium is an interesting experience. The quality of care is outstanding. For example, pregnant women are routinely prescribed physiotherapy sessions in their final two months. In addition to stretching, massage and strengthening exercises, the physiotherapist offers a kind of birth prep course by going through breathing and positions for labour etc. She also offers to come to the hospital to coach during the delivery (at a cost, see below). My gynecologist turned out to be great – relaxed, approachable and obviously highly competent – if not a true interventionist, in typical Belgian fashion. They test for everything here (she was astonished that I hadn’t been tested for toxoplasmosis or cystic fibrosis among other things in Toronto). They scan the baby at every appointment. The epidural rate is over 85%. Home births less than 1%. For me, this has been fine. I like my doctor and feel like I’m in good hands. And I’ve supplemented the clinical side with a great prenatal yoga class that seems to focus a lot more on my feeling good (and has, as a perk, allowed me a social outlet with other prego expats – very nice, even if the topic of conversation seems to be a little unvaried).

The great quality of care does come at a price though. Despite boasting a universal healthcare system, Belgium offers an odd and inefficient take on this. In addition to extraordinarily high taxes (upwards of 50%), everyone must pay (based on income) into something called a mutuelle. You then pay for all your healthcare costs (usually in cash), keep the receipts and submit them to your mutuelle for reimbursement. But you’re not always sure to be reimbursed the full amount. For example, specialists like gynecologists can charge whatever they like for a consultation, but mutuelles only reimburse a singular rate for any given procedure. I pay 40 Euros each time I see my gynecologist. I know someone who pays 25 and someone who pays 75. For the same service. None of us are exactly sure how much we’ll get back. Physiotherapists may or may not be conventioné (meaning that they belong to a sort of union that regulates the professional activity of its members). If they are, they can only charge a certain amount. If they aren’t (and you have to ask upfront about this – which I found out much later), only a percentage of their fee is reimbursed. If they come to the hospital to assist with the birth – very common here – your mutuelle will only reimburse if they are conventioné!

In addition, the doctor may charge a different amount to different patients depending on where he/she sees them (ie. a fancier part of town vs. a working class neighbourhood). They can do this. In a hospital, if you have a private room, you can expect to pay not only a higher rate for your “accommodation” but also doctor’s fees (and medication, meal, test costs etc) that are twice as high as if you saw the same doctor, ate the same meals and took the same pills but were staying in a shared room. Most people take out extra private insurance to make sure these discrepancies are covered. Having arrived pregnant, we weren’t entitled to private insurance. I’ll be staying in a shared room.

The Belgians don’t bat an eyelid but to a Canadian used to showing up with an OHIP card, remembering to ask for pricelists, have cash on hand and submit receipts is an unusual procedure. We’ve had a lot to learn.

Overall, though, gestating has been remarkably smooth and pleasant. It all came quite naturally and fit quite nicely into the other rather significant changes David and I have made to our lives over the last 9 months.

I can only hope the next 20 years pan out as well.

It has been pointed out that my entries thus far have veered towards the critical:  I may not be giving Belgians credit for all the good things they offer.  I admit this may be true.  But understand that to the expatriate eye, local/national idiosyncrasies are blaringly obvious.  Everything that is sub-par, frustrating or even mildly odd about this host nation is noted by the expat as a (typical) Belgian flaw.  Rightly so, no?

It must also be noted however that we, as non-local members of the host society, often exist in a bit of a bubble.  We associate mainly with other expats, search out foods from home (I was never that interested in peanut butter until it was no longer at my disposal), read English-language newspapers online and listen to CBC and BBC instead of tuning into local radio.  Our knowledge of Belgian news, admittedly, comes mainly from sporadic articles written in the New York Times, the Guardian or the Economist about those Belgian idiosyncrasies we love to poke fun at.

I must therefore admit that it is more likely than not, my own fault that I could not procure a waffle on New Year’s Eve.  I do not retract my commentary on the inefficiencies of Belgian business practice (in fact I have a lot more to say on this since trying to buy a crib and a rocking chair from various unhelpful retailers – I’ll save this for later), but I do apologise for ranting about the lack of fireworks at midnight.  As the expats we are, in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, we failed to take in the news that the fireworks display had in fact been cancelled.  It was brought to our attention after the fact by folks back home who had read about it in their own media (how did we miss it in the English papers?!) that due to various “security risks”, Brussels would not be blessed with a display to ring in 2008.

Our fault.  We should have been more in tune with local life.  If we had, I would never have been swayed into venturing in search of those waffles.  I would have argued for staying home and making our own (to be eaten with the maple syrup we love so much more now that we live here)… and to watching Toronto or London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations online.

For someone who is almost nine months pregnant, the notion of traipsing around downtown Brussels on New Years’ Eve did not entice but became bearable when the promise of waffles at midnight was put forward. So off I went with husband, sister and sister’s boyfriend who had all imbibed sufficiently on Belgium’s other source of gastronomical pride – beer. Wandering around the old town where we were told was to be the midnight fireworks display, we quickly discovered that though Belgians don’t consume merchandise like North Americans, alcohol is another matter. Large groups of people were out with bottles of champagne and beer ready to be corked and sprayed at the countdown (many had even thought to bring plastic glasses with them). It was in many ways, a public celebration of the new year like any other except for a couple of things:

Despite our high taxes and this being the so-called capital of Europe, no official fireworks display or New Year’s Eve celebration ever occurred (was this a drastic side-effect of the lack of Belgian government for the past 6 months?) Because of (or in spite of) this, Belgians took it upon themselves to 1) start random countdowns in the whole half hour surrounding the stroke of midnight – leaving many confused about when to actually uncork those bottles – and 2) to set off their own fireworks either from their rooftops (actually quite charming from our vantage point at the top of a hill) or in the street amongst the crowds (far less charming from our vantage point among said crowds). And (here’s the really frustrating part) because Belgians don’t seem all that interested in the notion of making a buck, there were NO WAFFLE VENDORS open (or any vendors of any description for that matter)… on the one night of the year when profits could have been at their highest and any entrepreneur with a waffle iron and a folding table could have put his kid through college, none were to be found!

Before you dismiss this as the desperate rant of a pregnant woman with cravings, let me assure you that all three of my companions were equally disappointed by the lack of waffle vendors. Hungry at midnight, we were unanimous in our view that Belgians had something to learn from North American consumerism. It may sound crass to criticize this society from the right, but waffles at midnight on New Year’s Eve should be the staff of life in Belgium, especially when women in their last trimester make the effort to come out to celebrate.

• In Belgium, an independent third party comes to conduct an “Etat des Lieux” before the new tenant moves in. This is apparently to ensure that any damage we do, we are held accountable for. In Canada, this would consist of a simple walk through of tenant and landlord together, perhaps ticking boxes on a sheet of a paper. In Belgium, because many folks are employed to do unnecessary tasks, there are people who work full time in this area. The day before we moved in, we met the landlord and the ‘surveyor’ at the apartment to check things out. The surveyor was equipped with a camera, a notepad, and a Dictaphone. He spent over an hour talking into his machine, making fastidious notes and taking pictures of everything. His impression of the apartment will apparently be typed up and sent to us in a formal (15-20 page) document some time before we move out.
• The apartment has fourteen foot ceilings and came with no light fixtures, or curtains. And no ladder. We’re still waiting for the landlord to bring one. In the meantime, in order to hang curtains, David fashioned height-enhancers from dressers.
• Appliances do not systematically come with a rented apartment. We’ve bought a fridge and a second-hand dryer and are now waiting for the arrival of a washing machine (model out of stock). Hopefully it will arrive before the baby.
• Though it was infinitely helpful to have a moving service pack up, ship and unpack all our belongings, a few annoyances ensued. Damage to a couple small articles necessitated dealing with the insurance company, which involved filling out a myriad of paperwork, including a photocopy of a letter written to the ship company (that’s right, the boat) to let them know that we were filing a claim. We’ll see what comes of the €250 we’ve asked for. Also, the all-male unpackers, bless them, they tried, unpacked everything so randomly that I’m still reorganizing.
• The 14 ft spiral staircase to the second floor is a bit impractical in the 8th month of pregnancy.
• Being in the 8th month, bending, lifting and climbing on chairs – regular aspects of moving in – are no easy matter and are best avoided. David has thus been presented with a list of tasks on re-entry every evening. We’re getting there.
• The apartment is twice the size of our last place and thus requires time and money spent to fill it. This will have to happen slowly.
• There is no Canadian Tire here.

But one month later, everything is coming together. And the place is great. It’s the first and second floor of a converted town house in a fairly lively district of Brussels. Original floors remain, as do the fireplaces (the living room one is still functioning), and we have our own private garden (a rarity it seems). It still needs work, but for now, we’re just happy to be settled into a place that will be ours for sometime to come.

If you’re interested, here’s a little video we made of the place.

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.

Since the Belgians, as little brothers of the French, love bureaucracy, I anticipated complexity and took an initial investigative trip to the commune offices of St. Gilles to inquire about our registration. I arrived at 1:30pm and went to the INFORMATION desk where the man behind it told me I was far too late to register, that I should come back early the next day. Ok. What time? “Early,” he said, “people come early and sign up for an appointment on that day – and it’s closed after lunch.” Ok. And what documents should I bring? “I don’t know,” he said, “you have to ask the people down the hall.” Can I ask them now? “Nope. They don’t work in the afternoons.” (So much for INFORMATION).

We went back the next week at 8:00am, laden with documents. Too late. All the appointments for that day had already been handed out (what time did everyone get there?). The list was full. We asked a man (sitting at a folding card table in front of the ‘Salle des Etrangers’) if we could schedule an appointment for the next day. Nope. But the following Tuesday would be ok. Fine. The man wrote David’s name down in pencil and handed him a blue raffle ticket, onto the back of which he scribbled 10:30. So David had an appointment. What should he bring to the appointment? “Oh, I don’t know. Bring everything just in case”. What? Wasn’t this the man down the hall who was supposed to have the information the man at the information desk didn’t have? Apparently not. “Oh and bring €7.50 in cash and some ID photos. And the blue ticket.”

Because I was registering under my British passport, the man at the card table wasn’t interested in me. I had to go to another wing, to the ‘Salle des Europeans’ where I wasn’t lucky enough to receive a raffle ticket – just a scrap of paper with the words 10:00 Tuesday, two copies of passport, 1 ID photo, € 7.50, scribbled in pencil. So I guess we both had appointments.

David, being the good lawyer he is, made several copies of all our documents (passports, lease agreement, his professional card – that took 6 weeks longer than it was supposed to and delayed relocation – his visa, employment contracts, letters from the bank, our marriage certificate, our birth certificates). We got ID photos taken and came each with exactly €7.50 in cash.

We returned early on Tuesday and waited with all the other bleary-eyed newcomers until our turn. I went to the European wing and (fifteen minutes before my scheduled appointment) knocked on the door to find out when/where to go. Four women were sat at four desks – one sending messages on her mobile phone, one filing her nails (I’m serious), and the other two chatting to each other across the room. I told them my appointment wasn’t for fifteen more minutes, where should I wait? “Oh come in now, if you like”. Had I even needed an appointment? I handed over copies of my passport, my ID photo and my €7.50 in cash, and filled in a form requiring nothing more than my new address, my parents’ names, my husband’s name, and the date of our wedding. Wow. Easy. But wait.

I was then given instructions for how I would register with the commune. Wasn’t that what I had just finished doing? No. This was only the pre-registration registration. “Next, the local police will come to your house to check to see if you really live there. Then they will give you a form that you have to fill in, and an appointment card for your registration appointment. You must come on that day, at that time with copies of your husband’s work contract, your marriage certificate, your rental agreement, 3 ID photos and €42.50 in cash.” What? “Can’t I just give you all those things now and be done with it?” “No.” “When will the police come?” “I don’t know.”

Meanwhile, David was in the ‘foreigners’ room handing over multiple copies of all the documents he had luckily come with. His agent was happy to take them because David had brought them, not because he knew exactly what he should be looking for. “Oh, that looks important, I’ll take that too!” They happily took his €7.50 and told him to wait for his police visit after which he would come back with more copies of all the same things! Oh and 2 ID photos (not 3) and €27.50 in cash (not €42.50)! What?

So now we wait for the police to knock on our door and invite us to our third attempt at registering. If we’re lucky, we may have a residence card before we move back to Canada. Register in 8 days?! I’ll be happy with 8 months?

BK

Belgian nationalism. Doesn’t sound very likely either. Or does it…

At first blush Belgians have little to be proud of. Apart from living in the 140th largest country in the world, their international experience is filled with shame and disappointment. Barbara Kingsolver popularised the sorry tale of the Belgian empire. Their best-known national is a Mike Myers creation in a Nehru suit named Dr. Evil. The Germans have had one or two modest military victories. Belgium fared more poorly at the Sydney Olympics than Uzbekistan.

Yet despite the unlikely appearance of fish popsicles, Belgian nationalism is flourishing. And what a time for a bit of Belgian pride. Though national elections took place on June 10, no party has yet been able to cobble together a coalition government. Whispers abound about the break up of the country. Warring factions stand off against one another over intractable divisions of language and ethnic politics, refusing to compromise, demanding greater regional power in order to weaken the national state.

And yet after nearly five government-free months, Belgians are displaying their pride like never before. Belgian flags flutter from apartment balconies on every block. Absurd cartoon figures in national colours point at you from bus shelters in Uncle Sam style, demanding “I want you, for Belgium”. Petitions circulate imploring the powers that be to save Belgium from disintegrating in the name of the Belgian race.

At a point when Belgians ought to be ashamed of their pathetic country more than ever, they are emboldened with a plucky attitude that aims to preserve Belgium and the little things that give it its distinctive character. Like chocolate and waffles. And beer and chips. And dirty magazines and high taxes and unemployment.

To the rational outsider it makes no sense. Most expats in Brussels dream of the day when Belgium disintegrates, and with it, those high taxes that provide underwhelming public services. But to Canadians in Brussels, there is something eerily nostalgic about Belgian pride.

Coming from another small, somewhat inconsequential, complex-ridden, constitutional monarchy divided by language issues, we have an innate sense of why the Belgians seem to care so much about their national identity. We might not have all that much to be proud of on the international stage but we ARE Canadian (whatever that means). So we cling to iconography like maple syrup and Mounties. Bob and Doug MacKenzie and “The Hockey Sweater”. ‘Universal Health Care’ and bilingualism.

And so do the Belgians. As hard as it may be for other expats here to understand why their Belgian neighbors aren’t cheering the destruction of this unusual jurisdiction, we find their patriotism somehow sensible.

Little brothers have to stick together. We’re off to have popsicles.

DR and BK

Olives

Originally uploaded by atticusfinch
I figured out photos. Click on this photo to link to the rest of them.