Week 204: Exploring Gent and settling in
At the end of our first week in Gent, we haven't made as much progress as we'd like, but we have made more progress than we thought.
Rather than a detailed catalog of everything we did, instead I want to start with a series of impressions about what being in Belgium is actually like after a week here.
First and foremost, Gent is lovely. Seriously, it's like a fairy tale. We pinch ourselves every day as we wander around the old town, running from errand to errand.
There is graffiti, but it's generally confined to specific locations. You don't see tagging or graffiti in the city center outside of these.
Belgium is clean. It's like a theme park at times. There's not a piece of grass out of place. We're currently in the suburbs, and Karina commented that every garden is manicured to perfection. Trees don't grow; they are trellised. Lawn meets neat stone driveways, with not a pebble out of place. There are children around–we hear them playing–but there are no toys in driveways or out the front of houses. Everything is neat and in its place.
Houses around Lochristi. The architecture here is very different. There are never eaves to shade from the sun. Quite boxy.
People are friendly—very friendly. Shopkeepers are up for a chat. Real estate agents are helpful. Everyone is interested in us and our story. They are all bemused as to why we would move to Belgium.
Belgian people talk about the weather a lot. As a shopkeeper said to us yesterday, in other countries, death and taxes are certain; in Belgium, it's death and the weather. When we say we're moving here, the very first thing they say is, "Oh, but what about the weather?"
We're learning that it really is regional. The same shopkeeper explained to us about the accents and how Gent (12 kilometres away) has its own accent and regional dialects that differ from Lochristi! She sells socks with Gent sayings on them, and her father-in-law, born and bred in Lochristi, was offended she would do so: "This is not our language." Apparently, they sell quite well. A lot of people from Gent have moved the tragically far distance of 12 km to settle somewhere a little cheaper and commute.
No one is in a hurry. Coming from the US, where a company formation could take an hour, Belgium is a shock. They have a lot of bureaucracy in place. It seems to be quite well organized generally, but processes must be followed, and things happen in an orderly and slow fashion.
The Gent festival is a BIG deal. The entire centre of Gent has been turned over to free festival venues and stages, and the town of Gent (population around 260k + 75k students) gets around 180,000 visitors over the course of the week of the festival. That's okay, they deal with it here in a typically pragmatic Belgian way, they just shut up shop. Signs abound in cafes and stores "Closed 20 Jul - 5 August" or similar. It's not a time to fleece the tourists and make extra money, it's a time to get out of here and go relax somewhere else.
The festival is huge and very popular. They have a practical solution to toileting - these grey urinals are everywhere. As are the signs announcing fines for peeing in the street.
But overwhelmingly, I think we feel that this is the right choice. There is an opportunity here. There are no hotel barges on the wharves. People are unfamiliar with the concept of what we are trying to do. Belgium has been passed by, a stopover at best on a boat relocating from The Netherlands to France for the season. Yet there's so much opportunity here. Of course, it's touristy, but even on the eve of the festival, we don't sense the same insane pressure that other locations have. There's room to breathe and to enjoy.
Of course we ate lots of good food and Belgian waffles. We ended up in a restaurant in Lochristi that was really popular, and we didn't realise it was an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. It was very good, though.
Our high-level goals at the moment are simple:
- Find an apartment to rent and set ourselves on the path to residency.
- Establish the company in Belgium. Which will be helped by getting an address.
- Buy the barge in France to start that whole process of transferring ownership and moving it to Gent.
Well, it's been a success.
We found an apartment to rent. We were a little intimidated at our first inspection as one of twenty people visiting, but it seems the agent/owner took a shine to us and our story. We inspected a couple of other properties, and it was clear that the first place we visited was the right fit for us, so we leapt on it and, by Wednesday, had confirmation that we had a place. We sign the lease on Monday and move in officially from the 29th (although we're trying to speed that up if possible).
Flower towers are a thing here in Belgium.
Then, with the company, the meeting with the accountants was good. Knowing an address for the formation helped, and now we're going to sign the documents this coming week as well. Discover by Barge BV is one step closer to being established.
With all of that in place, we've been able to set a date now to sign the contract for the barge in France. That's going to happen on the 29th (the same day we get the apartment), so we've been preparing for that (moving some money around, organising a car to drive to France, and so forth).
Amongst all of that, we experienced a bit of what the rental market is like these days. We found one property that was a scam. It was a "too good to be true" listing for an apartment in the centre, and when we contacted them, the owner spun a sob story about "I've moved to Ireland with my husband and can't get back to show you, but if you just pay me two months deposit, it's yours." And then proceeded to detail some convoluted and unlikely method of payment involving TripAdvisor! Yeah. Dodged that one.
With the apartment locked down, the pieces of the Rubiks Cube have started to click into place, and we are off. A week into our time in Belgium, we are certain that the seemingly difficult choice to jump here was the right one. Although things aren't moving as fast as we'd like, they are moving faster than they would if we had stayed in Greece.
The lack of a place to stay has caused us to move a couple of times. We were in a small hotel; then we moved to an apartment in Dampoort on the edge of the centre of Gent (which we loved–it had a guitar that I really enjoyed) and finally out to the suburbs in Lochristi. We'll need to move one more time before we can settle into our own apartment, which, after 3 years on Matilda, we're actually a little excited about.
Amongst all of that tedious admin, we've also managed to find some time to explore and enjoy the city. Two things we did were a canal tour of the centre and the Gravensteen castle.
Scenes from the canal tour. The little "hut" hanging off the side of the building is a toilet in the old monastery. It dumped straight into the canal.
The canal tour was lovely. It was a beautiful day with lots of cool history. One of the buildings on the waterfront dates back to Roman times, and the new ones are still old (14th, 15th, and 16th centuries). Some buildings have a lean on the front, not because of old age, but to allow them to lift items to the top without bashing the walls.
Gravensteen Castle was less interesting. Or at least not interesting in the way it's presented. It is iconic here in Gent, but really, it's a bit of a touristic abomination. The audio tour was a camp, over the top, history with sound effects of blood and guts and knights belching, but never explained the full history of the castle, nor that what you see is actually a romantic restoration in the 1890s of what they imagined the castle might have looked like in the 12C, which is a shame. The building has undergone a wide number of uses, including during the Industrial Revolution being converted to a cotton mill, being used as a prison, a mint and even minor roles in World War II. Much more interesting to me to learn about than the made-up audio tour.
Scenes from the castle. Lovely views from up top.
We're finding our groove and working on making lists (in fact, we've moved to a proper project management tool now!) to track all the things that need to be done and their dependencies. This is just the beginning; there's a lot of work to go. But we're moving forward quickly. Sometimes, we just need to remind ourselves of that and embrace the Gent motto of Don't Whine, Don't Give Up.
Until next time,
Tim & Karina