Slowing Down

Now that we've gotten to Belgium, we're twiddling our thumbs a little bit. Okay, Kerrie is twiddling her thumbs. Dan is playing guitar, reading, posting our photos and enjoying his fill of news updates from the internet. Who would have thought that after a month of walking to a new town every single day, staying put would be so difficult? Actually, it feels pretty good to be in a place and enjoy the luxury of knowing where things are a bit more and having the energy to go out for a Belgian beer and game of Speed Scrabble at our new favorite bar Metafoor. The first time we were there we knew it was a great place and it was only confirmed when they played Bringing Sexy Back and Dan started dancing in his seat.
We've found our apartment here in Leuven about two days of calling Belgian phone numbers and mostly getting no answer and being too afraid to leave a message in English if no one had picked up. We're excited about our new place- on the top floor with a terrace that looks out over the city... and an oven- the only one we saw in all of the apartments we looked at. How do all these people bake their cookies and birthday cakes?
We'll (hopefully) move in Sept. 1. The place will be furnished, but not until sometime after Sept. 5. It's a new building, and the company they had ordered the furniture from went bankrupt, so they had to scramble for a plan B. Good thing we have our sleeping bags.
Apparently there's a beer fest in Brussels this weekend, so we're thinking of taking the train and having a day trip.
Here are our five favorite things about Leuven so far:
1. good beer
2. 18 monstrous tortillas in the little ethnic grocery store for a good price
3. waffles
4. Bicycles everywhere- look both ways before crossing the street and don't walk on the red part of the sidewalk; it's a bike lane and the bikers will ring their little bells to warn you to get out of their path if you're on it.
5. The lack of poverty. Just about everyone has a job, and if you try to pick up a second part-time job, even if it's just teaching a class at the gym, you get taxed pretty heavily (about 50%) to try to discourage it. It's like you're taking a job away from someone else by having 2. I suppose that's good for us when we try to find jobs!