My First Months Living in Belgium

*2024 Edit: I no longer live in Belgium. This blog post is my point of view of living in Belgium from 2020-2021. Today, both Glenn and I have moved to Denmark. But I love to look back at my time here, so I’m keeping this on the blog for old times sake*

I’ve been living in Belgium for some time now, so I thought I wanted to share my thoughts about my life here. I will talk about why I moved to Belgium, where I’m living, how I found a place to live, what I do for fun and work, my immigration process, and my personal ups and downs in this beer-loving country.

Before I start this blog post, I’d like to make it clear to anyone reading along that I do (very much) like living here in Belgium.

In fact, I dedicated a whole blog post to all the great things that Belgium is famous and known for! So if I’m complaining a lot, it’s just because I’m having a hard time with the bureaucratic system.

If you’re and expat thinking about moving to Belgium, or Ghent in particular, then please don’t hesitate to leave any questions in the comments. I’ll help you as good as I can.

Now let’s get started!

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Why did I move to Belgium?

Glenn and I had been traveling the world for the last year, however, due to recent world events… I’m talking about the pandemic of course… We had to stop traveling.

Because we’re an international couple, Glenn and I was actually stuck in Lisbon for 3 wonderful months before we decided to move on and start a life together here in Belgium.

Getting a permanent base we could call home was (and still is) the right thing to do considering how the world is today. It’s just not possible to travel right now.

There were many reasons why we chose to live in Belgium instead of Denmark where I’m from. First of all, Glenn is the only one of us with a full-time job that can pay the bills, and second, living in Belgium gave Glenn a chance to be closer to home while him and his family are going through a hard time.

Even though I probably preferred moving to Copenhagen to be with my friends and family that I hadn’t seen for a whole year, I knew it wouldn’t be the right decision for my relationship. Since Glenn is my future, I decided to stay by his side.

Don’t get me wrong though! I’m grateful to live in Belgium, it just wasn’t my first choice after traveling the world for one year. But in hindsight, maybe nowhere would ever be my first choice to move to since I actually just wanted to continue our trip around the world.

Living in Ghent – Belgium’s best city

Years ago, when Glenn and I first started dating and he took me to Ghent for a day trip, I was completely sold! I told Glenn that if I was ever moving to Belgium, I just had to go live in Ghent!

And here I am.

Ghent (Gent in dutch/Gand in french) has always been my favorite city in Belgium. It’s such a lively and beautiful place, and there are so many things to do in Ghent. I love how the city center is plastered with old buildings, cathedrals, clock towers and castles. The scenery in this town is truly stunning.

Ghent is definitely one of the prettier cities I’ve ever been to in Europe… and now I’m living here!

Sometimes I can’t believe my luck.

Living in Ghent actually reminds me a lot of my old life in Copenhagen. There are bicycles everywhere! Yay! You can also find many laid-back coffee shops and hip restaurants with loads of international food. And just like Copenhagen, Ghent is full of beautiful canals twisting in and out of the city center. What’s not to like?

I absolutely love living in Ghent!

Glenn and I only have to walk 10 minutes from our home before we reach the city center and can enjoy a delicious coffee or a cold beer on a random Tuesday.

I really do like our way of living in Belgium, it’s all very laid-back here in Ghent. Everyone takes it slow, there is life in the streets and the restaurants are never empty.

How to find a place to live in Ghent

We live in a classic two story city-house here in Ghent Zuid (South). Only a 5 minute bicycle trip or a 10 minute walk into the city center. The location is really perfect!

We share the house with another international couple and they are the best housemates one could ask for. Glenn and I have the second floor, they have the first floor and we share the ground level area (kitchen, living room, garden). We really got lucky finding a great place to live here in Ghent.

When we started looking for an apartment to rent in Ghent, we went on all the classic rental sites online. But we actually found our place through a Facebook group.

If you are moving to Ghent as an expat, I recommend you to join the following Facebook Sites:

• Rooms and Apartments for Expats in Gent (Ghent/Gand), Belgium
• Expats in Gent, Belgium

The first group is great if you’re looking to rent an apartment in Ghent, while the second group can help you discover where to find anything from a good Pastel de Nata or a laptop repair shop in Ghent.

What I do for fun while living in Ghent

It’s been hard to make new friends. At all the bars and restaurants, the tables are 1,5 meters apart and nobody really wants to engage with strangers right now. It’s just not an ideal time to make friends during a pandemic.

So instead I’m trying to find some hobbies to keep myself busy in my spare time. I’m following a yoga class on YouTube. Check out Yoga with Adriene, she’s gold! I also got this obsession about swimming a few days ago, which means I’ve been to the swimming pool once… I know, hardly a hobby yet!

But I’m thinking about starting to swim 1-2 times a week just to get some exercise. I’ve recently discovered how much I actually hate running… Splashing around in water is way more fun!

I’ve also talked to Glenn about doing some climbing. I’m normally never the type to try anything new (except if it comes to anything travel-related), but I feel like living in Ghent gives me the perfect opportunity to try out new things.

Am I going to learn dutch/flemish? Well… I’ve been looking into a beginner course. It costs €300 and takes 3-6 months. I’d really love to be able to talk to the people here, but I just haven’t had the courage to sign up for it yet. It’s also a class taught from home, which sucks because then I can’t make any new friends.

At my next appointment with the immigration office, I will ask if they know about any good language classes. Maybe I can get a discount as a foreigner?

Anyways, right now I’m mostly focused on working and finding energy for all the appointments I have with Belgium’s bureaucratic jungle. So I’m just trying to take it slow in my spare time.

What I do for work while living in Ghent

So what do I actually do here in Belgium?

I haven’t really been looking for “physical” work yet but hopefully I’ll get to that soon (edit: One month after writing this blog post Belgium went into full lockdown for about 8 months – looking for basic work at a coffee shop or something like that wasn’t really possible).

Apart from my daily yoga and sad lonely Fridays (which I secretly love) on the couch with popcorn and Modern Family on the telly, I’m actually pretty busy in my every day.

At first it was hard to settle in, but now I feel like I’ve found a good routine to fill my days here in Ghent. This is what I do for “work” while living in Belgium.

Being a Hausfrau

First of all, I’ve become a real hausfrau. I’m in charge of buying our groceries, making dinner, and keeping our budget intact. I also clean and do laundry. But in all honesty, I hate cleaning, so Glenn often helps with most of it. Thanks love!

I actually don’t mind waiting with the food ready on the table for when Glenn comes home from work. I know, welcome to the 50’s! But I just love cooking and I often have the time for it, so I really don’t mind.

Luckily I found a boyfriend who eats everything I put in front of him. Glenn has involuntarily become a vegetarian, but he honestly doesn’t seem to mind… Everything goes down and often with some yummy noises, which must be a good sign.

Managing my travel blog

The best thing I do here in Belgium is writing content for this blog that you’re reading right now. I love spending time on improving my travel blog. Writing about our travels is also a reminder about how sweet my life actually is and how many cool things I’ve seen around the world.

This blog is my baby!

I’ve learned so much about running and building a website and at the moment I think it’s the best job in the world. However, even though I see that the blog is growing in many ways, I know the travel market is completely broken right now and it will take some time to recover.

I hoped to monetize my blog by now, but I just don’t think I will be able to make a living of travel blogging in these times where nobody is traveling…

Hopefully the travel industry will start to grow a little bit again in 2021. But for now, I don’t think I will be able to make big money from my blog.

But I still like working on the blog and I see it as an investment for when the travel industry will boom again someday. Then I’ll be ready! *2022-2023 edit: The blog has finally been monetised*

Trying to freelance

Sooo… I really wanted to freelance while living in Belgium. That way I could earn some money while staying at home.

I even started finding some good freelance jobs, but then I learned that you’re not allowed to freelance unless you’re a registered company. And to be a registered company you need an address you can sign up from (not possible from my current address), plus you need an accountant to handle all your businesses (I don’t currently have any businesses or money for that…), plus all sorts of other bureaucratic stuff.

So, I decided not to do this, and just focus fully on growing this travel blog, which is my baby.

It made me kind of sad because I felt so ready to start making money on my own terms, especially when I know how easy it is to freelance in Denmark. But hey, you can’t get it all, I guess. So the focus is on the blog.

Lost in Belgium’s bureaucracy

One of the hardest things about living in Belgium as an expat is all the official things you have to go through.

I’ve been to sooo many different appointments and everything just seems to take forever.

I’ve had several breakdowns along the way and Glenn has really been my rock. So if you’re moving to Belgium, prepare yourself for the biggest bureaucratic headache of your life – sorry for the drama.

Registration

If you’re going to live in Belgium for more than 6 months, you have to register. Since I’m European, I didn’t think that this process would be that difficult.

But I was wrong.

At Gent’s official website, there wasn’t really any information available in English about registering as a foreigner. Every time I did find some useful information, I was passed through a link to a dutch website.

Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m living in a foreign country so I cannot expect them to speak English – and I don’t! But when it comes to official matters, they really should update their immigration information to English. I’m so glad I have Glenn to be my translator! I can only imagine how hard it must be to move here without knowing anyone to help you with the language.

Anyways, I managed to find an e-mail where I could ask for an appointment. So Glenn and I went to this man, who couldn’t do anything for me but provide me with information.

20 minutes into the conversation I finally said: So where do I go from here? I just want to register. I didn’t need to talk about my choices as a foreigner.

He managed to give me an appointment with the immigration office for 2 weeks later.

I even asked him: “What about health insurance? How can I get insured if I cannot get registered?”, to which he answered, “Let’s hope you don’t get sick then”.

Thanks a lot. Let’s leave everything up to hope.

After waiting for 2 weeks, I could finally go to the immigration office to register my arrival in Belgium. The immigration lady was very kind, she offered me a lot of information and she gave me a national registration number. Finally, thank you!

There are several ways to register in Belgium such as for work, study, self-sufficient etc., the far easiest way is to register as working in Belgium. But since I don’t have a Belgium employer, this is not possible for me. So I registered as a partner to a Belgium citizen. This basically means that Glenn has to agree to provide for me.

This process will take 6 months before I can get my national Belgium ID card… And I have two more appointments during this time where I have to gather a gazillion documents.

*Sigh* this is going to take a long time.

Health Insurance

All people who wants to live in Belgium need to have Belgium Health Insurance.

Glenn made an appointment with one of the health insurance companies here in Belgium called CM.

We went to the meeting and they rejected me… Apparently they couldn’t offer me the obligatory health insurance because I didn’t have a Belgium employer. Damn it. So what now?! Couldn’t they just let me pay for it?

She told Glenn in dutch (Because she didn’t speak English) that he had to put me under the health insurance that he gets from his work. We don’t even understand how that works, so we looked into that. Apparently we first have to register as a “couple legally living together” in order for him to insure me. I still don’t completely get it.

So we booked another appointment with the commune in Gent to register as a couple legally living together. We were told to bring our identity cards and rental contract as proof of us living together.

Then she asked me: “Do you have proof that you’re not already married?”. I’m sure I must have looked confused… How on earth do I prove that I don’t have a secret husband in Denmark?

So I went home and contacted the Danish commune, which I recently lived in, and I bought a residence certificate with my marital status on it for €10 online. Easy peasy, we booked another appointment with the Gent commune and was finally able to sign that we were a couple legally living together.

YAY! Congratulations to us, we’re almost married.

So now the next step is for Glenn to contact his work to see if I can get insured through them. *Crossing my fingers*

I really hope that it’s sorted by my next appointment with the immigration office, or else I can’t live here… In the meantime – to quote the worker from the immigration information office – “Let’s hope I don’t get sick” – in the times of raging covid…

Bank account

Opening a bank account was fairly easy! Thank god!

I just called their office in Gent and they made an appointment. Oh yay, another appointment!

Everything went smooth, until… it didn’t.

Apparently I have to send a copy of my Belgium National ID Card within 3 months in order to keep my account open. Or else they will lock it.

Are you F-king kidding me?!

According to the immigration office, I cannot get my Belgium ID card until 6 months after my registration….. Because that’s how long the process takes. *sigh*

But my banker had a solution. He will call me in 3 months and ask for my ID card and if I don’t have it, I can ask for a 3 months delay without them closing my account. So hopefully, I will have my Belgium National ID Card within that time. *Fingers crossed*

Moving to Belgium has been emotionally hard

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be living in Belgium with Glenn! But as a foreigner, I don’t really feel like I’m that welcome.

I have to go through so many processes and endless appointments before I can live here legally. What happened to keeping things modern and online? Even a police officer had to come and see if I actually lived on the address that I stated. I wasn’t home so she just called me instead and vouched for me… So what’s the point of that? Moving to Belgium has honestly been much harder than I expected as a EU citizen.

I’m trying to do everything by the book, yet it seems like I’m just being send around between offices. A lot of the people don’t even know how to help me and it’s very frustrating when every website is in Dutch or French, and the personnel in these official institutions don’t speak that much English.

I’m so dependent on Glenn helping me through this process, and I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to move to Belgium without having anyone to help you.

Apart from all the stress this move has given me, I also miss my friends and family a lot. Sometimes I really feel like I’m alone in a country that doesn’t really want me here… I know I shouldn’t take it personal, but it’s just the way I feel.

Maybe it’s just loneliness kicking in? I think moving to any new country in the middle of a pandemic will always be difficult.

My final comments about living in Belgium

Apart from being pushed around in the bureaucratic mill and missing my family, then there are also many good things about living in Belgium.

I really do love living here in Ghent. It’s a beautiful city that I am happy to call home!

I’m happy to live with our great housemates who are also foreigners. So I’m not really feeling lonely. It’s also not like I don’t have any friends here. I sound too dramatic sometimes… It’s just hard to make new friends during this tough year of 2020.

Glenn has a lovely family and they take care of me. Especially Glenn’s sister has been really helpful. Thank you!

But the best thing about living in Belgium is of course that I get to be with my boyfriend. I love that we are able to build a home together after a year of travel. As long as we’re together, everything will be all right.

For anyone who is considering living in Belgium I have the following advice: Do it! But be prepared to spend hours researching the many things you have to do, show up to weekly appointments and accept that everything takes a long time.

I know it’s a cliché about Belgium, but if you’re into waffles, chocolate, beers and fries – you will not regret living here, though you might gain some weight. So far, life in Belgium is pretty sweet!

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So this was my blog post about my first months living in Ghent, Belgium

I know I’ve been complaining a lot about how hard it is to move here in terms of bureaucracy, but if you can look past that, then Belgium is a pretty great country to live in. I’m sure the immigration process is also different from person to person.

If you are thinking about moving here and have any questions about the whole process – or where to get the best fries, then don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Thanks for reading and happy moving!