According to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Belgians pay more than 50% than their income in taxes.  Thus, they have the largest tax burden world-wide.
 I guess I’d also brew up some 8% beer if my government would be taxing me that much.

Belgium was the plan for last weekend.  Beautiful beautiful Belgium.  My plans were shakey and almost non-existant, but who needs plans when the destination is as surprising as Belgium!?! 
I could stare at this map of Belgium forever.  It makes me dizzy, the possibilities.  Its posted on the wall of every Belgian rail station and it […]

 I left Switzerland a passenger in a car of a Flemish acquaintance who was going home to the ‘rents for the weekend.  I pestered with questions on the mothercountry the entire trip north, which made my trip fly by.  We rolled on through the French-speaking bit of Belgium, Wallonia, and decided to get a celebratory French-fries in […]

I took the photos below in a town called Moeskroen in Belgium’s south, about an hour past Neufchateau. On the map, the town has so much potential: the tiny sliver of Hainault protruding into French and Belgian Flanders. On the map its a tough call as to whether Moeskroen (Mouscron) prefers the French or the Dutch language. […]

Saturday night was meant to be a short visit to a buddy in Roeselare, “Roulers” in French.  Ostensibly, my train would arrive at 9pm and i’d leave in the last train to Courtrai at 11pm.  However, my buddy’s buddies were very welcoming and offered a lift back for after the evening was officially put to sleep. 
Who […]

 
Sunday began with daylight and a headache trip to a historical museum in Kortrijk. Who could pass up 7 centuries in one day?  I hadn’t known that the county of Flanders defeated the French army at a battle in Kortrijk, where the better-equipped French was outwitted and outmuscled by locals who disguised a swamp as a thicket.  The story goes, the […]

At the end of a 3 hour museum visit I was almost headache free! 
When greeted with such window art, any hangover will melt away:

I proceeded to Ypres, a town in western Flanders. Ypres always managed to become the battlefront in the world wars.  What was it about the geography which made nations want to battle […]

Speaking of mines, one encounters an entirely different sort of mine in Walloon towns.
 Tell. Me. Please.  Who places paper flags in dogmess?  Some Tournaisan activists apparently.  The flag’s writing is “Attention : Mine” and I chose not to get in close enough to photograph the flag’s font size and selection.  This was, afterall, a city […]

When does this type of fun ever end? 

zoom in
I went back from Ypres to Kortrijk in the train, passing through the anomally of “Comines/Komen”.  That town is a French-speaking enclave in Dutch-speaking Belgium.  From the train, however, it looked quite sleepy.  
I had brief flashbacks of my Mouscronite desolation, and decided to stay in the train.  Another tick […]

… had a hankering for something more substantial than my steady diet of french fries and waffles, and thus went out on sunday looking for the definitive home-cooked Flemish meal.  I was recommended to go to the Nostalgie and I was not disappointed.  The website and the menu are only in Dutch (Think Local!).  You can be […]