We are in Antwerpen, awaiting the arrival of Matilda. We have had contact with the shipping agent, and have learned that the container has not yet arrived, and that we will not be able to have the vehicle until at least Wednesday. Also Thursday is a public holiday here! So if we don't have the vehicle by Wed it will not be until Friday!
Oh well! It is springtime in Europe! The days are quite sunny, or just sprinkling with rain. The Belgians are out and about enjoying the warmer weather. Whenever the sun comes out they out in the parks. There are lots of tables and chairs out in the sun, where people are drinking beer or coffee. There is a buzz about the public places.
Today we went out walking and came upon a museum. This turned out to be a museum of a very early printers shop, with presses and books dating from the 1400s. Reuben's was a friend of the printers (Plantin and Moretus) and his portraits of them are all around the walls. He also illustrated some of the early printed productions. The printers were early humanists and favoured scientific publications. The original copper plates of anatomy books are on display.
Antwerpen is a very grand town, with its cathedral,
and other public buildings. This is the railway station! (said to be the 4th most beautiful railway station in the world!)
We enjoyed the cobblestones pedestrian walkways, and the urban landscape.
12/5/15 Tuesday
We have heard today that Matilda has passed customs processing and we can pick her up in the morning. YAY! At last we can get going.
Our discussions with the shipping agent indicate that he feels we really do need the carnet even in countries which don't require it. Without it we would be very vulnerable to paying import duties and VATs which would come to 10s of thousands of dollars. In addition we would be limited to exiting Europe from the same port as we entered in order to get our money back. So if we left the EU to go into say Turkey, we might need to pay the duty monies again there, thus having two amounts of 30%+ of the value of the vehicle. As I 've said before, by the time we've been around the world we will have these issues down pat.
This area of Antwerpen is known as the "diamond centre". Antwerpen processes and sells most of the world's diamonds apparently. And so it is perhaps not surprising that this is also the site of the "Great Diamond Heist" of 2003 in which $100 million + U.S was stolen. The mastermind was captured and jailed for 10 years, but the diamonds have never been recovered! He has since been released. I wonder what he is doing now, and I wonder how many friends (or hangers on) he has.....
We have Matilda! Everything went like clockwork at the container warehouse. She has no scratches (other than ones we are responsible for) and the batteries were still fully charged. Have look at how they handle our 5.5 tonne vehicle in the container!
And how little room there was.
So then just had to get the roof-top tent back on...
We left the warehouse and were on our way out of Antwerpen when we realised that we do not have the compulsory third party insurance for Europe. The banks (which double as insurance brokers) had closed for the day, the next day was a public holiday. We had nowhere to park in Antwerpen, so we had no choise but to drive on (carefully).
Watch for the instalment on this site to see what happened.,
Once you get down to the more complicated aspects of Internet marketing, you will inevitably find yourself working with a whole host of people: content creators, writers, shippers, reviewers, accountants, customer care etc. SEO Antwerpen
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