El Gamin qui Piche

Today has been a very successful day - we had to go to the Commune in Waterloo to officially 'leave' Belgium and hand in our ID cards. After all the paperwork was completed she gave us back our cards to keep as a souvenir but stressed that we mustn't use them! Then we had to go to the neighbouring town of Braine L'Alleud to 'sign off' from the Mutuel who deal with our health insurance.

When we drove into Braine L'Alleud, there were roadworks and we had to follow a diversion which took us past this monument with a Mannekin Pis on top of it. The original Mannekin Pis is in Brussels and in the 6 years that we lived in Belgium, we never knew that this one existed, so it was quite funny that we should find it today. Obviously I had to get out of the car and take a closer look, and a few photos. The original life size statue was erected in 1928 in the garden of a local cafe, but was stolen in 2004 and had to be replaced. 'El Gamin qui Piche' is in the local 'Wallon' dialect and means 'the kid who pees'.

Once back in Waterloo we went to our old apartment to meet with the Landlord to do the property check and hand back the keys. Renting a property in Belgium is very different to the UK and an amount of money equivalent to 3 months' rent has to be held at the bank and can only be released once the Landlord signs to say he's happy. There are many horror stories where tenants lose the full amount, and this has recently happened to a few of my friends, so I was expecting the worst! Fortunately, he was very amicable and the only item we had to pay for was the replacement of a new hob. Unfortunately, a spice jar had fallen out of the cupboard above it and cracked it - it was totally accidental, but we knew we'd have to pay for the damage. Anyway, there were no other issues so he signed to release the deposit and we parted on good terms.

So we're officially no longer Belgian residents - everything has been finalised and we're free to leave the country. We have one last dinner with a friend tonight and then we head back to Brighton tomorrow to continue with our unpacking!