Back in Texas with a house in our suitcase.

We are back in Texas. That phrase is much shorter than what it takes to actually get back to Texas from Hasselt, Belgium. Much, much shorter. Phew. I used to think that the actual "getting there" was not so bad, and that if I had the money and time, I could easily do it several times a year, but I am changing my mind about that! With a child and all the gear that comes with that (stroller, car seat, diaper bag, bag with food, toys, books, etc.) flying from Texas to Brussels (or vice versa) suddenly seems to take a whole lot longer. Twenty-four hours from door to door, and that after a very short night. But we made it of course. And kudos to Evelina, for she is an amazing traveler for her age! Here she is still being a trooper after getting off the plane in Chicago.
So my apologies for not posting while we were there. But by the time evening came around and I actually had a moment to sit and reflect, I was way, way too tired to write. Plus, initially there was not much good news, so I preferred to defer from posting anyway. Now that we are back, I can summarize the events, the ups and downs, and focus on all the positive things that came out of the trip. Here is the major one: We (finally) closed on the house on the 25th! It is ours. Yeah! (Imagine the sound of champagne corks popping!) By the time we actually got to that stage only four days before leaving, the toasting came with big sighs of relief and mental exhaustion. Better than the champagne was the feeling of being able to open the front door ourselves for the very first time!
While Evelina was spoiled and pampered by her Moeke and Baba, Robert and I ran around from place to place looking at kitchens, bathrooms, floors, etc. and had meetings with the contractor, architects, plumber, painter, etc. Robert is well on his way to learn a variety of dialects (which in Flanders means altogether new languages) after all this. I am not entirely sure how I pulled it off myself. I often had to ask the contractor to repeat things or rephrase them when I did not understand. After I got to know him better and felt more comfortable being myself with him, I straight-out said "Try to speak Flemish to me!" when I lost him. Still, yet another reason why we need architectural plans to communicate lest walls will be removed that we did not want to be removed. Even if you don't know Flemish at all, here is an example that will clarify what I mean: If I want to say "all gone" I say "alles weg." The contractor says "alvoet." No further comment...

I think we are incredibly lucky with him and his team though. My friends Debie and Patrick in Antwerp have been looking for an Antwerp contractor for months and it seems that the waiting list for projects is about 2 years. Ours is from the province of Limburg (where my parents live) and he is a friend of my father's, so he is invested in doing a good job. He made a tremendous effort to meet with us and to go over ever single detail to the extent of causing me headaches. I was not prepared to be thinking about plugs and sewers and drains and pipes. I just wanted to find the perfect kitchen! Ha. We found an enourmous (probably 100 year old) well (empty) and a septic tank (not empty!) and then he asks me what I want with that. Help! How do I know? It is hard enough to choose where I want the stove to go.

To sum it all up, Robert and I made some firm decisions about the organization of the house. Some of these are the complete opposite of what we initially planned to do, but being back in the house and imagining living there really changed things for us. Staring at plans is one thing, standing in the space that will become the kitchen and thinking of being there and living there is another. On some of the details we are holding off until the next visit. Even though we had a frustrating start, we left happy and felt accomplished.

What really stumped us when we first got there was the fact that apparently the seller had become quite upset with us during all the negotiations regarding the error that I had noticed in the contract (see my post of 5/3/07) and our request for an adjustment of the price (which was minimal really.) In any case, he had taken back the key from the real estate agency and refused to communicate with us. So when I very kindly made a plea to view the house again so that we could proceed with the architects he ignored all of my calls. So while we had planned to see the house a few times while working with the architects in person for the first time, we did not get in until after the 25th. Once again, I feel that it is really the agency that made the mistake. At the moment Robert and I are not very big fans of Century 21, and in fact, we are considering writing the main Belgium office about this. In fact the agent initially made me feel as if I was asking for something completely uncalled for as well, until I reminded him that I too was his client and that a large sum had already been paid on the house. He changed his tone after that, but to no avail. We were not admitted in before the closing, not even for a quick visit. Since it was beyond our control we focussed on other things and tried to use our time as efficiently as possible. It was not until after the 25th when we really we able to spend time in the house that I realized how tremendously necessary it is to be IN the space when figuring things out with the architects. We basically wasted two meetings and several hours with them working on things we immediately nixed after being back in the house. I did get a little mad at the seller at that point but by then he was out of the picture and had become the previous owner.

In the personal meetings with all parties involved (agent, seller's new girlfriend, and seller himself as well as his "notaris" facilitating (though in this case NOT) the sale, Robert and I were as courteous as could be offering bottles to show that we never had ill intentions but were merely protecting ourselves. The mistake was made by the seller's notaris and the agent, and even though neither one ever admitted it let alone apologized, we were friendly and even apologetic for the delay all this caused. The closing should have been a fun event, but in this case it was awkward and uncomfortable. Yet meeting the other party's notaris made it immediately clear where all the communication had gone wrong and things had turned sour. He was the epitome of what is known as "Antwerp Arrogance and Boasting" (apologies to my Antwerp friends but I think even they will have to admit that this prejudice has its foundations in actuality.) The man made a textbook example for Robert who had not really come across one of these specimens. For the Americans among my readers: try to imagine the arrogance and superiority-complex of a Bostonian mixed with the pride and rudeness of many a New Yorker (or are these merely prejudices as well?) and you get the drift.

In any case, as I said, we left feeling quite accomplished and with a very good feel for the house. Lots and lots remains to be done and it will be a challenge to orchestrate it all from here. But we've got a team of great people helping us over there. In fact, many of the businesses have been very accomodating as well when they heard of our situation. So onward we move. I will post the revised plans once they are done. And I ask for well-wishes regarding permits etc. Burn candles, pray, keep fingers crossed, etc. whatever it is that might help. We will need it if we want to have a house ready to move into in January.

We tried to have some non-business times as well, so I will post some pics of those moments. Evelina had lots of fun no matter what. She was entertained with all sights and sounds new and played with bubbles, had icecream (on several occasions), helped my mom with the laundry ('cause really, those front-loading washers are sooo much more fun than the American top-loading ones) and got all excited to learn that not only my parents have cats, but that the neighbors have a little dog. Her face upon seeing him for the first time is priceless and one of my favorite pics of her. Robert and I insisted on spending at least one afternoon at the beach. We went on probably the coldest day of our stay, but we wanted to avoid the holiday weekend-rush. It was so worth it for we had so much fun running around unihibitedly on the beach. Really, can two adults have this much fun on a cold and deserted beach without a kid and a ball? Of course my camera ran out of power so the rest of the pics are on my mom's camera. I will post them later.

































Here is a picture of the happy family having a drink in Zurenborg, our new "hood", right after our first visit to the house after it became ours. The neighborhood is such a lively place and it was wonderful to experience it in the spring when restaurants and cafes open the doors and tables spill onto the streets.









I will end then with a shot taken at the open-air museum in Bokrijk which recreates rural Belgium (with actual houses not Disney-style fakes). Lots has changed since the times from which the houses here date, but at the same time I feel like I could have taken this picture along many of the highways. Lots of Belgium still does look like this and Robert and I were both pleasantly surprised to notice how green it gets there in the spring and summer. It had been a while since we were there at this time of the year. Hey, even the grape vine on our facade is thriving and will bring some green to our house at least some part of the year.











More news as more news develops, for now, greetings from Texas with love.

What happened to the rest of April?

In Austin the weather has been wonderful at times and wet and chilly at other times. Here are a few shots of a trip to one of Austin's landmarks, which now has a new bubble tea shop right next to it. Evelina loves to go here, though she is not so sure about sitting in a giant hand.

The weekend outings on nice days are someting to look forward to during the hectic weeks. But still, I think I blinked and suddenly April had slipped by. It is May. It is hard to believe. Another semester over. My students will be through with me after Friday's exam. I might be more happy about this even than they are. I enjoy teaching, very much, but teaching while a very big cloud called research is hovering above you is slightly less enjoyable. Then teaching seems to take up lots and lots of time. Although I do truly enjoy getting to know the students and yes, this semester again two of my students decided to "convert" and become art history majors. Yeah!

So other than finishing up this class of mine, we have been through some shifts regarding this house of ours (actually not yet!) in Belgium. Here is the short version of it: We found out that the neighborhood is protected as a historic monument and landscape. That was not a big surprise really, but of course with this come specific building codes etc. In order to be able to do our renovations we will need not only a regular building permit from the city of Antwerp, but also a permit from the government office regulating protected monuments. So we decided to have the house checked as it is now, before closing on the contract, to ensure that all previous changes had been done according to regulations. And there came the problem. They were not and no permit was ever requested, let alone obtained. Part of an addition is actual not within the allowed building code and will have to be taken down -- something we had not necessarily planned on doing. The seller's contract explicitely stipulated that there were no special regulations regarding protected monuments to take into account. So, we decided that the costs we will incur for changing this and bringing it back into the allowed standards will have to be covered by the seller. Well, he is not liking this idea. After his first completely unnegotiable negative reply, he is now having a bid made himself of what it maight cost to take down the addition. He also offered to do it himself, and we kindly declined that one! (Yeah, that is all we want, a disgruntled seller waiting for his money, tearing down a part of the house we want to buy! No thank you!) So, that is where we are at. We wait, I suppose.

So, apart from not even owning the place and not knowing really what this seller will agree to, we will have to get double building permits for our own changes to the place and each of these can take up to 6 months! Right now I try not to think about this. I try to focus only on our immediate plans. In a few days we leave for Belgium and we plan to pretend that all will go well with the closing and that at least some of the work can start relatively soon. And for this, materials will have to be chosen and purchased, and so we will focus on that. In any case we meet with the architect in person next Friday (gosh, I just realized how soon this is!) and hopefully that will bring back some of the excitement. 'Cause contracts and building permits and communicating with other people through lawyers have a way of killing some of that initial excitement, ha.

Our biggest daily excitement is of course Evelina! She is such a joy. I will post some pictures of her below. On earthday we went to her school where all kinds of activities were scheduled. Evelina's favorite was the live music and watching the live-bug show. (Two separate shows actually, unfortunately no lizards with guitars, or giant spiders with drums.) I will post the picture of the giant roach. Yes, she touched it. (No, mama did not.) For all those of you reading in Belgium, yes, je hebt het goed verstaan, een kakkerlak! There was also a tarantula but she was quite upset because it was actually a very cold day. Oh and speaking of ugly big things, I will also post this picture my dad took while he was here of a Ford pick-up truck. My friends here in Texas will think nothing of it, but for the Europeans this might actually be a visual treat. (Or they may be even more repelled by the car than the kakkerlak.)





























Yes, this is TEXAS, but so are nuns on the roof of buildings (well, in Austin at least.)


So with that, greetings, from Texas with love, vanessa

Quiet after the party

Here is a very quick end of the week note. All the guests are gone. Evelina's American grandmother made it back to the Panhandle, and her Belgian grandparents are on their way to Hasselt after a grueling trip it sounds. After 3 hours in the check-in line in Austin they were told that no planes could fly in (or out) of Chicago because of the severe winter storm. So they left the next day (yesterday) only to be flown to Paris instead of Brussels because the firemen were on strike and no planes could fly in or out of Brussels airport. So they then boarded a rikkity bus after about 4 hours of mass confusion and were driven from Paris to Brussels! I just called them again since the image of them packed in an ad-hoc bus kinda frightened me. They are in their car, on the way to the house. Finally.

In any case, the house here is quiet now and very messy. Parties and family visits are wonderful but tiring, and keeping up the house was not a priority. All the more evident now that everyone is gone. The decorations from the birthday party are still up. And no, the weather was not nice. Not at all. In fact it was probably a record-bad Easter weekend. I must have sacrificed the wrong items to the weather gods. Anyone any clue whether the Texas weather gods are opposed to vegetarian sacrifices? But we had the pary regardless and Evelina was surely a trooper. The house had never (in her conscious life-time) been so full of people she did not know very well and she partied like a pro. Her grandmother brought a rocking-horse that was made by her father (so Evelina's great-grandfather) for her when she was a little child, and Evelina loved it! She truly enjoyed when everyone sang just for her and ate her chocolate cake to the last crumb. In fact, we have all had to sing for her several times over as she indicated she wanted to hear it again by exclaiming an extended ha-sound and swaying as if singing. So finally after a few days, Robert forbade any more Happy Birthday to You singing until next year.




There is quite some more news, but I will save that for the next post. I just wanted to get this one up and thank everyone for the birthday wishes and attentions. So here are some more pictures of the past weeks with family gathered to celebrate that big event! Until the next post, greetings from Texas with love.

Pics of Evelina's party at her daycare. Notice all the yummies on the table. Her Moeke and Baba made Belgian sugarwaffles and pannekoeken (crepes) with Nutella. And at the end, a great shot of all the grandparents together--a rare occasion.

April 5, a big day

04.05.06. That was this day last year. It was the day Evelina was born. She had her first birthday today. Of all the birthdays in a child's life, this first one is no doubt the most significant for the parents. Evelina had no clue of course that today was her birthday. Although she probably realized something was different when both Robert and I showed up at her day care in the early afternoon and stayed there for the little party we had for her. We brought home-baked Belgian sugar waffles and Belgian crepes with Nutella and sugar. She was both excited and confused. What were we doing there? And then she got to home to spend the rest of the afternoon with her grandparents Moeke and Baba. But for me it was a day of commemoration, reflection, amazement, and pride. Robert and I did well I think, this first year as parents. Of course I thought of this day last year, although this day itself (Evelina was born at 8:27 a.m.) was not one of my best as I was suffering through my allergic reaction to the painkillers they had given me. But I very vividly remember holding her bundled little self for the first time, and softly kissing her little forehead. A most beautiful little face. And now she is a loving little person with a strong will and a most happy constitution. She walks and babbles. Sometimes she seems not even a baby anymore. Here is a picture of a series of portraits we just had done to celebrate her birthday and to give as presents for Robert's birthday. Well, we think she is the cutest baby ever. Keep checking for more pictures of her upcomming birthday-bash. I pray to the weather-gods for a sunny day for a very sunny child. Rain is predicted, but in Texas April ought to be sunny, darnit.

Books, birthdays, steps, and plans.

Great news. Robert received his published books! A whole box of them arrived from Italy and they look great. They feel great as well. They are light and printed on nice smooth paper in a format that is portable and easily readable. What a birthday present, no? He turned 38 on the 27th, so the timing was wonderful. Here is the jacket. The photograph of Robert on the back was taken by me on our wonderful balcony of the apartment in Castiglion Fiorentino in Tuscany.












He is quite pleased with it. We don't really know yet how it will be sold, or where. For those of you reading this in Italy, check if Feltrinelli has it, especially the Bologna store. The book was published by the University of Bologna press. Pretty impressinve, no, to have one's book published by the press of the oldest university in Europe! (1088 for those of you who wonder.)

The other wonderful news is that Evelina is walking! Here is she is in a field of bluebonnets. Of course this picture only shows that she can stand, which she has been doing for a while now. Those first steps came several weeks ago as well, but jusst this week she actually for the first time resolutely marched away from me towards her toys and she is able to turn around without first hitting the floor with her diapered behind. She can stand up from a sitting position without pulling herself up as well. Yes, a whole new world it is all of a sudden. I suppose she was determined to be walking at her birthday party!













I finally received plans of the house! I have been promising these for a while now. I don't know what it is about plans, but I really like them. I do think I should have gone to architecture school all these years ago when I was trying to decide on what to do after highschool. But that was (oh my!) 1988 and I choose graphic design (yes, entirely unrelated to computers then!) for some reason I have now long forgotten. But I digress. Forgive me reader, as it is nearly midnight and I have been up since Evelina got really hungry this morning at 6:30 a.m. So, the plans. Here they are.







So these are obviously the plans of the exterior and a section. If the section is confusing to you it is because the house is confusing. The house actually has four floors with two "in-between floors." This works as follows: from the first floor (i.e. above the ground floor) you ascend the stairs towards the second floor and halfway there, there is a small room that sits exactly inbetween those two floors. This happens again on your way up from the second floor to the third floor. I don't know exactly what these rooms originally were used for. In our house one of them is empty, and the other has been converted into a bathroom. They are too small to be bedrooms in our case. In my friend Inge's house in Antwerp these in-between floors are actual bedroom-size rooms. We don't really know yet what we will use the little space for that is empty right now. It would make a pretty decent size closet if nothing else.



And these then are the four floors. I have fiddled with the plans a little, i.e. erased some walls on the ground floor and moved some other walls so as to create one large open space and a little more outside-area, and sent this to the architect to give him an idea of what we have in mind. For the third floor (our bedroom I turned the three doors into one and added a little bit of the hallway to the room to make this more convenient. It will be just us up there so we don't really need three entrances. Here is this:





The architect is now going to put together a design concept of his own, based on what he knows about us and then ta-da everyone will live happily ever after in a wonderful house. Yeah, right! Then the negotiation starts, and the payments. Ouch! I will keep everyone informed.

So, this was a meaty post in terms of visuals. But I cannot resist and end with one more photograph. One of my recent favorites of Evelina and her amazing "papa." Seeing these two together just makes everything else vanish into unimportance.





Warm spring greetings, from Texas with love, vanessa

Architects, Italy, and Evelina

Keeping up a blog is hard work I now realize.I seem not be good at regular postings. Either that or time has accelerated lately and I continuously find myself short of it. I so looked forward to springbreak, to be able to catch up. And what have I been doing? I have been scrambling to get a fellowship application ready and in the mail. It is due tomorrow, I will be sending it overnight. I am still waiting on a letter of recommendation. All that work and all that time, my springbreak nearly over, and the chances that I will get the fellowship are so slim that buying a bunch of lottery tickets would have been more cost and time effective. Come to think of it, I might still go out and do that too. I also decided last minute to send in an abstract for the big AIA conference (Archaeological Institute of America) which is in Chicago next year. I made that submission by a few hours. Phew. So all that and my house--which I had planned on giving a good clean-up, drawers and closets and all--is still a mess.

So what has been happening otherwise you ask. Well after a long silence we got a long report back from the architect. We don't have the plans yet, he promised those for next week. But he did go to the house and send us his findings. Good news: he thinks it is a great house with many possibilities (well either that is good news or merely a marketing ploy to get us to work with him, on those possibilities you see... ) and we can keep the floor! Yeah! Not so good news: he thinks there might be quite some work necessary on the bay window. But no bad news really. Of course we have not yet gotten any bids from him. I am sure we will consider that very bad news.

What else? I have been (sort of) hired as the art history instructor for a program located in Umbria! If the classes fill I will teach "Umbrian painters" to the program's participants in July and September. This will be one of those things where many aspects will have to fall into place to make it all work. But it does give me something to look forward to. The lady that runs the program sounds very nice and eager to make it all work. So fingers crossed. If you want to check out the site, here it is: www.caifiordi.com

Evelina is doing swell! She switched day care in February and is now at the UT developement center in a class with bigger kids. She seems to be loving it. I can't believe she is almost 1! One year old. See that is what I mean, time has been accelerating. Is that what happens when you have kids? Anyway, she is starting to say words. "Papa" seems to be here favorite one. She understands an aweful lot. She knows and uses appropriately various signs. She is putting food in her own mouth (and ours as well) and she is starting to walk. Six steps is sofar her record. And she is just such a joy to be around. And still as cute as a bug! Here are some recent pictures of her.









Other than that, we are expecting my mother. She arrives this Sunday. And in time for Evelina's birthday party my father will fly in as well, as will Robert's mom and Dale. So that should be lots of fun. It is the first time that everyone will be together. There will be pictures of that event for sure.

For now, lots of greetings from Texas with love.

Not that many people are reading my blog (there remains the list of people who were invited but have not reacted... what am I to make out of that?) but those who do are becomming demanding! (Lea!) ha, thanks for the kick in the butt. I have been wanting to write, but just not had the free moment to do so. Between life with husband and baby, teaching, disseration work, and trying to deal with paper work etc. relating to the house in Belgium there is not much time left. Of course, I could try not sleeping anymore. Oh, wait, I did that after Evelina was born, for about four months... not a good idea ultimately. Of course then I had no choice. (And yes, it was all worth it!)

So you want to know what is going on with the house? Well not much. We are trying to take care of the final closing. We have until May 16th to complete the paperwork. We first thought to take care of things in person, since we plan on going over there right after my semester ends (May 4th!). But my very cautious husband does not want to push it that close to the deadline. What is one of us gets sick, he forwarns, and we cannot go as planned, then what? Well, then... everything just gets much much more expensive as we will then be responsible for paying daily interest on not paying for the house. So, we will take care of it by power of attorney. That document was drawn up in Belgium, and has been translated already. I am waiting for it to get here. For some reason it showed up as a blank document on my email yesterday. Once I have it, Robert and I have to sign it in the presence of a lawyer and then that lawyer has to sign it stating that he saw us sign it and that we are who we claim we are. And then, it needs an Apostille stamp, and off it goes back to Belgium again.

The University here has legal services for students, so I called to ask if they could take care of this for me. The girl on the phone was not sure so she had to go check with one of the lawyers. I explained several times what it really was about. When she came back she said they were not sure. It turns out that they are very hesitant in dealing with anything foreign. Hmmmm.... let's see this is one of the biggest universities in the country with slightly more than 50,000 students of which about 9 % is foreign. That is about 4,500 students. That is as many of the entire student population of many other colleges. But no matter, they do not like to deal with foreign issues. They will however deal with small wills -- small, that is, up to
$ 1,500.000! Well, I guess that's Texas for ya! Anyway, we will get the document taken care of no doubt. So after all this (and then of course some financial transactions!) the house will be legally and officially ours. YEAH (and...gulp)

So for now, the only thing we are having done is inquiring about bids and having the whole house measured by an architect. The architect will plot every little detail into Autocad and we will have very accurate plans. I will try to post them when I have them. After all that, some of the breaking down of walls can start. That is exciting too, as it will open up some spaces and make them bigger. I will be eager to receive (via my parents) and post pictures of work in progress. But at the moment we are not sure at all when work can, let alone will, begin.

So other than this my class keeps me busy, more than it should. But my students just had their first exam (and no I am not grading the 80 tests myself, thank goodness for beginning grad student-graders! ) and I have started teaching Roman art and architecture. And here is were objectivity falls by the way-side: I will spend several lectures on Rome, even though I only spend a few on the Sumerians and Akkadians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks. I can do that because it is my class. And thinking about teaching and the Romans, I would like to share this image with you all which I will (carefully!) show in class. It always helps to make comparisons with current issues, although one needs to be careful. By university policy I am not supposed to or even allowed to make politically loaded statements nor any religious ones for that matter. And even though UT and Austin are in general quite liberal, we must remember we are in Texas. Not that I want to make those type of statements in class anyway. All I do usually is ask (rethorical) questions and leave them to ponder. Here's an example: The Roman emperor Trajan erected an enormous forum with a large column monument in the heart of ancient Rome after he defeated the Dacian people and returned home with the booty. There were statues of the defeated enemy all over. What would such a public display of victory look like if our current President would be allowed to put one up, let's say in DC? No answers needed on that one.

So here's what you get with a comment like "where are the posts?" Answer: ramblings. I'll post some more pics next time. For now, greetings from a very warm Austin, Texas, with love