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Thanks for sharing DrewTheBear

Armand

I really wish people in Belgium would learn how to use a damn round about u give way u used the inside lane if ur going left aghhhhh its drives me mad

Exactly! I had to get that one off my chest. It means if theres two lanes approaching, then nobody uses the left hand lane and it surely makes congestion worse. Anyway.

Yeah and then they pull out at ur on round abouts and junctions drive up ur ass on the moterway i thought uk was bad

My god i see a lot of Anger here with respect to Belgium driving!!! I never had so many troubles with driving in any other country before!

Have to say the roads here are better than UK, but the drivers are terrible.
I have never seen so many near misses before as I have on the E40 also I live very close to a roundabout and always I am hearing the squealing of tires and honking of horns because people do not understand basic driving etiquette. Don't get me started on the local parking lot....

Any ways, my list:

Pro:-
The sheer variety of beers and drinks to sample
The people (so far) are very friendly
The randomness of the architecture
Systems that actually work
Trains that do actually arrive

Cons:-
As above, poor driving!
Drunk people sitting below my window at 3am in the morning...
Trying to find anything similar to smoked bacon.

Well not sure were in UK ur from but I find a lot of roads here to be worse but I guess for both countries it depends on aera. I did find some bacon In a Okay market. I didnt eat it and im not sure if its smoked have u spoken to the butchers perhaps

Like:
Beer
The people
Planckendael zoo


Don't:
No KFC
Light Pollution
And another vote for the roads.

omg i miss kfc so much lol and nanodos this country needs a nandos

Ok so here is a full list

Things I Like
The bakers yum
Peanut butter and Hagel Slag (sorry for miss spelling i barely ate peanut butter untill i moved here)
Leoardis chocolates
Having my bf closer

Things I dont like
Belguim drivers
Train Toilets near brussels (once i moved to gent i found toilets on trains to be ok but the ones near brussels and flemmish bravant well i feel violated lol
The fact people allmost always charge you to use a damn toilet even in Kortjik cimena disgusting
The fact I have the being english curse (as my tutor calls it as in people speak english to you always)
No KFC and Nandos and many other food places a miss espally no coffee shop that dose skinny lates apart from starbucks and my god the price of starbucks here sniff

Well i think that it is ill probs think of more once i posted this

When we go to the Netherlands I always bring as KFC back, probably not what most bring back but I need a good fried chicken fix every now and then. It never used to worry me not having it but when you can't it becomes an obsession.

The toilet thing is odd too, you shouldn't need to pay for it anywhere. Especially when you have paid for your tickets to a gig or cinema.
Another thing is the garbage collection, it should be a public service not a revenue raising excersise.


I definitely agree about the chocolate shop, I love those.
And the good bakery's with good bread.
And the Floris bar in Brussels is great I miss going there.

I also like Sinter Klaas lol

You generally have to pay a part to all publuc services in bel atlest with the white sacks here u pay for them the 20 euros for about 20 and it makes u recyle more

20 Euros? I wouldn't complain about that.
It's 40 Euros here, 2 euro a bag. It's disgraceful, it costs 4 or 6 euro just to put the rubbish out and that's if the horribly poorly built, undersize bags don't split on you and you have to double up. Then you have to just dump the bags on the side of the road which the feral cats, hedgehogs and whatever else tear to shreds leaving rubbish everywhere and they don't pick the bags up. You can't even put the bags in cans to protect them.

I don't know how it is supposed to encourage you to recycle when they have the other recycling services on offer already. There is nothing left to recycle. It's a poor excuse but they won't change as it must be making them a fortune.
Any green argument they might have is made redundant by the fact they won't provide actual bins to buy or rent and instead continue to create more pollution in the manufacturing of the white bags.

Well I guess its diff there but in Gent you pay for ur white sacks i have ripped a couple but there useally ok 30 liter ones for 20 euros. You get about 15 to 20 ive never actually counted them. Those are for household. Our PMD goes in blue bags and other paper and boxes go in a cardboard box. They take the white bags every week and the others every 2 weeks and we just put them out and that it that. Glass we have to take the bins near the station

You can indeed buy wheely bins from Interza who operate refuse services in Zaventem, it's simply not true.


We're a family of 6 and our non recyclable rubbish would fit in one Interza white bag at 2 euro for the  week, I find that extremely cheap. Ok the white bags are cheaper in Brussels, but it's only because there's not the political will there to charge people more for white than yellow and blue bags, it's a deliberate policy to encourage people to recycle correctly and not put blue and yellow items in the white bags.

^Exactly. And EVERYWHERE charges for trash pickup, it's NOT a "public service," it is a JOB, that people are paid to do!! Gawd, this country is fabulous, it drives me crazy when people start ranting about completely inane things as though they were some huge ordeal. >___<

Besides i have found that everything i am used to being  a public service to have to be partly paid for her trash schools healthcare etc. But yeah not every country charges for it but Belguim dose but really its not that costly

PS only once in 3 years have our refuse bags been attacked - our neighbours gave us the tip of putting the white bags on the wall or at least raising them off the ground as the foxes who DO destroy the bags don't much like climbing even a small height to get to your bags. To avoid having the bags opened by animals, you also keep your food waste separate and place it in discarded shopping bags, tie them and then put them in the larger white bags, so there are 2 layers the animals have to get through to get to your food waste, it does seem to work as they can tell by the lesser smell that it's just not worth scavenging for.

The only rubbish around ours which does not get collected is rubbish which is not in the right bags - you either get stickers placed on the bags reminding you to re-sort, if you persistently put recycling in the white bags or wrongly put recycling in the wrong recycling bag, then you get a 75 euro fine.

We actually live in Brussels region and I find the service here excellent compared to the basic recycling which still goes on from where we moved from. There are door collections for large items, green waste recycling. For all this service, we must spend perhaps 150 euro max per year on refuse bags which is for 6 people, how on earth is that expensive?

@ schoolmum
All those wheely bins are for the recycling which we have and I have no issue with at all, but you cannot buy one for your white bags and you cannot put the white bags inside a can or anything else.
Again, the policy is flawed when we already recycle everything that can be recycled, there isn't any more we can do. It's a cash cow, nothing else.

It doesn't matter here if you seperate the food into other bags either whatever wants to get at it will get at it. Like I said, if the bag is split bad enough they will leave it, pick up the others but leave the broken one.
The simple fact is it can be easily avoided by bringing in wheely bins, but it would mean they have to sacrifice some income.


@ Melby, Simply not true. Maybe I'm used to garbage collection being a civil service and paid for by the local council, after all that's what we pay taxes and council rates for. It is(should be) a public service and also a public health issue. Maybe it's not the same everywhere but it is how it has normally been done in my experience.
It's hardly inane. Maybe not a huge ordeal but hey, thread title is 'Things I don't like' and I definitely don't like this aspect.

These differences just take spme getting used to. Like in UK we get a wheelie bin and thats that and its all free. But i never recyled really so when i came here i learned a lot about reycleing

You're right, it's just something different. It's not a big deal as I make seem to be but I was genuinely surprised by the way it's done here with the white bags.

In the interest of saying something positive again, I like the music festival season. The AB and Paul and freindz tattoo shop.

Well  i had the best day yestoday with Sinter Klaas

I see plenty of Kraainem residents right next to us using containers which they put their white bags in, some apartments have collective huge wheelie bins that they put their white bags in to and Interza empties them. You could get a simple large box from Brico and stick your white bag into it to protect it from animals and from tearing, then once Interza have collected, you retrieve your box from the street.

Part of the funding for refuse collection here comes from local income tax, but some funding comes from the sales of the bags - it's a simple system of making those who throw out more rubbish pay more, I find it fairer than everyone paying exactly the same price which is unfair on single person households who consume and throw out less than large households like us who have to pay more to throw out more. The white bags are the most expensive to encourage people to recycle more and consume more wisely so they throw out less.

Things I don't like;

1. I find the road surfaces are really terrible here.
2. The bad and reckless driving which I've already witnessed.
3. I love a junk food fix every now and then, so I was disappointed when I moved here to disover there's no KFC, the bloody heathens.

Things I do;

1. Cycling, Belgium seems to be full of keen cyclists.
2. Sculpture classes, there's more 'hobby craft' activities here.
3. Day trips out, there's always something of interest happening somewhere in Belgium.

We should open a KFC lol

I'd love too, but it costs a bomb for a KFC franchise and I wouldn't want to actually work in the place.

Hopefully KFC will eventually come to Belgium so I don't have to keep going all the way to Zeeland, Holland for a Variety Bucket and a Zinger Tower Burger!

I think i may join u next time lol road tripppp

Lots of people say they like KFC - it's never appealed to me though. But I respect your right to like it ofcourse! I like buying the Fermier (spelling?) chicken from Carrefour to roast with carrots and onions which caremalize - now that is awesome.

I should add to my list of things I like etc:
6. Getting paid twice in December, and holiday pay in May.
But, I dont like...
6. Having to claim back the over taxing each year and not receiving it for 10 months.

Not had the misfortune to pay Belgium taxes as of yet lol but i always have to claimb bk from uk