First week in BRX

What a week it´s been! We arrived in Brussels late afternoon on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 after a very long journey from Toronto. The flight to Heathrow wasn´t bad at all but our decision to traipse across London on public transport with 5 bags/cases, a pack and play, a stroller, car seat handbag and diaper bag........oh and & our 15 month old trooper, young Joshua, was not the best one we´ve ever made. However, the train from St Pancras to Brussels Midi was effortless! We had a meal served to us and Joel enjoyed a couple of glasses of red wine which, after about 1hr sleep in total over the previous 24 hours went straight to his head!

Once in Brussels we made our way to our temporary accommodation on Rue Dumonceau. I don´t recall if we were immediately shocked by the state of our temporary accommodation or if that sunk in when we´d caught up with our sleep but it really was a dreary apartment. It was really poorly equipped, incredibly uncomfortable, hot, dark and worse still....filthy. The walls were so dirty and if you walked around in bare feet your feet were black within 10 minutes.

We battled through Saturday evening with poor Joshua not really understanding why we were telling him it was bed time as his body clock thought it was still late afternoon. Finally, at about 2am we were all fast asleep.

The crudiness of our apartment hit home on Sunday when we went exploring and neither of us wanted to go back to the apartment when we were done! That night I only got 90 minutes sleep and had to head to work - my first day - with horrendous jet lag and about 8 hours sleep total in the previous 3 nights.

First day was pretty horrific - 10 hours induction.....by the end of the day I was on my knees but the worst was yet to come. The weather outside was getting really bad and soon there was fork lightning, black skies and heavy rain overhead. I was handed the keys to my temporary loan car and basically told I could go home. All well and good but I had no map, no GPS, no mobile phone and was horrified to discover it was a manual transmission which I haven´t driven for over 5 years!

I cried within 5 minutes as I couldn´t get the car into reverse.....one of the new Directors came over to help me (midly embarrasing) and I then managed to get out of the Deloitte car park at least. I headed in the vague direction of Brussels (our office is out near the airport) and got horribly lost almost immediately. I finally pulled over to a gas station and as I burst through the doors I totally lost it. The poor woman behind the counter looked rather scared as I just stood there and cried and cried and cried. She gently said to me ´what are you looking for´ to which I replied through my sobs `Brussels´.

Using a map nice petrol station lady drew for me I managed to find my way back to our dreary apartment and into the arms of poor Joel. Both of us were really fed up. 2 glasses of wine and a vicodin later and I drifted off to sleep.....

Tuesday night I only got 4 hours sleep and Joel and I agreed that we could not continue to stay in our apartment as we were feeling an emotional impact of being somewhere so awful.

On Wednesday we met with the folks from the agency who had placed us there and they showed us a couple of alternative apartments. One of them was great, but not available until June 17th so we agreed to move temporarily to a 3rd option until the nice one was available.

Wednesday evening my parents arrived (HURRAH) which was a welcome respite and just lovely to see a friendly face. They saw our miserable little pad and concurred it was not good, then we packed up the car and drove to our new place in Woluwe, to the east of the city.

Over the next couple of days, Ma & Pa Brazier looked after young Joshua as Joel and I went on a house/flat hunting spree. On Thursday, in heavy rain all day, we looked at 15 apartments and had a ´slight falling out´ in front of the relocation consulant - we were just soooo tired and emotionally spent! We had pretty much narrowed it down to 2 places when on Friday she showed us one more. A 3 bedroomed, 2 floored apartment in the Etterbeek area. We both loved it and Joshua will have his own bedroom and playroom which he so deserves after the month he´s been through!

Every day is getting better as we learn where to go to shop efficiently, how to use our bank cards (Belgium has a whole secret set of rules around bank cards - we´ll save that for another day!), when to NOT give priority to cars coming in from the right and a myriad of other ´character building´ observations.

We do miss Dallas enormously and think of our little cottage there and our great friends with enormous nostalgia. We also find it difficult to be so much further away from our family and friends in Canada, however we are excited to be closer to those in the UK and to have already been able to benefit from being a train ride away from my parents.

Our first 10 days have been really exhausting. We look forward to the next 10 days!!