My Friend Tom

We have a new addition to the family. No, we didn't adopt another pet. (Our hearts remain true to Tink and Ashley.) This new addition is one that we couldn't survive Europe without. In fact, I can truly say that we would be lost without him. You might know him as TomTom, the GPS unit, but we refer to him affectionately as Tom. Roads in Belgium don't exactly run north, south, east and west. Like the locals, they like to enjoy life at a leisurely pace, meandering across the countryside. Little roads intersect with big roads in a spiderweb of confusion around here. You can try to read a map, but the names of the roads also change at any given moment. Depending on who put the sign up, a road can go by one name in Dutch and another totally different one in French. City names do the same. For instance, what we refer to in English as Antwerp, is Anvers in French and Antwerpen in Dutch. Most of the time, they sound similar, but this is not always the case. For instance, Tourain becomes Doornik in Dutch. Now you see where Tom comes in. All you need is an address, and you are golden. This is not to say that there aren't still a few surprises in our travels. Tom has a sense of humor. He finds great joy in sending us down tiny one-lane roads in the middle of farm land if it means shaving a few minutes off of our trip. On one occassion, he led us to a bike path. Bad Tom. No relationship is without it's problems. Tom always gets us where we want to go, and that's what's important. As we learn the roads, Tom keeps us from getting lost. And he doesn't fight me for the remote control once we make it safely home. He's a pretty good guy.