As every article has told us, the recent European elections were a sweeping victory for the centre-right and the far-right across Europe, and…

I am of to vote today, in my first European elections. Who should I vote for? I like the position that Groen! takes on social and environment matters…

The British Humanist Association were giving a conference on “Darwin, Humanism and Science”, so I nipped over to London for the day to …

We tried out the House of Lalibela for a lab dinner. A few people were reluctant to eat with their fingers and were suspicious of the food descriptio…

Flemish parties reject provocation by MR leader ReyndersRepeating what Olivier Maingain of Brussels francophone coalition partner FDF had stated d…

After some excellent and always informative comments by Cedric on my last post I wanted to write a few thoughts on differences and similarities b…

In a week's time I have to vote in the EU elections for parties from the Flemish list. My reference point in political parties is really …

Yesterday I had my first conversation completely in Dutch. Okay, it was just asking for a return train-ticket to Brussels, but she understood, repl…

Last night we went to the Delirium Cafe in Brussels. It is right in the heart of the tourist district, near the Grand Place, and is a great place to …

…that you are in a new country?Well, a lot of services are shared. There is an international library, a joint cultural centre and joint provision…

We thought we would spend the glorious Belgian spring day in the small town of Baarle-Hertog with our dear friends visiting from Cambridge, Mic…

I have to say, when I saw the Thai House I didn’t have high expectations, guessing it would be along the lines of greasy take-away Chinese or somet…

A young friend of our who recently moved to Belgium was telling us that she had always dreamed of going to Paris and hoped that one day she would g…

With Michelle and Grant in town we wanted to show them the dynamic range of Belgian beers available. Lydia is a big fan of the Kwak, not so much for …

Himalaya is another Nepalese restaurant in Leuven (the other is Basecamp in the town centre). This one is just outside the train station. As it is op…

Namur En Mai is a festival of arts held over a long weekend every year in Namur. It got a good write-up in the Thalys travel magazine and we had a pu…

In honour of the first community raising $500 000 in microfinance funding at Kiva I thought I would spruik their good work at TravBuddy. Support loca…

This is interesting news from Gent: The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week…

After my last post, in wondering about why obesity in Belgium was so much lower than in America, despite more time spent eating and greater…

Here are three interesting statistics I came across this weekend:Average time spent eatingAmerica - 75 minutes per dayAustralia - 90 minutes pe…

Second Sunday in May every year in Ypres is the Kattenbelletje. Once every three years, the festival coincides with Kattenstoet, the Cat Parade. …

It is the year of the comic strip in Brussels and the comic strip festival is on. They have downloadable tours of the public comic strip art that lit…

The weather on Sunday was perfect for Belgian festivals, both modern and historic. We briefly popped into Brussels to see the World's Largest Tinti…

The EL-DE house is a museum and memorial to the Gestapo prison and Nazi era in Cologne. The main exhibit is the house itself, which was the local Ges…

Normally I find chocolate museums rather disappointing. You see, I really quite like chocolate, so I somehow expect a chocolate museum to be equally …

Just two hours on the Thalys from Brussels and you are in Cologne. We had a very pleasant day walking around. Of course we visited the Kölner Dom, t…

Belgian festivals in 2009 The Sunday before Shrove Tuesday (22nd Feb, 2009) Cwarme, in Malmedy. The Haguete, covered by masks, wander around with…

My last piece of business with town hall is now complete - I am now the proud owner of a Belgian drivers licence. This one was the ordeal, first I ha…

The religious like to say "There are no atheists in foxholes", despite the countless atheists who fought and died in wars, or who survived throug…

After the Cistercian Abbey in Seraing (just outside Liege) was closed down after the French Revolution, it was taken over as a crystal manufacturer. …

We spent the day today in Liege, once the capital of the highly religious prince-bishopric (985 CE to 1794 CE), then a booming industrial town, and…

I am reading "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb at the moment. It is a really interesting book in that it challenges our preconceptions (or…

From the National Geographic Magazine, May 1948 issue "Belgium Comes Back"."Everybody works in Belgium - men, women, children, animals. The tempo of …

Our foodie friends are hard to impress - luckily the New York Times had given them advice on which places to visit, with two features on Les Brassins…

I took Jeong and Lianne on a day trip to Maastricht, to experience one of the key delights of Belgium - being able to travel across Western Europe at…

The visit of our dear friends Jeong and Lianne was our first chance to show off this beautiful city in which we now live. It was a wonderful…

Floralien, Lente in Groot-Bijgaarden (Spring in the Great Botanic Gardens), is a annual flower show in Brussels. The show includes over a million bul…

Atomium is a giant iron crystal, 102 metres tall, with atoms 18m in diameter and tubes 29m long and 3m wide connecting each atom. Entering the base a…

This park just next to Atomium is a 1/25th scale model of some of the highlights of Europe. It is designed as a one hour walk-around and contains eno…

Today's exploration of Belgium was Brussels through the eyes of an eight year-old girl. The Grand Place, Manneken Pis, Jeanneke Pis, none of these …

I thought I knew central Leuven fairly well. I must have walked up every street multiple times. Yet I had no idea of the hidden delights that were wi…

When we were showing Elle around Leuven and she mentioned how she loved real hot chocolate, this is the place we took her to. It is in Grote Markt, o…

I've been treating the cafes along Oude Markt as pretty much interchangeable. The seating all merges into the same delightful atmosphere, so why sit …

To show Elle around Leuven we booked ourselves on a Leuven Tourist Office tour. For only €2 we had a two hour walking tour of the city, just two gu…

On Stille Zaterdag, Silent Saturday, Church bells do not ring in Flanders. Children believe they have flown off to Rome in order to bring back …

Maestro Gelato is the most central place to get ice-cream, right in the middle of the sights. Luckily, James put me onto this new place, 't Galetji, …

Paasfeesten Leuven runs over the Easter weekend every year in Leuven. It is a Folklore festival, and each year different countries participate. This …

The sky was bright and clear when we left work, so James and I walked down to the Oude Markt to meet everyone for drinks. The trees lining the side o…

I'm told by the beautiful young things that the Seven Oaks is the actual trendy night-spot in Leuven, Oude Markt is sooo blase. We stumbled across…

We were talking to a UK expat the other day who was complaining about the service in Belgium, saying she missed the service from when she was liv…

After the tour of the ugly side of Brussels yesterday, I was browsing sites on urban planning and came across this interesting graph. It is a littl…

"If you think that I hate Brussels I don't, it is because I love Brussels that I am so disappointed in it".That is how our guide finish…

Brukselbinnenstebuiten ("Brussels turned inside out") is a Flemish non-profit organisation that, among other things, runs tours of Brussels. They hav…

t Elfde Gebod ("The 11th Commandment") is a really cool little bar right next to the cathedral in Antwerp, which we discovered thanks to Di. When all…

The first thing you notice when entering Antwerp is the beautiful train station, which must be the most elegant I have ever seen. When the trai…

Antwerp Zoo is one of the oldest in the world, and was obviously designed at a time when a zoo was about parks, statues and rotundas for the visitors…

This article from Nature interested me: "One of Germany's largest research centres was wrong to dismiss without notice one of its institute direc…

I have often wondered how law works in bilingual countries. In Belgium, all laws are legal in both French and Dutch. For example, the law allowing …

It was seriously strange last night to see our tiny little street sealed off by police in riot gear. To watch from the balcony as the police, weari…

There is going to be an ugly little protest march today in Leuven, pro-fascism pro-racism, and a protest march to protest the protest (anti…

Many people know that the Smurfs are Belgian, created by Pierre Culliford in 1958. Fewer people, however, may realise just how Belgian the Smurfs a…

We had a wonderful day in Stavelot, experiencing Carnaval de la Laetare des Blancs-Moussis. The festival dates back to the 1502, when the Prince-…

Laetare is held in Stavelot on the fourth Sunday in Lent (22nd of March in 2009). It is a huge festival in a tiny town - a quarter of the population …

I have made three major geographical moves now. Adelaide to Canberra (1000km), Canberra to Seattle (13,000km) and Seattle to Leuven (8000km). Each ti…

Another nice cafe on Oude Markt, this one has Spanish tapas and Italian mains. The food was excellent (I had vegetarian lasagna, Lydia had lasagna) a…

Here is something that I dislike about Belgian work culture - the compulsory medical examinations for employees. I don't like going to the doctor, I …

We went to this little family-owned Lebanese place to celebrate signing the contract for our first apartment together, and we really enjoyed it. The …

I take back what I was saying about Pizza in Belgium - La vecchia Napoli served up the first truly excellent pizza I have had since moving here. Huge…

We had a conference at Blankenberge, a seaside resort town on the coast of West Flanders. It feels 10 000 miles from the beaches of Adelaide (whi…

Having had public health care in Australia and private health care in America, the public health care system in Belgium outstrips them both. Of cou…

Another pleasant day in Brussels, house hunting. We found another excellent apartment, this one near the central station. It is more expensive, but i…

It is interesting that the names that I once found so common are now so rare, while rare names can be exceedingly common. There are 48 "Gerts" where …

De Rector is meant to be one of the hot night scenes along Oude Markt, the student drinking street in Leuven. To me this makes it strange that it is …

I had to go to Gent University for a meeting, so afterwards Lydia and I took the opportunity to visit the Saint Bavo Cathedral. The Cathedral was con…

I love standing at my bus stop outside a bakery in the morning. One moment I'll be watching the statue of a small cat on the chimney of the…

We had a very pleasant wander around Leuven today, accompanied by friends. We started at Renee, a statue built to represent the female students o…

Maestro Gelato is a trendy ice cream cafe at the head of Oude Markt, the main pub street of Leuven. It is an upmarket gelato store with good, but not…

Restaurant Basecamp is a nice Nepalese Tandoori restaurant just around the corner from the Town Hall. The food is quite good, great garlic naan, with…

De Dry Coppen is a gorgeous little bookstore a few streets from the town square of Leuven. The bookstore has a good selection of Dutch and English la…

The Leuven Botanic Gardens are the oldest in Belgium, founded in 1738. There are small ponds, herb gardens, greenhouses and hidden statues, making a …

Lydia and I were chatting on the train about how the cost of living was so much cheaper here in Belgium than it was in the US, when Nadia looke…

We spent our Friday night having drinks at the Australian Embassy. I read somewhere that there are about 1000 Australians living in Belgium -…

In the tower above the university library lie 63 bells. The carillon, the only musical instrument that is also a building, was first built in Flander…

The finale of the carnival at Binche is on Shrove Tuesday, starting at around 4pm and lasting for nearly two hours. It is a simple train ride to and …

Binche is not the type of town that would normally attract many visitors. An ordinary looking town of 30,000 in French Belgium, once a year it expl…

Cafe Piazza feels a bit like a Belgian version of a Sports Bar, the bar area at the front and tables at the back, dominated by a wide-screen TV with …

Lydia and I are language impaired. I am learning Dutch and she is learning French, but we only speak English and that is likely to take yea…

The festival of Cwarmé in Malmedy has been going on for at least 500 years, on the Sunday before Shrove Tuesday every year. It is simply delightful,…

As the train took us east from Leuven to Verviers the land slowly rose up and then turned positively hilly. We started to see more of towns than just…

From Verviers we caught a bus through the snowy highlands of Hautes Fagnes to the town of Malmédy, in the German-speaking Eastern Cantons of B…

The Children's Carnival is held on the Saturday before Shrove Tuesday in Villers la Ville, in Walloon Brabant. The main Carnival is on the day after,…

The cost of labour in Belgium is quite high. Taxes are the highest in Europe, at 55.4% (as an aside, while the taxes are used in a progressive mann…

We were flicking through the list of Carnival festivals in French Belgium and came across Carnival for Children in Villers le Ville. Since the ruin…

We had a nice lead on an apartment near South Brussels train station, so we hopped on a train from Leuven to Brussels. Lydia was tickled when the tic…

Leuven is packed full of odd little statues, partly because it has been an important town for hundreds of years, a centre of learning and …

Tomorrow is "dikke truiendag", so the university is going to dropp the heating down to 19 degrees. It is part of a Flemish government campaign to h…

Il Fornello Pizzeria is a small Italian restaurant on the Oude Markt. It was pleasant and friendly, we were given a nice table on the top floor, over…

Across Europe lies what is called the "Antibiotic border". South of the border in the Romantic countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc) antibiotic…

Everything is a travel experience when you are living overseas. It is interesting how some things are so much cheaper than you are use …

This little café in the town square would in most places be a tourist trap, because it is in the perfect location, looking out across the incredibly…

In the centre of the city the largest square, the Ladeuzeplein, is dominated by the University Library. The square is named after a former rector…

I lost our first weekend in Belgium to an ear infection, but things are getting better now. After paying through the nose for health ca…

We opened up our Belgian bank account today, and they are very security conscious about online banking. No simple password to open up your online ban…

A friend of mine was telling me an amusing story about the language differences in Belgium, where Belgian French is considered by the French to be…

st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } Knowledge about Belgium in Australia is very limited, so whenever we tell people we are moving to …

Our flight landed and we sat at the railway station in Brussels, waiting for our train to take us to our new home. It was dark already by the time we…