When I picked up my passport from Tanzania the woman at reception looked at my passport and said: 'ah, vous êtes belge...' She made it sound like a bad thing, but then she smiled and asked me if I was from the French-speaking or Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. And then she started talking Dutch to me. She said she lived in Brussels for a while and she said she really liked Belgium and she was sure I'd really like Tanzania. So that was very nice.
They put this in my passport:
I walked 10 blocks uptown to the Zambian embassy. As opposed to Kenya and Tanzania, Zambia is not in a tower block. It was in a two-floor small building (that almost looked like a normal house). The woman there was not so friendly. She told me off for not filling out an address in Zambia, and when I said I'd be travelling around, she said 'Well, if I wanted to go to Belgium, I'd have to name a place where I'm going. Belgium is a big country, you can't just say Belgium, you have to name a place, otherwise I wouldn't get a visa.'
I thought about pointing out that Belgium is a tiny country, but the look on her face made me think twice and instead I wrote down Livingstone.
She didn't cheer up after that.
I'll get my passport back on Wednesday and then this game is over. Which is good, because there wouldn't really be enough time left to squeeze in another visa.
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