Delius Diaries

Sept 18, 2025, 8:45am on 7-hour train to Bremerhaven Germany with Connor to pick up our new VW Taos (SUV) at the port of Bremerhaven. (note, yes my posts are written out of order, but I will change that going forward soon). Moving to a foreign country there are many lessons. I have been schooled in what to do and what not to do when moving to Belgium. I like and love many things about Belgium! But nothing is perfect and as such the main issue that Belgium suffers from is what I refer to as the “administrative state”. Nothing is quick or easy.

Problem statement – we need one car in Brussels. Solution (we thought) was to buy a cheap used car local in Brussels. Voila, no big deal. Haha, you silly American (said with a French accent). Here are my learnings (not a word, its an erroneous plural, so I like to use it when possible) – 1) used cars sell via parking lot dealers or individuals with questionable reputations, 2) a used car needing service will take months in the shop, 3) 21% tax, 4) time it takes to legally drive car in the “administrative state” once purchased…. 6-8 weeks! If I had bought a car from my neighbor August 1 and paid cash, I would still have to wait 6-8 weeks to get appropriate docs and tags. We spent weeks down this path and realized we were wasting time and money. During this period we used public transportation. Connor is now an expert and can get anywhere by bus, train or tram in Brussels, big bonus. A good skill that transfers when traveling to other countries. But public transportation isn’t an option for getting to school, so we had to rent a car ($$$, ouch).

There are other derivations of this sitch I won’t go into. And many times I have thought “we should have”…. One, bought a used car in the states and shipped it to Brussels. But that in its self was challenging – if it broke down it would be months to fix, no access to US parts, oh and no one is quick about anything here. Two, ship one of our cars – funny as they are way too big for Europe, 6-week ship time and we had to transport the car to Atlanta and then find a way home (single parenting), and still if we had a breakdown, months long wait to get it fixed. So basically no good options for Belgium. I think other European countries would be different, maybe.

Where we landed was a new VW Taos that we had never driven or seen in person, a city SUV, bought in Germany with German temp tags we can drive in Brussels while we wait out the 6-8 weeks of the administrative state rigamarole.  Other benefits are having a new car (under warranty) with hopefully no issues that we can ship back to the US for Connor to drive in just a few years. But we spent much more than we originally thought we would on a used car.

So why did we travel to Bremmerhen, Germany? We could have paid $1600 to deliver the car to Brussels (oh and wait 3-4 weeks for delivery) but where is the fun in that? So instead, I get a fun adventure with Connor. He packed Monopoly to play on the train, he is still so sweet! And I packed a lunch for the 7 hour trip. We changed trains twice in Cologne and Bremmer. When we arrived in Bremmerhaven, we stood in a long taxi line for 20 minues, in the rain, and realized that was never going to happen. No ride share in that town. So we took a 30-min bus ride and then walked a mile to the port to go through the paperwork process.

Notes – train travel is a much more elegant mode of transportation than flying.

Next up – getting our car registered in Belgium which requires Scott to meet in person with someone from the Embassy, sign more docs, pay a fee, and wait for the tags to get delivered in the mail. This process has been more paperwork than any home I have ever bought. But here she is, the Taos. Perfect for our European adventure.