Category: Belgium Page 1 of 2

Snow Days to Kick off the Year

On 2026-01-06

It started as the wettest snow I have ever seen. I struggle, a bit, to explain it. You hear “wet snow” and you might think something like “wintry mix” but that’s not a good explanation. Think snow. Run-of-the-mill white stuff falling from the heavens. Only wet. Moving like clumpy rain.

I’m sure in the vast volumes of weather descriptions, there are words for it. Thompson’s Snow or Merriweather Flakes or some such. I could look it up but as for now, I’ll just call it Merriweather. Sounds, appropriately for this blog, Dickensian.

The above photo I took around 18:20 on 2025-01-02, a Friday, putting it at one of my first photos of the year. It is a mediocre-sliding-to-terrible photo in most metrics, but I feel it captures the essence of Merriweather Flake.

By Saturday (3 Jan), it turned into more legit snow. Here’s a photo of B and our two tuxedo cats enjoying the first or second aftermath. [Photo by Kaz]

The sun was at least partially out in this photo and the snow had stopped. It returned later that day. Then a very bright moon came out (not pictured). Then the snow returned. Then it cleared.

That was the pattern for several days. Remember how I have talked about there’s a stretch of woods we have to walk through to get to civilization? Here’s what that looked like on Sunday (and, presumably, today) [photo by Kaz]:

For those paying attention, this means B is now in the select group of people who can say they had to walk through the dark and snowy woods [sunrise is currently after her school day starts] just to get to school. There’s even an uphill, there.

A bit back, I talked about how often it rains during sunshine, here (The Devil Has a Lot of Fairs in Grimbergen + Pooping on a Train a Decade Ago). I can now attest that it also snows in the sunshine. This is around 08:30 this morning (2026-01-06):

You have to have faith there is snow in that picture. There is. Much like the last time I was talking about it, you also have to have some faith there’s sunlight in that picture.

Shortly after, the snow ate the sun and it degraded to this:

And now, circa 14:50, the sun has again taken the lead:

We are expecting more snow and, this time, a proper wintry mix over the next several days.

I’m Southern US enough that I’m still mostly fascinated by the snow. There is the downside that my post-injury stability is so low that I pretty much cannot step foot outside while there’s any chance of icy or slippery terrain so I’ve been largely stuck indoors since Friday night with only short excursions.

That is kind of ok. I just get to be the creepy guy staring out the window as folks walk by…

“It’s Gonna Be Our Year!”

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-01-01

In Daily Life, Expat Stuff, Grimbergen, The Algorithm

I don’t know who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to let me have so many green-tea-and-gins last night but they were a complete idiot.

Name probably rhymes with bug or rug or something similar.

Funnily, it wasn’t the gin that was the real problem. Had I mixed 2-3 shots of gin with a liter of water and drank that I’d probably feel pretty swell today. It was the couple of liters of green tea that kept me up to something like 03:00.

One year I’m just going to go to bed for New Year’s. Since Belgian parties are just getting started at midnight, it probably won’t be for a couple of years, mind.

It’s a gray day in Grimbergen which is just sort of saying, “It’s a day.” Kind of nice, though. Not too cold. Not too loud. Windy in a pleasant way. Noon but feels either earlier or later. A kind of liminal space.

I’m sitting here next to two open windows letting in 5C air and giving a thought to the standard thought that we all do on 1 Jan: resolutions. I swore off the whole thing a few years back, mostly, but sometimes they are fun. Sometimes they are hopeful.

Over on the Doug Alone, I talked about (mostly) leaving crowdfunding. That’s one of them. We’ll see how that goes.

A couple of other bigger ones in a more general sense of things (since crowdfunding is pretty much 100% tied into my solo roleplaying hobby) are (a) reducing gamification in my life and (b) generally increasing privacy awareness. And (a) is going to impact a lot of other potential resolutions.

“It’s Going to Be Our Year!”

Before I get to that, let me give you some insight into the core Doug experience. Last night, after getting the first green-tea-and-gin in myself, I started sending out pre-Happy-New-Year’s messages to a few friends and while the messages tended to be personalized, in very nearly all of them I joked about the phrase, “This is going to be our year!” Those who get my sense of humor appreciated I was both making fun of arbitrary goalposts and whispering the foulest curse of them all: hope.

It helps you have say it with a shaky voice like a person saying, “Maybe the cave troll isn’t home, we should go into the dark cave and find out.”

Joyfully nihilistic curses aside, maybe it will be. I don’t know. I just take things as they come, mostly.

(a) Reducing Gamification

This is frankly the biggest one for mental health and general well-being. I have no specific numbers (which feels like a pun) but the gamification of every single aspect of our life feels like it is increasing. Earn points for purchases. Day-week-month streaks in every app. Add five friends to earn a point. Allow GenAI to access your data? Well, we’ll do it anyhow but if you give it away you can get a badge to show off on your profile that no one will ever click.

I pay money to upgrade the “freemium” experience of Duolingo, Geoguessr, and NYTimes Games. All three are big about pushing daily plays and uses [“Please stay addicted to our services”]. Badges. Achievements. I “buy” (lease? not sure what the proper legal term would be) books on the Kindle and it sends me notifications about not letting my streak expire. When I started deleting social media, I was seeing it more, there. Stuff that has no business setting weekly/monthly/annual goals have started bundling it.

Back 20 projects on Crowdfundr.ai? You get platinum status. There are no benefits but still we love you like your parents never did. Spend $2000 on gachas? You get 1.25 points per $100 spent instead of just 1 point.

It’s an incessant noise. And the fact that so rarely do hitting any of these milestones unlock anything besides maybe meaningless in-game currency shows how effective it is to just offer up a hexagonal png to keep people reaching for a goal that only exists to increase company profits through addictive behavioral programing.

When I was first workshopping this resolution, I thought about flat out cutting out any app or system that had such systems baked in only I realized, relatively quickly, that I would more or less be able to not access the things I actually use.

Instead, the idea is to simply ignore the badges, achievements, streaks, and other stupid bullshit designed to increase addiction. If I didn’t read today, no more panic reading a chapter to keep my Kindle streak going. If I don’t feel like doing Duolingo, just let the streak die. In some cases, this will likely be tied into getting rid of some freemium upgrades. So it goes.

The irony of this is that it kind of negates the concept of resolutions. I do want to read more. Play more of my old favorite games. I want to solo play more. Take bigger risks. Lose weight. Work on fixing my ankle.

I will likely have to compromise to some degree. It can be hard to lose weight without tracking calories somewhat. It can be hard to budget better without a budget.

Just absolutely no apps to do the data for me.

(b) Increasing Privacy

Which brings us to the other major resolution. Find ways to increase my overall privacy. This one is harder to specify without sounding a bit like a conspiracy nut. Or, perhaps, it is easier to specify:

Stop giving private information to unlock upgrades,
Use more offline stuff and fewer things that require third party tracking,
Avoid using cloud-based systems more, especially now that so many cloud-based systems have decided that using them is akin to giving your personal documents to their AI systems,
Using my own storage back-up solutions, own media servers, own email servers, etc.
Using more encryption that isn’t designed to expose the data to the host,
etc

There are so many little ways this one will show up. It makes me think of something that Northerlion (the Twitch Streamer) said. He mentioned that getting cash from the ATM feels like a borderline criminal act because you get the cash and then no one really tracks how you spend it. The sense that if we just use the stuff we own, we are going dark.

After the move to Belgium, I have been watching more stuff streaming from my personal server and through physical media, partially because I would have to use VPN to watch my American-media-libraries despite paying a lot of real money to build them up and still being an American citizen.

And one of the aspects of this is that when I put in that DVD/Blu-Ray/CD then no one but myself really knows what I am watching or playing. If I play a CD a dozen times, it doesn’t get tracked and used to sell me something. I can watch a movie a dozen times and it is up to me to watch trailers to see what else I might like.

We’ve been so conditioned to accept The Algorithm(TM)’s “help” to fill every waking hour with media that we are giving up the ability to own these pieces of happiness. It is becoming increasingly obvious how much companies don’t want us to own our own media now that I kind of have to own it to enjoy the things I enjoy.

Just look at videogames. Now you buy a code in a physical case and you attach that code to your account and if that library every goes away, you bought a physical case in a store to temporarily lease a game.

Or movies where you buy a blu-ray and they want you to use the “free digital copy” code so they can keep better track of who has what. Some Blu-rays and DVDs have features that require you to access the internet to see fully.

“If you are not paying for it, you are not the customer,” is a lie. You are the customer, always, but also the product. It’s kind of up to us to set the line and we are currently losing and pretending its inevitable.

And that’s…madness.

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.

I just appreciate someone finally wrote an ode to Belgian Weather

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-30

In Grimbergen, Humor, Music, Music Video

We are are at the time of year where the forecast in Grimbergen is permanent stuck on two alerts: “It may rain in a few hours” and “Rain may cease in a few hours.” With apologies to Mitch Hedberg, it used to be raining. It still is, but it used to, too.

Brandon Jamar Scott’s new song [Part of his Trailer Park Alien Universe], I feel, encapsulates this.

NOTE: if the “69 News” and the title of the song being wet doesn’t give you a heads up, let me just say the humor is raunchy. A wee bit. Beetje. Etc etc.

It’s a catchy song. And maybe one day we will get justice and get the missing piece of the Universe back, which was struck on grounds of Nintendo declaring it…canon.

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

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-11-17

In Grimbergen, Photos

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.