Moving to Belgium has been an experience of patience – it appearing, disappearing, reappearing …

There’s my language challenge – hardly any Flemish so far.  Plus the customer service people on the phone usually have little to moderate English.  I often don’t know if my requests have been understood.  Same for the technicians who come to my home.  How do I make meaning with folks whose first language is Flemish?

Deliveries are a challenge.  So often they come to the wrong street or they don’t know my apartment number.  With one furniture company five scheduled deliveries were unsuccessful.  My stuff showed up on the sixth.

Is all of this “bad”?  No.  Just frustrating. And I choose to roll on in becoming a Belgian resident.  The pull to be here is so strong.

Some friends in Canada thought I was crazy to move here.  “You’ll lose all your health care!”  Which indeed I did.

I came here thinking “Maybe I’ll have to pay full price for my prescriptions.”  Would that cause me big problems in the future?  Maybe.  But I didn’t have eyes to see the dangers ahead.  I just wanted to live in Ghent!

I’ve been talking to a private company named Solidaris for two months now, to see what health care I could get from them.

Because I’ve never paid taxes to Belgium, getting health care was going to cost me big bucks.  I might have to pay 900 euros every three months ($1300 CAD).  Ouch!

I got a letter from Solidaris, in Flemish of course.  I couldn’t read it.  But I do know numbers: 881 euros.  (Sigh)

That’s a lot of money!  Of course I could choose to not enroll with Solidaris.  I’d pay the full prescription cost but the real crunch was if I had to stay in the hospital … hundreds if not thousands of euros each day.  Even though I plan to live till 104, I can’t guarantee that I won’t darken the door of AZ Sint-Lucas Hospital Gent.

This morning I got an e-mail from the person at Solidaris who’s been cheering for me even since I applied. 

As a clarification: this one is for two quarters of a year. Your official enrolement date with Solidaris is 01/04/2023. So this invoice is for two quarters untill the 30th of September this year. So 881,42 : 2 = 440,71 euros every 3 months.

Yay!

I walked into Solidaris this morning and sat with another rep.  He thought my e-mailing friend was wrong.  I’ll really be charged 881 euros every three months.  But he said that because of the amount of my Canadian pension income I really should be charged 440 euros.

So … it’s under review

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How come I keep smiling in the face of moderate adversity?

I don’t know … it’s becoming a habit