Moving to Vilnius

 I have to tell you something: when I was 16, I wanted to live inside a Sydney Sheldon novel. I wanted to travel to Europe (never the Far East) and I wanted to live in Paris and drive a fabulous convertible with my head covered with a scarf and smoke slim cigarettes while wearing a fabulous coat at a sidewalk café. Back then, I used to try to figure out the logistics of stowing away on the freight ships that come to Jamaica. How else was it all going to come true? Today, while shopping for a car in Germany, in a tiny little town called Arzfeld, I looked around and squeezed my eyes shut really tightly and then opened them and wondered: how did I get here? From my little corner of Kingston to Arzfeld shopping for a car? And how did I get to a thousand other places when I hadn't the foggiest idea of ever converting from skinnygirl-living-on-dreams-and-Sydney-Sheldon-novels to .... it's been scary sometimes. But I march on.

So...I am moving. Away from Brussels, Belgium and onto Vilnius, Lithuania. We can't stay in Brussels now that my midget (my little 3 y.o. daughter) has to go to school. There are no school spaces in Brussels...not for anyone of unimportance...not even if you pay up to 55% of your income in taxes and social security. The low-life politicians in this country have made it so that children who live in Brussels get a second-rate education and you have to sell southern body parts (and am not talking kidneys) to afford a good education for your child unless you are networked with the Blonde Bleue Belge (B.B.B; look it up, it's true and shocking!). So, yes, we are moving.

What will I miss about Brussels? Maybe my gym. I make no jest. I have lived here for close to 9 years now and I will not miss a thing. I will not miss the tram noise going "clang clang clang" by my bedroom window and I will not miss the dirty streets and I will not miss the Belgian socialist attitude where everything is "c'est pas possible.."! Intractable people!!! And I will not miss those bloody idealist Eurocrats who inflate the cost of living in this city. But I will miss my high-tech and fabulously-equipped gym despite the fact that it is confusing for me when a person with both breasts and a giant penis uses the women's dressing room alongside the other women. I will miss my girls--my girlfriends prop me up and are my chief support system and the sisters I'd pick if I could have picked my sisters. I will miss La Cueva de Castilla (my little neighbourhood Spanish resto). And I will miss the Arabs on my roundabout who call me Ms Bob Marley and sell me fresh fish, vegetables and mostly fresh meat. I will miss the spices sold in the Turkish and Moroccan supermarkets.  I will miss the healthcare. And finally, I may just miss my little house. Uhmm..and I will miss shopping at Rue de Brabant...so much like downtown Kingston. And I will miss the flea market. And I will miss the Leonidas chocolates and I will...oh dammit! I was intent on not missing a bloody thing! I may miss the smelly, noisy, lazy, terrorist-infested, socio-communist , heap after all...

To date I have lived in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and the UK (for a good few months each), the Bahamas (for a year), US (New York and Washington DC), Dubai (for a little less than a month), Belgium, Switzerland (for a year) and now on to Lithuania...phewwww!!! Am tired. The late and great Sydney Sheldon could have gathered some writing material from my travels....like the time a dashing Italian took me on a midnight ride on his Ducati along the Seine or the time a taxi driver tried to kidnap me in Dubai or the time a Nigerian followed me home on the London underground or the time the Colombian Ambassador to Barbados proposed or the time I hosted a dinner party for the other Colombian Ambassador to Barbados and almost killed him and his guests with fish bones or the time I hid from immigration and the police in Trinidad...

Back to the packing. I leave on Thursday.