I am sitting at my new desk, in the 4th place I have called home in 65 days, not counting the hospital. My long househunting quest has been finally settled. Just to recap, I left my old apartment in late December, the place where I had stayed since shortly after moving to Brussels. I moved into the Ward in preparation of the knee surgery, and stayed there for another month afterwards while I healed. However, I was unable to find another place to live by the time I had to leave the Ward, so I moved into my friend Cátia's house in Place Jourdan, right across the street from Holly's apartment where I originally stayed when I landed in Brussels before I found my first apartment.
It was nice to be back in the old neighborhood. Place (pronouced "Ploss") Jourdan is possibly my favorite place in Brussels, and other friends have moved into the neighborhood since those times, so it is always a fun place to visit. It was great staying with Cátia; we got along very well. I worked on my dissertation at the library during the day (a change from my usual vampiric writing schedule) and chatted and watched movies with her in the evening. Admittedly, it was nice saving money on rent, and the savings was enough to justify some lavish dinners and brunches. The two weeks were basically a mini-vacation.
The only downside was that I couldn't live on a couch forever and I had to find a place to live. It was hard to find a place that was accessible to NATO, with a reasonable cost. Also, the roommates had to be compatible (I had to decline living with 22-year old art college students at this time in my life). But I eventually found this place, only about 1 kilometer from my old apartment.
I am now living with 3 other people: a Belgian man and woman (both single professionals) and a younger French girl who is finishing her masters. Which means that all of my roommates speak French natively, which is quite a bonus. I moved in last week, and the next night we had dinner as a group. We all seem to get along quite well. They all know English, but speak French to each other quite a bit. I am already learning more French, and it gives me new motivation to practice what I have already learned.
The apartment is quite beatiful (I will post pictures later). The building is maybe 100 years old, and built like a bank with a marble entrance way and staircase. There is also an old-timey elevator, the kind where you close the cage-type door by hand. The inside has been recently redone by the Belgian man (the owner) with fancy Star Trek appliances and a big dining room area and sitting room. There is no TV, but classy places like this one don't necessarily need one.
This may be odd, but there are three smells that this apartment has that give me instant deja vu. The first is that the kitchen smells like my cousin's house in Boise in the North End. I think it's the mix of an old structure that has been remodeled. The second is that my room smells like my parent's house right after it was built, when all of the wood smelled new. The last is that one of the bathrooms smells like Grandma Hartigan's house. Strange, I know.
So, things are getting settled. I have two more weeks of writing my dissertation and then hopefully I will start the next week at NATO. It's nice to be fully unpacked for the first time in awhile. I will send out my new mailing address when I get the post box set up.
