Category: Belgium

[Photos] (double) Rainbow Over De Abdij van Grimbergen

On 2025-11-17

While I was writing the previous post (Foggy Night in Grimbergen), I looked out the window and saw a double rainbow to the west. Feeling I only had a few seconds to make it count, I headed outside and scooted over until I found the angle for which I was looking. To capture a rainbow over De Abdij van Grimbergen.

Unfortunately, my phone does not do well with the zoom and I still haven’t unpacked my better camera. Unzoomed, it looks more like…

Because it was actually a double rainbow.

Neat-o. Even if my photo quality sucks, it’s still a fun shot.

Right after I took the shot I had to scoot back up the road and inside because we were getting another Devil’s Fair. Then it just turned into outright rain for several minutes.

Foggy Night in Grimbergen

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-17

In Belgium, Daily Life, Grimbergen, Photos

This is actually from a couple of nights ago. When I took the photos, I was shutting down for the night [basically]. Then, yesterday, I spent a fair chunk of the day wrapping up the Dragon Quest 1-2 HD-2D Remake [which is a crazy title to type out]. So while these lose some immediacy, and it is currently kind of sunny but with the threat of rain, I still wanted to share them.

This past Saturday night [2025-11-15, ~20:00] a heavy fog rolled into Grimbergen. We have had a few foggy days since moving here, a couple of foggy nights, but this was by far the strongest.

The lights outside our house were pretty clear, but also clearly fog wrapped. The intensity, though, was apparent in the way that we could see no lights [well, one made it through] across the field. There’s a street across the way and we can normally see the houses fairly clearly, including their lights. And there is the abbey (Abdij van Grimbergen) which can be spotted from a distance and is brightly lit. It was also lost into the dark. This latter bit was probably the most unnerving.

After noticing it, the fog kept building up over the next hour or so and in that way that you can hear shouts and barks and and a few other sharp noises, only those tended to make it out of the dark. It was a wonderfully spooky effect. One slightly lost as the lights of Vilvoorde caused the sky to redden noticeably to the east, but glowing red fog on one side is a sight in itself.

Around 22:00 or so, it had dissipated enough that you could see more nearby lights. The next day it was back to being rainy with just smaller patches of fog.

A Day in the Life #17694: B’s Back in Town, Mail Call, Spices, Halloween, Exercise

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-07

In Belgium, Brussels, Daily Life, Exercise, Food, Horror, Music

In my last post (The Pillow Washing Incident), I mentioned a bit of a catch up. This post represents that, mostly. I’m sure I’m leaving things out but to kind of enshrine a log for myself.

B back in Town

Barbara’s school had their annual “adventure camp” conclude today. It was a week-long trip somewhere in Belgium [I, oddly, do not know specifics, though I am sure I have been told] where the school as pretty much a whole — minus the early year students and some others that have opted out for various reasons — goes and does a lot of camp-type stuff. Swimming. Playing. Music. Talent shows. Eating in camp cafeterias. That kind of thing.

I’ve never exactly been to that kind of camp. I have done some volunteer work where we go out into the woods and clean up a bit or fix old playgrounds. Kind of similar, just a bit more hammer-and-nail and less friends-playing-games. And I’ve gone camping plenty of times. Lots of hiking and such.

I’m glad she got to experience it. She said it was mostly ok. Food was her biggest complaint.

Oddly enough, she seems to have more energy than I do now that it is concluded.

Kaz and I had a week to ourselves but we got the edge of a cold and for other reasons mostly just hung out and took care of a few things around the house and rested up. The parent paradox. Kids are gone for a week and you just choose sleep. Well, sleep and watching The Substance (my second time, Kaz’s first).

Take this as advice: it is a terrible date night movie.

It also ranks up there with Under the Skin as far as movies go where you get to see someone who is undeniably attractive in the nude and the overall vibe just outright punishes you for it.

Mail Call

On the left is the UK Blu-Ray of Southbound. On the right is Florence and the Machine’s new album, Everybody Scream, the “Chamber Music Edition.” Not pictured, because I picked it up digitally, is Robert Rich and Markus Reuter’s Incubation.

I have watched Southbound once, years ago. Likely near the time of release. Back then, I liked it better than the V/H/S movies. Ironically, I ended up rewatching V/H/S a good bit more. I have been doing a rewatch of that series and kind of felt like Southbound should join. I’ll likely write up my thoughts at some point on Doug Talks Weird.

As for Everybody Scream, I’ve been a fan of Florence and the Machine for a good while and am excited for this one. I have heard a couple of the singles and they fit well into my expectations. A good witchy album. We’ll see how the “Chamber Editions” of the songs go. It was supposed to hit on Halloween but there was a delay so I got it a week late. That’s ok.

Halloween

Speaking of… Halloween is not quite a big deal here in Belgium. There are lots of parties and lots of decorations. Schools have costume wearing events. I’ve heard there are even haunted corn-mazes and such. Here on our sleepy street, we were pretty much the only one to do anything.

That’s “Sam,” my very quickly done pumpkin using Sharpie. I decorated him on Halloween evening and put him out in a chair with a little hat because it was quite chilly. The hat got deeply rained on so I tossed it into textile recycling but still have the pumpkin. Not sure what we’ll do with him. Maybe consign him into the garden and let nature take its course.

Barbara (and Kaz) went to a classmate’s house and did some minor trick-or-treating. It seems like a few neighborhoods organize stuff.

She was Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters. She is of the age for that movie to hit big and wide. Got her the soundtrack and everything.

Spices (and Beans) from Foods of Asia

One of the things Kaz and I did while B was out of town was hit up Foods of Asia in Brussels/Evere and dropped around 100€ on spices. I am not talking any crap at all about Belgium, which actually has an ok assortment of spices in most shops, but there were a few that I really missed getting in proper bulk. I don’t like the tiny little jars of spices when I want to cook.

We got cloves, coriander, cumin powder, whole cumin, nutmeg, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, asafoetida, and some other similar things. Also some ramen and a mid-sized bag of jasmine rice.

Oh, and butterbeans, which I grew up knowing as limas. It was a pretty big staple for our family growing up (only bested by black-eyed peas in the legume category). We had a bean we called butterbean which was probably just baby-limas picked fresh. I don’t know.

The only bean that I have not been able to find, precisely, is pinto beans exactly like what we had in the Southern US. There are pinto beans here, but maybe just a bit more mature? I’m not sure. They taste a bit different and are a bit harder. It’s not too bad, though. Just a minor shift in cooking.

Alright, that’s probably enough note-taking. It’s sunny here in Grimbergen. I’m about to get out and go blink at this so-called “day star”.

OH, before I go, here’s my bike ride stats. Pushing to over an hour. Roughly of an average of mid-20s km/h. Intensity up to around the half-way mark on the bike (equivalent of mild uphills). The middle of the ride was more intense than the end but there’s no way to take a picture of the whole route so I just have the snap of me doing the wind down to finish out to the 17mi mark:

The Devil Has a Lot of Fairs in Grimbergen + Pooping on a Train a Decade Ago

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-28

In Belgium, Daily Life, Memories, Words

We seem to get a lot of sunshowers [LGT: Wikipedia] here in Grimbergen, BE. The weather mix where it is raining while sunny.

Back in Alabama, I feel like you’d maybe see it once or twice a year. In Belgium, I’ve already seen a good dozen times over the three months I’ve been here. I have no idea if it is normal, or if I have some magic touch. Though, since the Flemish word for it seems to be Duiveltjeskermis (Devil’s Fair), “magic touch” might have a cursed connotation there.

You can probably not see much rain in either photo. Consider this something like a trust fall.

It’s also non-Summer Belgium, so you can barely see any sun. So it goes…

Three fun facts in which one is a follow-up of another:

(1) I had the window open [obv] in that second photo and while taking the picture, noticed the wind had shifted enough that it was starting to blow rain inside. Before I could shut the window, a quantity of rain poured all over my radiator, electric cords, power bank, and so forth. I had to rapidly shut everything down and unplug stuff while still covered in rain water.

(2) Whenever I see sunshowers, the Southern US phrase “The devil is beating his wife” pops in my head, which is frankly some Punch and Judy-level nonsense.

(3) Only that specific phrase doesn’t. My brain loves to say “God is beating His wife.” Which is potentially more blasphemous, though I’d argue that the extra-Biblical depiction of “The Devil” is plenty enough to go around to start.

Anyhow, the linked Wikipedia article has lots of fun phrases. My second most used, after “X is beating his Y” is “fox wedding” because I’m a weeb at heart.

I did have to check, though, because I was sure I had blogged about this before. Which I have. Though it seems like the actual discussion was on my old Livejournal, which has gone the way of Punch’s baby.

BONUS PHOTO: Pooping on a Train a Decade Ago

Ten years ago, today, Kaz and I were on our way to Providence, RI¹. It was a nice trip. Since one part was visiting H.P. Lovecraft’s graveside, I might post during spooky week.

That photo shows our toilet in our compartment. If you notice, it is right up against the seat. Meaning either you had to sit next to the person pooping or you had to sit across and stare them in the eyes. Good times.

That’s not even the worst “toilet business on a train story” I have. The worst was on a trip back from New Orleans when I was trying to pee. I was standing because I was not trusting the cleanliness of the shared seat. The train took a corner at speed which caused me to slip a bit and, well…

Sorry, Amtrak folk who had to wipe that down. I did do my best but it was a bit past what you could accomplish with train-quality toilet paper.

You can go ahead and put the “whoops” GIF here, too.

The photo was tagged by Google as being exactly a decade ago. It might have been the day before, since I would have had to get to a good connection to upload it. ↩︎

Photo: Absolute Unit of a Slug

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-21

In Belgium, Discoveries, Photos

After this morning’s rainy walk, there was a lot of waiting out the rain to finish. Got in my work out. Showered. Ate “second breakfast” [read: a banana]. Drank tea. Did some online errands.

Finally, got a slight break before what looks like round 4 or 5 hits, and so went outside to pick up a couple of things that had gotten blown around a bit like the bucket we use to our restafval¹ and just checking the outside plants. Remember, one of the previous storms took out our granny statue.

Anyhow, while knocking water out of buckets and such, I saw this absolute unit of a slug:

I would guess around 10-12cm. Not the chubbiest I have seen but still an impressive chad.

Translation: residual waste. In Grimbergen, we divide our waste up into various types. PMD [Plastic, Metal, Drink Cartons]; P&K [Paper and Paper Cartons]; GFT & SH [Food Waste and Clippings (groenteafval, fruitafval, tuinafval, en snoeihout, to explain the acronym); Glass [not including beer/beverage bottles, which we return to stores]; Bulky items [grofvuil]; and Small Hazardous Items [klein gevaarlijk afval]. Restafval is essentially everything else. ↩︎

Rainy Walk to the Bus

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-21

In Belgium, Daily Life

Dear Space Pilgrims,

I will see yesterday-Doug’s Still Getting Used to Dark Mornings and raise him with this morning’s rainy walk to the bus.

Note, these pictures are a bit blurred out because of, you know, rain. It was relatively impossible to actually wipe the moisture off the lens without adding additional moisture. Take them as mood pieces, if you will.

My weather app keeps insisting it’s going to stop raining, soon. It has been doing such since around 20:00 last night.

The above is actually waiting at the bus stop for B’s bus.

Here is the walk through the woods between our house and the bus stop:

Yes, I’m taking the piss just a little. No, that’s not just a black PNG like last time. It’s a photo I took, in the rain, of some very dark woods. Toss in the sound of crackling branches and running water and not being able to see a dang thing.

If there were ghosts there, I probably would have spotted them. An unearthly glow would have been welcome.

This is the last one where coming out of the woods into a rain-drenched, leaf-strewn street makes an interesting juxtaposition where nature ends and my ability to see began…

I should probably get a better camera for taking dark, rainy photos. I have a feeling I am about to see a lot of them.

Still Getting Used to Dark Mornings

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-20

In Belgium, Daily Life, Discoveries, Expat Stuff, Memories

I know it’s a common features of expat blogs, of which this tangentially one, to focus on “10 things which shocked me!” type content but while there have been two dozen stacks of things to which I have had to adjust, I am not sure if many are really “shocking.” There’s a few I might share because of humor and anthropological studies type reasons, but overall I am pretty boring in that regard. Stuff is kind of the same but definitely not the same the world over.

There is one thing of which I was previously aware intellectually but in everyday practice has taken a bit of adjustment: the later morning sunrises.

That was taken at something like 07:08 this morning [2025-10-20]. My phone camera slightly lightened it. The sky was more true black at that angle though the light pollution of Brussels was pushing through a bit to the south.

I think you should at least get the idea. Squint a little while looking at it.

I appreciate this is a reality for millions of people and not really a big deal. It is fairly new to me, though.

I grew up in southern [aka Lower] Alabama in the United States. For most of my life, there was a rough idea of sunrise and sunset being similar throughout the year (there’s a four hour swing but Daylight Savings Time imbalances this to the evening side). 7am was pretty definitely post-dawn. 4pm was pre-Dusk. It got fuzzier after that.

Up until my 30s, all of my travel was across the American Southeast region. Alabama, Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana. Probably in that order, though maybe more LA than GA. I think the furthest north I had ever been was Norfolk, VA. The furthest west was near-ish New Orleans, LA.

Occasionally I would read books like Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and it would talk about the sunlight fading at 11pm [aka, 23:00 in here terms] and I would be confused. I was aware of stuff like the so-called “midnight sun” but it took me a long time to really appreciate the difference. Even when I traveled to places like Boston, it never quite stuck.

My trip to Scotland, near Glasgow, in 2018 was probably the first time where I had that all important realization of proper first-hand experience. Around midsummer, the days were delightfully long which was probably terrible for jet lag but it was nice having a practicum.

It was similar to student-era me figuring out that integrating a curve = acceleration & area under curve = total distance traveled by an accelerating body. The kind of thing I could rationalize but actually using the math to predict real life objects and extrapolating that into new formulae was a big deal for me in my astrophysics days. Or when I began to work out multidimensional math and how frames of reference could be shifted and calculated in high school.

All that said, moving from a place with something like an 4-hour swing to a place with an 8-hour swing has been kind of neat. The ultimate practicum. I’m sure I’ll be fussy around mid-winter but we’ll see.

Visiting the Museum of Illusions

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-11

In Belgium, Brussels, Discoveries, Expat Stuff, Photos, Places

I’m going to be absolutely real: I suck as a tourist.

In this context, I am not a tourist right now but I am a currently a long-term visitor in a strange land — and I feel like Belgium counts as a strange, if delightful, land — who at least generally should be engaging in a bit in the culture.

Which I totally do. I talk to magpies and crows and hang out with cats while just enjoying nature and some old streets.

I finally decided to correct my first statement with a visit to Brussels’ Museum of Illusions with Barbara and Kaz. It is a smaller collection of full-sized illusions, mirror tricks, and puzzles. Kind of place you could spend an hour or two. It is quite nice and absolutely surrounded by all kinds of shops and destinations if you wanted to make a day of it.

If nothing else, take these two points to heart:

It is well worth a visit and has some cool trinkets in its gift shop.
My photo skills inside sucked more normal so I do not have a lot of photos to show it off, alas.

The Museum at a Glance

Once you get up the escalator/elevator there is a bit of confusion about where to go because it is a highly visual place. You come up about 1/3 the way into the exhibits. My natural tendency to curve right almost lead me to enter into the place without paying. Barbara had been there before — as had Kaz, who was joining us very slightly later — and helped point out the desk to pay for entry. I would have spotted it eventually, no doubt. It is not hidden, just also not super obvious compared to some of the kooky fun on display.

Once paid — €17.50 for adults, €14.50 for children of Barbara’s age — you then have the option to get a lock and key to put your stuff into a locker, which nice, and the guy behind the counter double checked that we did not have balance issues — I am a fall risk, after all — or epilepsy — I am just light sensitive enough that one of the attractions (The Vortex) was pushing it for me.

There a few dozen features. They are numbered but the precise count escapes my memory. Maybe half of those are fairly quick images or wall-mounted illusions. The kind of thing where one line looks longer than another. They did a good job of curating some of the more interesting ones and several have been redesigned to have some interactive elements.

Then there are several larger, more interactive pieces. The aforementioned Vortex is the larger carnival classic of walking through a dark, swirling tunnel of lights. That was my one mistake. I should probably have skipped it.

Besides that you have rooms with angled floors and carefully designed wallpaper so that a person on one side looks a lot larger than the other or looks like they are leaning.

My favorites tended to be the pair of rooms playing with lights and the handful of exhibits based on mirrors. The above image show the top of my head is a fun little item where angled mirrors allow you to see yourself and the room from multiple angles. That’s a single photo showing more or less every angle of myself.

There’s an “infinite room” where you can throw your own rave party with hundreds of yourselves. An upside down room where you can your best “clinging to the ceiling.” A hatch that looks like an infinite spot into darkness where you can take “falling” photos.

Then there are a trio of large scale puzzles. A pair of several kaleidoscopes that make for some trippy pictures. A forced perspective chair.

In general, the place is pretty heavy with photo opportunities and your enjoyment will be based on (a) how many fun photos and videos you want take; and (b) how carefully you pay attention to the balance-or-epilepsy warnings. Those wanting a more hands-on variation of learning about light and optics tricks can get some good learning done.

The staff and the other attendees were all perfectly chill and it was a heavily positive experience. It is not necessarily a regular outing type of place but I imagine we’ll go back a few times while in the country.