[Old guy, new toy]

Hello, this is my first post (not a techie, I like things simple, and prefer legal.)
I live in Belgium, and bought a Sony PRS300 in the USA in August as a gift for my daughter. We did not try to register or use it until back here in Belgium. Now we cannot get it up and running. We got a name & password from SONY in Germany, but we cannot register or authorize the reader. We don't even get a message - The reader screen stays blank with a Triangle and an "!" inside for hours, and never changes. We have found some very very small print on the back of the box "Use of the eBook story from Sony is limited to residents of the USA." How can we start to use this E-book here in Belgium? Or as a second option Germany or France, as we go there a lot more often than the USA. We'd be happy (enough) to buy some books from Sony, and look forward to the many in E-pub.