Da Car

We experienced our first rookie mistake this past weekend. We got up, not so bright and early, on my birthday (10/7) eager to take a trip to Bruges. Much to our dismay, our car was not where we parked it the night before. Before I go on, let me just say that parking in Brussels is not an easy task to begin with. We got home late from a party on Friday night and were delighted to find a space that was not too far from our flat. We did not see the sign that was posted on the Place (Plaza) in which we parked because these signs are posted on the end of each street. The sign was in French, but it was easy to tell that parking was not allowed on the first Saturday of each month due to a market that was held in the square. By the time we emerged from our flat on Saturday afternoon, the market was gone and so was our car! Needless to say, my birthday plans changed. We were both a bit irritated, but the situation was so comical that we could do nothing but laugh and start figuring out how to get out of this predicament.

We began by calling several of Rick’s American colleagues and our relocation specialist, who is Belgian. Unfortunately, the two people who have had this happen to them before did not have their cell phones on. The relocation specialist told us that the first thing we needed to do was find the police station—yeah right! Brussels is organized into several different neighborhoods called communes. We found our commune listed in a book and learned that each commune has its own police station. We called the station to get directions, but the person Rick spoke with did not speak English. We decided to walk around and soon found a police officer. He directed us to the station where we had to pick up a form that would be used to retrieve our car. The person at the station did not speak much English either. We were told that the car had been taken to a place called "Da Car." We also found this amusing. In her broken English and our terrible French, we were somehow able to get directions to "Da Car" from a woman at the station.

We hopped on the Tram and headed to the outskirts of Brussels. We got off at a stop that was just off a highway and was in the middle of some strange industrial area. This is where her directions ended. After walking around for about 5 minutes we asked a guy parked at a red light for directions. We were right around the corner. He was nice enough to give us a ride. Everything turned out fine, all things considered. We were lucky that they took credit cards at "Da Car" because we don’t have a bank account set up yet and there are only a few ATM machines that will allow us to withdraw Euros. We found out that towing fees vary depending on the day of the week and weekends, of course, are the most expensive. So 110 Euros (about $150) later, we were back in business. The whole ordeal only took about 3 hours and we learned a lot from it. By then it was 4pm. We were able to salvage the rest of the day and made plans to visit Bruges on Sunday.