r/AskBelgium

Got married and now I’m part of a French/Flemish family and I love the culture. I’d love to know any interesting facts or customs that I may not be able to find easily online. Thanks in advance ☺️

So for context my mum is British but my stepdad who raised from the age of 4 is Belgian born and bred. My grandparents from him are both Belgian, I have been to Belgium more times than I remember going all over the country, he raised me in a way a Belgian man would with no British cultural input. I was raised with Belgian mannerisms, cooking, entertainment and culture from him. I understand Belgian politics, culture and jokes. Can I consider myself as being half Belgian or Belgian at all when he’s not my blood related father.

I recently moved to Belgium and I am currently waiting for the police to come check my address. To be honest, it has been a bit annoying that I cannot leave the house as much as I would like to explore my new home city, but mostly, I am confused because it just seems like a very strange rule to me, especially since it seems that this is done for everyone moving, even Belgian citizens within Belgium.

I have tried googling to understand the reasoning behind it, but I only find pages explaining the rule, not why it is in place or how it came about. Is it just tradition, maybe from back when things were more community and village based? Is it to prevent some kind of fraud, but if so, what kind of fraud, and how much is this really preventing? I kind of doubt that it's preventing enough fraud to be worth costs of sending all these police officers around, but maybe I'm wrong and I just haven't found any statistics. If anyone can point me to sources (in any language) explaining the history and reasoning of this I would be super interested.

I have been on sick leave since July 2025. I resigned this week officially, and have been applying for jobs.

After having a good talk with a recruiter yesterday, I got invited for a job interview next week.

Am I obliged to tell the recruiter/manager I have been on sick leave for so long? Is that something they will find out if I don’t tell them?

Ik heb een Audi A3 sedan Sline van 2025 gekocht bij een erkende garage. Tweedehands, maar het was een personeelswagen met 2500-3000 km dus eigenlijk bijna nieuw. Auto kostte 43k.
Nu heb ik hem ongeveer 4,5 maand en zit ik op 10.000 km.
Sinds ongeveer 2 maanden heb ik een heel hard piepend geluid bij het remmen. Het is echt luid genoeg dat mensen op straat kijken als ik afrem.
Garage zegt dat remblokken en schijven “in orde” zijn en ze hebben zogezegd Audi/importeur gecontacteerd en wachten op antwoord.
Wat mij vooral opvalt:
bij koud weer bijna geen geluid
bij warmer weer is het echt extreem hard piepen.. ik heb deze auto gekocht in Januari, dus toen kon ik het nooit horen.. door koud..
Voor mij voelt dit niet normaal voor zo’n nieuwe en dure auto, maar de garage doet alsof het niet duidelijk is wat het probleem is.
Ik begin mij af te vragen of dit “normaal Audi remgeluid” is of dat ze mij gewoon aan het afwimpelen zijn tot garantie voorbij is.
Iemand ervaring hiermee? Moet ik hier gewoon op blijven pushen of is dit typisch iets dat “normaal” wordt gevonden bij Audi?

Hun antwoordt:
Wat betreft het piepende geluid bij het remmen begrijpen wij dat het aanhoudende geluid voor u storend is en vragen kan oproepen omtrent de werking van het voertuig.
Zoals reeds besproken willen wij u nogmaals bevestigen dat de remmen door onze werkplaats grondig werdern nagezien.
Hierbij werd vastgesteld dat de remblokken zich nog op minstens 80% van hun oorspronkelijke staat bevinden en technisch volledig binnen de normen van Audi vallen.
Slijtageonderdelen zoals remcomponenten vallen bovendien niet automatisch onder garantie wanneer er geen technisch defect of abnormale slijtage wordt vastgesteld.
 
Net daarom hebben wij de voorgeschreven procedure van Audi gevolgd en de nodige controles en behandelingen uitgevoerd, waaronder het reinigen en behandelen van de remcomponenten.
Tijdens onze testritten werd hierbij geen abnormaal geluid meer vastgesteld.
Aangezien het geluid zich opnieuw voordoet, hebben wij conform de richtlijnen van Audi een officieel technisch dossier geopend bij de importeur, inclusief de door u bezorgde videobeelden.
Op die manier wensen wij voor u verder te onderzoeken welke oplossing of bijkomende aanbeveling Audi in dit dossier eventueel nog kan voorstellen

I've been to Belgium a few times over the years for tourism, always part of a larger trip connected to other countries by high speed rail. I normally use Brussels as a base and venture to places like Ghent, Leuven, and Bruges. Someone in our party mentioned wanting to check out Lille but then I realized that I've never been to Antwerp but always kind of wanted to. We like museums, Flemish food, monuments, just sight seeing in general. We like parks, cafes, canal tours, castles, grand squares, architecture, history, etc.

The small Chinatown looks cool but other than that what does it offer visitors that you won't find in the other cities? Is it worth a visit or should we check out Lille instead? There won't be time for both.

As the title says, I kind of regret my bachelor choice: International Business Management at Artevelde. I’m 21 and graduated during the first semester of this academic year.

To be honest, the degree was barely challenging for me. The semester abroad was easily the highlight of the entire experience, but apart from that, I often feel like I could have spent the last three years doing something far more meaningful, useful or at least just challenging. Something that would directly lead to a stronger career path or challenge me intellectually.

The issue is that I struggle to stay genuinely interested in things long term. Recently though, I’ve become really interested in AI and machine learning, and I’ve been spending a lot of my free time learning about it. Also because it is in the rise and I understand that it will undoubtedly make a big part of our future. At the same time, I’m currently doing a bridging program for a master’s degree that does align with my bachelor, but I still keep questioning whether it’s actually the right path for me.

Has anyone else gone through something similar? Feeling like they chose the wrong degree, or only discovering what truly interests them later on?

Any advice or personal experiences would be appreciated.

Salut ! Je ne demandais si y'a des gens qui arrive a faire de l'occasion sur autre chose que Facebook market place en belgique ? J'ai l'impression que c'est devenu la référence ^^"

J'ai une tour pc a vendre et vinted me fait peur au niveau de l'envoi donc j'aimerais une vente en main propre vous aurez des conseils ?

I always hear a lot about credit cards with amazing bonuses like cashback, great insurance, extra advantages like travel miles,... in other countries (especially the USA). Are there any good credit cards like that available in Belgium?

I know Revolut has their RevPoint system for cashback and a few extra advantages like a sub to NordVPN,... but I wonder if there's any better cards available at other banks.

What are the best credit cards in your opinion?

I have two children and they need to learn French this summer to have some basics before school. I live in Flanders and I’m having a hard time finding resources I don’t have to pay out the nose to even search on. Could any of you please point me in the right direction? (They are too young for online learning)

It has happened multiple times to me now that I am on the train and second class is completely full. Not a single seat left and multiple people standing next to the doors or sitting on the stairs. So then I sit in first class. Then the sncb people come and tell me kindly to move. And I go down and I see six people standing because there are no seats in second class. It is completely illogical to have people standing when there are plenty of seats left in first class. Truly ridiculous. Does anyone know what exactly is the policy about this?

Hi everyone! I am an international student here in Brussels, and am still very actively confused to how medical system works. I am having bad allergic reactions right now and went to my GP. Although she prescribed some basic medicine, her main advice was to understand what exactly is triggering such a reaction, which is only possible as a specialised practitioner like allergologist or dermatologist. She even gave a referral and a phone number of CHU Saint-Pierre. I called them this morning times: first time they hung up immediately, the second told me multiple times that there is no spaces (not right now, not in a month, not ever) — wonder if that might be because I was speaking English to them? Anyway, this reaction is quite severe and it’s impacting the quality of my life so I’d want to figure out what is going on as soon as possible. However, most public hospitals (I would rather not overpay for non-contracted specialists) have the closest availability in Fall or even next year in general. I cannot believe people wait months to go to a doctor. What if my problem is not relevant anymore? Can someone please help me and give an advice, because so far I have been struggling a lot. Thanks!

I am a 31 year old Indian immigrant who has been living and working in Belgium since February 2022. Everything was good till last December until one fine day out of the blue my employer decided to make me redundant. I thought everything was going to be fine since I still worked in Belgium for 49 months. I thought I could apply for an Unlimited work permit and find a new job in the meanwhile while I look for a proper professional job.

Here is the shock. Due to the financial decline of my previous employer since the past few years they decided to put me on DOP or economic unemployment.

That added up to 2 months since in the last 4 years. ( The economic unemployment)

I fell agonisingly short of the 4 year mark and my visa got refused. They told me I could reapply from June but I don’t have a job ( I have been trying ) and my 3 months countdown has begun.

I have been here so long worked all the time. This feels unfair and I am so close to permanent residency and citizenship yet it all feels gone down the drain.

Anyone been in a similar situation?

What can I do to salvage these 4 years of work + residence and convert it into something useful.

All constructive suggestions welcome. 🤗

Hey, I'm thinking of moving countries and I dont know where to so i thought of booting up the old reddit account.

So the economical state of my country, politics, high food taxes, high cost of living, job market crisis, and ofcourse my alltime favourite the 250 days of bad weather we get every year. All of these (and most likely other reasons aswell that i cant think of rn) has just left me wondering how life would be somewhere else.

I'd like for this post to be your place to vent about your countrys shortcomings and praising what you like about them and i'll just take some inspiration.

If i were to move i'd do it in a couple years time at the minimum.

I'm ofcourse from Finland

I am an international student planning on moving to Belgium in the next few months. Throughout the process of moving international, I have noticed that Belgians are not into responding to email quickly. Is this just my experience, or is this a cultural thing?

EDIT:

I want to reiterate that I am not trying to be disrespectful. In the work culture that I am around, email is checked religiously, and, quite frankly I feel that is a bit toxic. I know that different areas have prefered communication styles; calling, texting, in-person, email, etc. and I just want to match my future communications to the style of the place that I am moving to 😄

But, as I said initially, this could just be a 'me' experience, and not at all a work culture thing!