You won't find a sign like this in Belgium! :-)

So, my American friends, I’m here to tell you that you are very lucky and that you shouldn’t take for granted the many conveniences of life in the U.S. Sure, Europe is great. It’s charming and quaint and all of that, but it’s also a pretty inconvenient place….at least if you’re a spoiled American like me.

Well, I really shouldn’t generalize. I don’t know about ALL of Europe. I just know that things take forever in Belgium, and, to a certain extent, in the Netherlands.

Though becoming a temporary resident of Belgium was amazingly easy (and we’re hoping permanent residency is simple as well), acquiring such things as Internet service and automobiles takes forever in Belgium. And when you buy a sofa in Holland, don’t expect to be snuggling up on it any time soon.

Our current "sofa."

We ordered a sofa from a large furniture store in Breda about four weeks ago and we’re not expecting to see it for at least four more. That’s right people: a regular sofa—nothing fancy at all—takes at least eight weeks to be delivered.

My husband attempted to order our Internet service the first week we were living in our new place. Silly him. He wanted to compare prices, so he called one company and was told that he’d get a call back the next day because the person with whom he needed to speak was unavailable (crazy right?). Well, that call never came. He eventually got back with that man only to find out that that company didn’t provide service where we live (a draw-back to living in the woods).

When we finally got through to another company, they said it would be another week before someone could come out to install the equipment. Eventually, the guy came, but he didn’t actually “install” anything. He just set up our phone and left us to do the rest (cable TV and modem, etc.). He said that if we wanted him to do it, we’d have to set up another appointment (no doubt 2 or 3 weeks later!).

The car was another fun adventure. We found a nice used vehicle on a small lot in a nearby small town. We told the owner of the lot that we’d like to purchase it. Pretty simple right? In America, we’d have driven it off the lot that day. No so in Belgium.

Belgian law requires that all vehicles must be inspected before purchase by a government-employed inspector, who certifies that they are safe for both the driver and the environment. Okay, no problem. I’m not going to argue if the government wants to protect consumers. So, how long would that take? Not so long, really. It was a Tuesday, so, provided we got insurance and plates (I’ll explain in a sec) before then, we’d probably be able to pick it up on Friday. Great!

Or not! Apparently, the inspection didn’t actually take place until Friday. We got the call on Saturday. If we had insurance and the plates—which we didn’t—the car was ready to be picked up. If we didn’t have those things, we’d need to wait another week before we got the car because the owners were going on vacation and would not return until then.

We didn’t have insurance because we hadn’t heard from the garage all week and were still in the process of shopping around. Four days is not a lot of time when you’re on Belgian time. If you don’t have insurance, you can’t get your plates and if you don’t have both of those things, you can’t get your car! Thus, the process of buying a car took not one day, as it would in America, but almost 14! In-freakin’-sane! And we still have to buy another car!

Me painting. :-)

Of course, I shouldn’t complain too much. Because the sofa is taking so long to arrive, I have plenty of time to finish painting. Plus, it really is a good thing that the car was inspected by a third party before we bought it and that drivers are required to have insurance before they purchase a car. And I guess there’s one other positive side-effect of all this waiting: it’s teaching me patience! I never realized how little I had until we moved here. :-)

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