Money sent and contract signed.

So today it's pretty much signed, sealed and delivered. Surprisingly it's pretty easy to transfer money between accounts; we did it at our bank, and for a fee of $30 we transferred funds directly into our landlord's account. I would suspect that we will open our own Belgian account and make some lump sup transfers every few months to try to cut down on the service fees.

Speaking of service fees, I notice when I look at my statement for my advance trip to Paris/Brussels/ Liege this spring, that Interac charged me $5 for every PLUS withdrawal. For an extra $10-12 per month above our existing service plan, I could have switched to a plan that covered out-of-north-america ATM withdrawals, and avoided those costs. It makes sense to do just before you are traveling overseas, and you can always switch back.

We made a minor addition to our housing contract, specifically to mention that repairs to the house or appliances that are required because of regular use (i.e. regular maintenance) will not be covered by us, unless we break something through misuse. Apparently when you rent a house as a primary residence, for several years, you have to cover all of the maintenance costs, such as furnace cleaning, plumbing, etc.; in Canada it is the owner who pays for those. Our landlord family is really very nice, and they've invited us to visit them when we arrive, since we'll be there perhaps two weeks before we can take up residence in their house.