Week 207: Back in Belgium

A much shorter post this week, we’ve been back in Gent and dealing with lots of administration.

On Monday I took my laptop to an Apple authorized reseller to try have it fixed. This involved the start of a series of frustrations.

We have been roaming here on our Greek mobile numbers and mid-journey they decided to cut off our data! Now, to be fair, we have abused the T&Cs and they were within their rights to do so, but I was left driving in a strange town with no ability to work out where to go next. No matter. I found a local burger joint, hopped on their free wifi and downloaded an eSIM. Data again! With the laptop finally dropped off, I headed back to Gent.

Monday night I had a diagnosis. €1,000 to replace the board. Ugh. It’s been playing up for a while (failing to suspend properly) so not too surprised, but still. What a pain.

This caused a lot of discussion about next steps and we decided to replace, rather than repair. Easy! We need a laptop quickly, so let’s order one. Not that straight forward… in all of Belgium they use the French AZERTY keyboards. I’m not about to unlearn 40+ years of typing, so we needed to find a QWERTY one.

The best option seemed to be ordering online. You can order a QWERTY keyboard, but they would take almost two weeks to arrive. Gave up, frustrated and decided to sleep on it.

On Tuesday we cleaned the garden and ran into more uniquely Belgium problems. There’s no way of disposing of green waste! Well, there is - a recycling centre. But to use that you need a membership and to get that, you need to be a resident. Guess who’s not resident yet. We decided to drive around until we found an open bin we could dispose of the small bags of clippings. Tried one store for a laptop (no luck) and then dropped the car off and walked home.

Wednesday was our residency appointment. So as an EU citizen (or spouse of) you apply at the city for residency. It’s a big thing here in Belgium, they know where you live! And you have to register. The appointment was very smooth and easy. There was a very friendly lady who processed us and most of our documents were in order. This gives us an “Annex 19” which is NOT residency, but says residency is “in progress”. It allows some other processes, which are required for residency to move forward.

An important step in residency is the Police check where they come and verify that you live where you say. We were asked when (generally after 5pm we said) and told it could happen within a few weeks, but as it's holiday season, maybe longer. Ugh, we still need to move Matilda and move the barge from France so will be away from Belgium in the next several weeks. We went home for lunch and there was a ring on the doorbell. It was Wendy, the local police inspector “I just saw this come in, it’s a lovely day so I thought I would come for a walk.”

She asked questions, eyeballed the house and confirmed we do indeed live here. Next step in the process is done.

With our Greek SIMs not working (or roaming) we need a Belgian number so we went to get that. We can’t get a contract yet (still not resident!) but we could get pay as you go numbers that we can switch to a contract later. So there was progress there.

Then it was off to the accountants. This was a productive introductory meeting and a lot of administrative conversation. The key thing out of this was that it makes more sense buying the laptop through the company, but it needs to be invoiced in a particular way.

This led to a lot of frustration Wednesday night, because there are lots of built in rules (buying as Belgium company? Have to have a Belgian bank account!) but eventually all THAT was worked through. Laptop is on its way.

Then Thursday we visited the bank, for business accounts and personal accounts. A surprisingly pleasant and quick experience. Then off to the social insurance people for signing up for our national contributions (which we can do with the Annex 19 but is needed to complete the residency).

Thursday afternoon we met a branding agency, we want to get the look and feel right, including logos, crew uniforms, etc so we’re starting those investigations now. While that may seem early, when Clair is here, the first step is a repaint so we want the colour scheme locked in.

We’re getting road blocked by the boat licensing requirements. We have the right training, but none of it is recognized here. The course we need to take isn’t even that difficult - it’s about three days and an exam. But it’s only offered in Dutch or French and exams in Dutch, French or German. In Greece we paid for an interpreter which was fine, but here no-one can tell us if that's OK.

While we work through this, we need to bring the barge up to Gent. So we’ve found a skipper and had several productive meetings there, as well as kicking off some more tasks for Clair. While she does have her certificates, she needs her fire extinguishers to be in date, she’s missing a VHF radio and without AIS she’s not allowed on some canals in France which makes the journey trickier. More problems to solve.

On Friday morning we had a productive meeting with the city of Gent talking about licensing. We’re trying hard to do everything right and “by the book” but of course, the moving hotel business is new here and there is no book yet! We cross different regional governments, with their own rules, so things like a licence to serve alcohol in different locations gets complicated. More conversations and more research to go.

Saturday the weather was lovely (it is all this next week, in fact tomorrow should be downright hot). We decided to take a free city tour. We walked in to town and had a lazy morning until the tour. Unlike earlier in the week where we’d seen only four or five in a group, there was a horde of tourists. So we decided to come another day. Instead we went and did some tourism research at the Bookz & Booze bookstore, enjoying a few drinks in the warm afternoon.

For this next week, there’s nothing major, just more of the same. Paperwork, pushing forward and trying to keep up the momentum. We’ll start the journey on Clair toward the end of this month. For now, we’re looking for that window to move Matilda and have one less worry on our plate. We’ll see. There’s a short list of things we have to do to “wrap up” Greece. It would be good to have that behind us.

We are feeling more at home in Gent and are often surprised at how relaxed and helpful the locals are. From help finding the right platform at a train station, to buying a second hand office chair and having the seller offer to drive it to our flat, these people are cool. Every business meeting is served with an excellent coffee, and we never feel rushed to end the meeting. When we explain our tourism business, we are always met with enthusiasm and encouragement.

Until next time.

Tim & Karina