Month: December 2025

Christmas Trip to Glasgow

On 2025-12-29

In Daily Life, Discoveries, Food, Memories, Scotland, Travel, Vegan

It has been some time since I have been to Glasgow. The last time was a single day (plus or minus a few hours at an airport) in 2018. Went out to see the Sister-in-Law (A) and her husband (D) and to celebrate their wedding. I was officiating said ceremony. It never made it to the old Dickens-of-a-Blog because it would have been in the down years. Had it been in up years, it would have been one of the Posts All Time, no doubt.

I have no photos of my time in Glasgow at that time, for some reason. Perhaps I did not want to seem too touristy. We took the train in, ate at a vegan restaurant that was a poster child bespoke gentrification [that seems to no longer exist in 2025] and then had to take a stupidly hot bus back because the day was so hot it stopped the trains from running in the afternoon.

Here’s a photo I took walking to the train to take into Glasgow Central:

I will say it is not indicative of the actual nice quality graffiti you can see around the city. This one just made me chuckle the most.

I did take more photos this time, including this one showing off much higher quality wall art near St. Enoch:

Now, as to who exactly that is? I have no idea. My one working theory is that had the Christmas Market (Winter Wonderland, I think it was called) not been there, it possibly lined up with something in the distance. My second working theory is that there had once been something in the upper left corner of that wall for him to be holding up. This is above the Hootenanny. I probably should have just asked.

That is near the front of Adagio Aparthotel. Where we stayed this Christmas trip. It was nice. I am not one to get too hyped for any sort of hotel but I will say I would stay there again. Great location. Lots of shops. The Winter Wonderland (at least, for a couple of weeks a year). Glasgow Central station in walking distance. Several bus stops. Pharmacy and grocery stores. Waterstones. You can spend a week barely breaching a square kilometer and have a full experience.

Turn right and cross the road to see the river and you can visit some more higher quality graffiti. Cats seem to be a theme. Some QR codes. It perhaps is corporate, I have no idea.

The only two negatives were a) my brain spent a lot of time reading it as “Apartheid Hotel” (as opposed to “Apartment Hotel”) and b) there was a fire alarm test on Tuesday that I had failed to note which meant I had to make my way down multiple stories just to realize the note about it was in the elevator (aka, lift, aka the thing you do not take in the case of fire).

We took the train in. It is virtually impossible to make train rides proper exciting (on par with reviewing hotels). Passing through the Chunnel is a bit fascinating because it is so relatively dark that it makes the windows of the train look like a long row of mirrors. And it makes your ears pop.

We also took the train back which was just about as pleasantly boring. Except I tried, and failed, to snap a photo of the Angel of the North. Every time the shutter would do its shutter-type thing, a building or tree would intervene.

This was post-holiday travel which meant folks were a bit more tired, grumpy, and sick. Added some spice. Some. Never a lot.

In between was Christmas with the extended family, some shopping, and far too much eating. I also got to spend my first Boxing Day in Britain. Pull my first Christmas cracker.

Of all the too-much-food we too-much-fooded, Buck’s Bar probably wins for most memorable. American style chicken restaurant with some strong vegan options. Went to the Mount Florida location and had a Nashville Hot Vegan (aka, the Vegan Hot Cock) with extra pickles. B made out with a huge vegan not-milkshake + Oreos. Right amount of spicy. Mine, not hers.

Also in the Mount Florida // Cathcart Road area we hit up Three of Cups (astounding vegan treats and good tea) and Mount Florida Books which, as a huge book nerd with all sorts of interests in queer and odd books, I can highly recommend.

Seriously, if you find yourself in Glasgow then trip out to that section of town and look around. Worth it.

There is, in the way of things, a hundred more things I can say (and five or so more eateries and shops I could shout out) or I could have cut out half of it.

I’ll leave with this for now, though. The first three or so days, there, through Christmas, Glasgow had been on its best behavior. Then, on Boxing Day, walking back from St. Enochs I saw two guys fighting with police intervention. Only the police left to see to a wreck and the guys were going their separate ways.

Right as I was walking up, guy #1 turned around and went back to guy #2 and all I heard was… “You want my name? Here’s my first name: Fuckoff!”

Ah, hungover Glasgow was healing.

A Day in the Life 17722: Duolingo Fun, Bandcamp Friday, Still Recovering

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-12-05

In Belgium, Daily Life, Discoveries, Humor, Music

First off, and last in the title, I am still recovering from the two-fer. The cold feels in retreat but we’ll see. The ankle is still a problem. Here’s hoping tomorrow continues to improve both.

Second in the title, and second in the post, today (2025-12-05, een vrijdag), is a Bandcamp Friday. Those are days where (at least supposedly) 100% of the proceeds go directly to the artist. They are nice moments and another reason I like Bandcamp as my central hub for acquiring music. Some musicians time releases to show up on them, or have other promotions.

In this case, it wasn’t one of those I was interested in, but I had been eying Fabo Music for a minute and saving it up for one. Lots of albums which are unofficial soundtracks to Dungeons & Dragons adventures and the like. Kind of stuff I like to play while engaged in solo roleplay. One slight wrinkle is that Fabo Music often includes one-hour loops of their songs which makes sense in the context of playing as background music for RPG scenes. The downside being that it makes the zip files of the albums bigger so it is taking some time.

While fiber ever approaches (at least is showing up on the streets near us), we are still under the auspices of the older Belgisch internet. These downloads will possibly be an all morning task. I even gave up on my usual Snag-the-FLAC habit because some of them were in the 6gig range. AAC, only, for now.

And now to first part of the title. I have been using Duolingo to help learn Dutch, though it has been the, well, Netherland flavor of Nederlands. Last night, something happened where not only did my Duolingo lessons jump several degrees of difficulty but also started including more stuff about Brussels, Bruges, Leuven. Etc.

I think in technical terms I got added to some AB testing or whatnot. Who knows? It is kind of fun, though. The speaking and listening exercises are now less “De eend draagt geen schoenen” (the duck is not wearing shoes) and more, well…

This means they are less about listening and saying words and phrases I know and more about parsing sentences I do not know. The kind of thing where you jump straight from “Mijn naam is Doug” to “Je speelde als een poffertje zonder suiker!” I am very rapidly learning a lot of edge cases of the Dutch language.

At the same time, I have no idea if these are anything like actual phrases but I like them. “There’s no polder without a leevee.” “I am playing like a poffertje without sugar.” The third one is from some sort of Amsterdam noir.

“It was a quarter to eight and I was waiting at the canal…”

This means the practice rounds went from taking me around a minute to taking me more like 8-10 minutes each, but so it goes.

In the middle of this I have learned some things. Like how to say “the boys wear dresses” and “no pants, please” in Dutch. My favorite so far is: Vanwege het weer hebben wij een bakje troost nodig.

Because of the weather, we need a cup of comfort.

Suffering a Two-Fer

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-12-04

In Daily Life, Health

I’ve been struck by a bit of a two-fer this week. The first-fer is I have done something janky to my right ankle. Now, I am no stranger to doing janky things to my bones…

…but it’s often annoying. Back in the day I would have to triple wrap it and then limp the couple miles into work. Here, in my temporary semi-retirement I have more option to just homebody but there are things that need to be done around said home I body.

I am of an age and a bodily disposition that there is never really a precise HOW when it comes to the question, “How did you hurt yourself this week?” Frankly the age barely touches upon it. I one time stubbed my toe on a vacuum cleaner while getting ready for bed. I one time, at the age of eleven or so, stepped slightly incorrectly off the back of a truck. It’s a gift.

At this point, I think it was something that happened while I was running around making Bolden’s-giving (hinted at in my post about Miyoko’s butter). It can take several hours to put together a larger meal like that and there are a lot of opportunities to do something. Like just…I don’t know…walk strangely in a way that insults the ankle gods. I had gotten my COVID and Flu shots just a couple of days prior so it is mayhaps involved. Not that COVID shots give you swollen ankles to go with your free 6G tracking but more like the bit of tiredness and such made it easy to stumble at some time.

The other-fer is I have a mild cold brought about the joyous intersection of public transportation and a child in school. Which means we all have it. It is not bad as far as colds go. This is the third one from the school year which feels like it is on schedule. Perhaps a little up but we are in a strange land with strange people. A very strange land.

The problem, besides being mildly sick, is the kind of painkiller used to treat headache and sore throat go a little too well with the sort of anti-inflammatory to treat the rest. It washes me out pretty badly. Or I suffer one or the other.

At least the sunsets and sunrises have been nice. The above photo is the sunset from my dark and dank computer corner. Currently we have the opposite: sunlight pouring in from the other window across the way.

That being said, I’d put good money on it raining some time today. Because, you know, Belgium.