Nowadays, a car is pretty much a necessity.\u00c2\u00a0 And just about everyone here in Belgium has one.\u00c2\u00a0 So why do the Belgians make getting a car on the road such a difficult, lengthy, and truly exasperating process?\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s what I had to go through…<\/p>\n
When you buy a car (even a second hand one – and even from a private sale) in Belgium you don’t get the number plates with it.\u00c2\u00a0 These are actually issued by the local authorities (it’s another way of getting tax).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 We bought a couple of cars from a dealership, paid the money, and asked for the keys so we could drive them home.\u00c2\u00a0 “No, no, no, you can’t do that. You need the number plates”.\u00c2\u00a0 OK, so where do I get them? “From the Gemeenteburglijkesomethingorother”, they reply.\u00c2\u00a0 So I have to leave the cars at the dealer, and go down to the car registration place (as I roughly translated it), along with a huge piece of paper (per car) with all the car’s details on it, and a copy of the dealer invoice to prove that we have paid for the cars.\u00c2\u00a0 However, they<\/em> flatly told us that we couldn’t have number plates unless we had proof of insurance.\u00c2\u00a0 Fair enough I thought – same thing in the U.S. (you can’t get a windshield sticker for your car without showing your insurance documents) but couldn’t someone have told us that before we had spent 4 hours in the queue??\u00c2\u00a0 So I go back to the insurers, and ask them for insurance (I’d been in and asked for a quote already but didn’t see the point of starting the policy until I actually had the cars…).\u00c2\u00a0 They wander off, tap a bunch of stuff into a PC, then come back and say “I’m sorry, you’re not actually registered in Belgium; we can’t insure you”.\u00c2\u00a0 This was before I had registered at the Commune, because I found cars before I found somewhere to live (so we could drive around and look at houses, strangely!).<\/p>\n At this point I had to wait until I had found somewhere to live and had registered at the Commune.\u00c2\u00a0 I did this, and they issued me with my ‘Provisional ID” (a cardboard thing with my photo riveted to it. Really.) – they said my ‘real’ one would take about 6 weeks (even my U.S. Green Card only took a matter of days once approved, and I’m sure the Belgian ID card isn’t a patch on that…).\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, I happily trudged back to the insurers (some 2 weeks later by now…) and proudly waved my ID at them.\u00c2\u00a0 “Oh no, that’s only your Provisional<\/em> ID.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t accept that.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to see the ‘real’ one.” What the f***?\u00c2\u00a0 What is the point of the Commune issuing a provisional ID (which shows that you have registered at the Commune) if no-one accepts it as ‘proof’?\u00c2\u00a0 I loudly voiced this concern to the insurance agent.<\/p>\n Clearly my outburst had an effect, as the insurers quietly whispered (as if they were doing me a huge favor and flouting all kinds of rules which could result in their being executed) that there was<\/em> a workaround – I could get ‘transit plates’ for my car.\u00c2\u00a0 These are strictly temporary, and are typically given to dealers so they can drive the car from one showroom to another.\u00c2\u00a0 They are still issued by the authorities (you can’t just use a bit of cardboard like you can in America), and you still need to have proof of insurance to get them, but at least you can drive your own car then.\u00c2\u00a0 Perfect, I said.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s do it.\u00c2\u00a0 However, just as I started to feel as though I was making progress, they announce that ‘transit plates’ are a real insurance risk (why?\u00c2\u00a0 Are you more likely to have an accident because your number plate is red instead of white???), so the insurance rate is double<\/span> (some favor!), and – the killer – you have to pay for a FULL YEAR in advance (even though the plates have a maximum validity period of 6 months – go figure!) as opposed to the standard monthly installments!\u00c2\u00a0 At this stage I have little choice, so I just empty out my wallet and keep throwing credit cards at them until they stop asking for more.\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least that’s what I feel like doing.\u00c2\u00a0 In reality I have to go to my bank, get the money transferred to the insurance company’s account and then bring them printed confirmation of the transfer before they’ll believe me.\u00c2\u00a0 Long story short (too late, I guess…) it costs me a couple of grand, but I finally have the proof of insurance in my hand.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, it is a sheet of laser printed paper with some lick-n-stick stamps on it.\u00c2\u00a0 Real ‘official’ looking…<\/p>\n So finally, we go back to the car registration place, queue up for a couple of hours again, and wave our paperwork at them.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, they start questioning why we’re not registered at the commune, but back off when I point out that that is not their concern, as we have the insurance documents, and we’ve already cleared it with the insurance company, which should be their<\/span> only concern.\u00c2\u00a0 By now I’m getting wise to the bureaucracy and can tell when someone’s trying to step outside their jurisdiction…\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, they eventually give us our red transit number plates.\u00c2\u00a0 Hurrah!\u00c2\u00a0 Sort of.\u00c2\u00a0 In another inexplicably stupid twist, the authorities will only issue you with one<\/span> number plate – for the back of your car.\u00c2\u00a0 You are legally required to have two (front and back).\u00c2\u00a0 You would have thought that there were enough people in prison with nothing else to do but sew mailsacks and punch number plates, but noooo.\u00c2\u00a0 So everyone (everyone who gets a car – not just us, or people with transit plates) has to go and get the second number plate made themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 You can generally do this at a Mister Minit (they cut keys and repair shoes as well…), but of course most of them don’t carry red ‘transit plates’.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried\u00c2\u00a0three or\u00c2\u00a0four branches before I finally gave up.<\/p>\n Anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 A good month after we’ve paid for the cars, we go back to the dealer armed with one red number plate, and tell them to screw the second plate ’cause we’ve had enough bull and we just want our cars.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not really sure about this, but I just turn to my kids (Finn & Freya at that point) and tell them to go and play in the cars in the showroom whilst we sort things out.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m on the verge of handing Freya my keys to run along the side of the showcars, when the dealer concedes.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost.\u00c2\u00a0 They have one last card to play.\u00c2\u00a0 “It’s Saturday, and we’re too busy to be able to give you an explication” A what? “Explication.\u00c2\u00a0 Explication!”\u00c2\u00a0 (I feel like Bill Murray in Lost In Translation<\/em> – “What?\u00c2\u00a0 Lip<\/em> your stockings?”).\u00c2\u00a0 I finally work it out to be “explanation”, I just can’t work out what there is to explain!\u00c2\u00a0 By now I was losing my patience.\u00c2\u00a0 “Look, it’s a car.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve been driving them for years, and I’ve already had these two out for test drives a couple of times, and you didn’t see the need to give me an ‘explication’ then…\u00c2\u00a0 Unless you’re going to explain the internal combustion engine to me, there’s probably not much I don’t already know.\u00c2\u00a0 Just give me the keys and I’ll work it out myself”.\u00c2\u00a0 Reluctantly, the salesman handed the keys over, but as a final snub, he claimed not to have any Owners Manuals at all (in any language, even though I volunteered to take the Flemish version), so I truly would be left to work it out for myself…<\/p>\n But that was it.\u00c2\u00a0 We finally had our cars.\u00c2\u00a0 A very nice 2.0 litre Opel Zafira minivan for the wife and a shitty little 1.0 litre Opel Corsa for me.\u00c2\u00a0 Done.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost.\u00c2\u00a0 I had\u00c2\u00a0 the cars, but I was still on transit plates.\u00c2\u00a0 And only a back one, for that matter.<\/p>\n Several months later, my real<\/em> ID card finally turned up, which meant that I could go to the bank and get real<\/em> insurance on my car.\u00c2\u00a0 But all they do is give you another form, again with licky-sticky stamps on it, to say that they have seen<\/em> your ID card.\u00c2\u00a0 You then have to take this form down to the car registration place, with your old red plates.\u00c2\u00a0 They will give you a new white plate (again, only the one – you need to get the second one made yourself), then go back to the insurers, wave your white plate at them, and they will flip you over to real insurance (as opposed to the 2x the rate transit insurance).\u00c2\u00a0 Still with me?\u00c2\u00a0 So with the wife having to run the kids about, I took her front number plate off, so I could go down to pick up the white plates for both our cars.\u00c2\u00a0 However, as soon as the wife drives out to drop the kids off at school, she gets pulled over by the police, who want to know where her front number plate is.\u00c2\u00a0 She explains that I’m on my way to collect the real ones (actually, I’m just sat at my desk, planning on going at lunchtime), but gets told “No, no, NO!\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t do that.\u00c2\u00a0 Drive home immediately, and do not drive this car again, until you have the plates on the car.”\u00c2\u00a0 Really. \u00c2\u00a0So she has to go home, without dropping the kids off at school, and call me to drive all the way home with her red transit plate, so she can put it back on and take the kids to\/from school. Oh, and the police gave her a EUR50 fine, just for good measure.\u00c2\u00a0 Come on, what a stupid<\/span> system!<\/p>\n So we were left with no choice but continue to drive around on transit plates and extortionate insurance rates until we could find a time when neither of us need our cars for the 2 hours we’d spend in the queue at the car place, followed by the time it takes to get to Mister Minit and back to have the back number plate made.<\/p>\n That said, we did manage it, and some four months after paying for the cars, I was officially registered, legal, and had both my cars on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 I wish I could say that I’ve learnt something from all this, and that it wil be so much easier next time.\u00c2\u00a0 But I know it won’t.\u00c2\u00a0 This is just the process.\u00c2\u00a0 I wasn’t being victimized for being a ‘foreigner’, and I wasn’t doing things wrong. This is just how it is.\u00c2\u00a0 Welcome to Bureaurcacy Central…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nowadays, a car is pretty much a necessity.\u00c2\u00a0 And just about everyone here in Belgium has one.\u00c2\u00a0 So why do the Belgians make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[80,66,48,46],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-belgium","tag-bureaucracy","tag-car","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}