1934-1937: My grandparents' first apartment

 

Rue de la Victoire 155, 1060 Saint-Gilles, Belgium. 
155 is the red brick building, left door.

    I don't know precisely when my grandparents moved into this apartment, but they moved out on August 24, 1937, in order to move to the apartment on Avenue de Mai, where they were living when WW2 broke out in western Europe.

    There are family stories surrounding what I believe is this apartment: Arthur and Roma lived together before they got married, which I suspect was pretty scandalous for the time.  Grandma had returned to Poland for a year (probably due to a lack of funds?), but she returned to Belgium in the fall of 1934 to complete her final year at University, and I think that's when she moved in with Grandpa. It made sense - he had graduated a few months earlier, and was presumably working and could afford the rent.

    When they eloped on January 12, 1935, their landlady gave them a little reception when they returned from the Brussels Town Hall, with a nice spread of wine, cheese, and sausages, and as a further wedding gift, told them they could take as many hot showers as they wanted for a week (evidently she complained about my grandmother's overly long showers as it was expensive to heat the water).  Grandma graduated with a degree in accounting six months later.

    Despite living together in this apartment to reduce expenses, they were quite broke when they got married. According to family lore, they couldn't afford rings, so their parents gave them some gold jewelry to be melted down to create their simple wedding bands.  Grandpa had wanted to give Grandma a diamond ring, but that was just impossible, so she told him to never mind, that someday in America, he could buy her a big diamond.

    Decades later, on a trip back to Belgium to visit family, they did buy a biggish diamond, and as a child, I was always fascinated by Grandma's ring. After she died in 1999, I inherited it, and I still wear it today.