Belgium seems to function best in the presence of some disorder: A fact that is evidenced by our lack of a federal government for about a year. I like to think of it like the second law of thermodynamics. The more order that Belgium tries to impose through its small bureaucracies, the more other parts of the country have to release that energy by increasing the disorder and devolving into chaos. Our town is doing its part by hosting a music festival through the weekend. Much of the festivity is happening almost immediately out our front door. In typical Belgian fashion, the festival has taken over much of the available parking in the town and has blocked several streets. One of which leads to my car park, meaning that I had to rush home early to ensure I could snag one of the remaining public spots near the library. Getting to that spot was more challenging than usual as everyone else had the same idea. With the blockades funneling the town into the narrow rat’s nest of streets and alleys, the insane priorite adroit laws made every intersection a potential collision. Driving around here was already an exercise in extreme evasive maneuvers. It has now degenerated to vehicular anarchy.
Contrasting this however is the experience I had at the Police station yesterday. I need to get a Belgian driver’s license, which seems a little oxymoronic once you see how Belgians drive – You have one year from the time you move to transfer your license to a Belgian one and my year is almost up. The process is fairly straightforward, if not a little bureaucratic. First, you bring your U.S. license to the police station. They check it’s authenticity and issue you a letter that you bring to the town hall along with your U.S. license. They confiscate your U.S. license and issue you your Belgian license. The Belgian license is paper card stock with your photo taped to it (I am not kidding). It also never expires. The police were busy yesterday, so asked me to leave them my phone number and they would call when it was ready. I thought that was nice enough, so I was even more surprised when later in the evening an envelope dropped through our mail slot containing my letter. They apparently saw where I lived and hand delivered it on their way home. Can you imagine a U.S. government official doing the same thing?
So the lesson here is one of Belgian Entropy. Getting your driver’s license is quick and efficient (although it results in a very un-official looking document) which then must be offset by the poor quality of Belgian Drivers and infuriating complexity of Belgian Roads and driving laws. Somehow it works.
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