Moved

Moving house. What a pain in the bum! During my 45 years, I have moved house a few times and I've got to say that it doesn't get any easier. My first, and I hope last, experience of moving from an apartment was something I have no wish to repeat!
We now find ourselves in a place I have heard described as 'the wild west' and 'that godforsaken place'. Obviously by people who have never visited the region because I love it here! We have gone from being close to the Dutch border to very close to the French border and an hour and 20 minutes closer to the ferry terminal at Dunkirk...I can almost smell the fish and chips!
I suppose it's all a matter of perspective. Some people find that living in towns to be perfect for them, whilst others prefer life in the country. Not only do I find this part of Belgium pleasing on the eye, I also love the lack of people here.
We enjoy going to the cinema. In Belgium they have the Kinepolis, a fantastic chain of cinemas which are, I'm sorry to say, better than anything I've ever been in in Britain. We used to visit the Kinepolis in Antwerp, which involved a 30-45 minutes drive and then a slow drive around the car park, looking for a space and finally hordes of people doing people stuff. Last night we decided to visit our local Kinepolis to see the movie District 9 (a fantastic movie!). The journey took us 7 minutes and we parked straight away. We had pre-booked our tickets online but needn't have bothered as the cinema was only a quarter full. I'm not saying that we didn't enjoy our visits to Antwerp, but our Kortrijk visit was a damn sight easier!
As I said, we are close to the French border. We are even closer to the Wallonian border; Wallonia is where the people speak French instead of Dutch. It just so happens that our nearest Hubo (DIY store) was in Wallonia, so we jumped in the car and paid it a visit. It's very strange to drive through a country and suddenly find the street signs change from, for example, Kerk Straat to Rue de Marche. When we lived in Malle one would often see Dutch number plates on cars, now we see French number plates. After our visit to Hubo, we popped into a supermarket next door, a French chain I had never seen before. My wife said what I was thinking:" It's like being on holiday!" The shelves were stocked with French goods as well as those more familiar to me, everyone was speaking in French and it was a little bit surreal. All this just a 5 minutes drive from our home.