Brussels

I’m not talking about the telco landline phone booths that were probably around in the 1990s. I think it was ~5—10 years or so ago that there were many hole-in-the-wall convenience shops that had phone booths. I never used them but I’m not liking GSM voice prices so I wanted to try them out. I assume they are cheap voip lines.

But I cannot find any now. I saw 6 or so (what I think are) phone booths in a Ria money transfer shop, but they were taped off and out of use. Anyone know of any that still exist?

I found this but I think they are just talking about telco serviced phones:

https://www.thebulletin.be/public-phone-boxes-thing-past-belgium

As the world quietly and non-transparently removes the cash option, I try to keep an eye on whether I am a boiling frog in that pot.

Mutuals for healthcare do not accept cash payment for their administrative fees, and yet their service is mandatory. Though I wonder if the bPost cash payment service would work for this. I believe bPost’s service is restricted to only certain kinds of bills like utility bills.

Mutual staff told me if they need to reimburse a patient who gave them no bank info, they send a Belgian “circular cheque”. Many people erroneously believe cheques to be non-existent, even some bankers!

It’s a bit off because generally (in the commercial sector) when you pay for something using a certain payment instrument, any refunds should use the same payment instrument. If you paid cash, you should get cash back. If you paid by a bank card, the reimbursement should go back to that same card. It’s important for accounting and avoids shenanigans like a consumer asking the bank for a chargeback when the refund was already given through a different means.

Anyway, it’s understandable that a mutual would not have that degree of precision. But isn’t someone who is unbanked essentially screwed in this case? What can an unbanked person do with a Belgian circular cheque? In some countries they would in the very least be able to cash the cheque at the issuing bank. According to Belfius, a circular cheque cannot be cashed and must be deposited on an account. This seems to impose forced-banking, correct?

Product returns

BTW, I paid cash for something in a shop which I later returned. The shop was “incapable” of refunding cash and they insisted on reimbursing to a bank card. I could not work out how that could be legal. Consumers are entitled to refunds in certain situations, so if a merchant refuses a refund due to a consumer not having a bank account, they are essentially violating the consumer protection law, no?

As a test, I insisted on cash reimbursement. It was under €10 yet still a big hassle for them. Even though they had a cash register holding cash from inbound payments, they had to discuss with management in order to make an exception and reimburse cash.

Anyone see this before? I have only ever seen a cavity in the bottom near base where it balloons out. The top has always been solid edible flesh in every butternut squash I have worked with until this point.

(edit) I should mention that the street market is surprisingly fair. Prices tend to be lower on lower quality produce. Avacado pricing is all over the place, as is the qualty, which is hard to know in advance. But I’ve never felt ripped off on the avacados. It’s possible that the price of €2 per butternut squash factored in the reduced flesh. It’s just something to be aware of.

Of course it’s well-known that Belgians do not need a passport to move freely in the Schengen area +2 nearby countries, but I thought it was interesting that some overseas countries allow Belgian tourists without even a passport:

“3. Bilateral Agreements: Some non-European countries have bilateral agreements with Belgium allowing Belgian citizens to enter without a passport. For example, Belgian citizens can visit certain countries in South America and the Caribbean with just their their national ID cards.”

That was just a vague and incomplete blurb in the linked article. Does anyone have more details? Which parts of S.America?

This page also mentions Netherlands in the Americas, presumably the Dutch Caribbean. So then the question is, is just the Dutch regions of the Caribbean accessible without a passport, or rest of the Caribbean?

I also wonder: what if a Belgian re-enters Belgium from abroad, e.g. Africa, with just a national ID card. I that allowed? I mean, Belgium obviously recognises their own ID card and there’s no reason for citizens to need a stamp. So if they can re-enter Belgium on an ID card from the Caribbean, why not from anywhere?

🇦🇹 Austria
🇧🇬 Bulgaria
🇭🇷 Croatia
🇨🇾 Cyprus (non-Schengen; must show the card)
🇨🇿 Czech Republic
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇪🇪 Estonia
🇫🇮 Finland
🇫🇷 France (in Regions of France))
🇩🇪 Germany
🇬🇷 Greece
🇭🇺 Hungary
🇮🇸 Iceland (non-EU)
🇬🇧 Ireland (non-Schengen; must show the card)
🇮🇹 Italy
🇱🇻 Latvia
🇱🇮 Liechtenstein (non-EU)
🇱🇹 Lithuania
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
🇲🇹 Malta
🇳🇱 Netherlands
🇳🇴 Norway (non-EU)
🇵🇱 Poland
🇵🇹 Portugal
🇷🇴 Romania
🇸🇰 Slovakia
🇸🇮 Slovenia
🇪🇸 Spain
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇨🇭 Switzerland (non-EU)

^ That list is well published all over, but excludes S.America and the Caribbean. Can we get a complete list for Belgium?

Same old same old. Every year. There are always unmet demands.

Fire fighters vs police

Perhaps the interesting episode this time around was firefighters were protesting and a small group of firefighters broke off from the rest and blocked a round about, then attacked some cops there.

Military

It’s also weird when the military strikes. The military is not generally a democratic institution internally AFAIK. And the service people are theoretically not there for personal gain but to serve their country. So it’s unclear how the country and voluntary servants thereto would be out of alignment.

Are the service people trapped in long contracts, perhaps? In principle I would think they would simply bounce at the end of the contract. If recruiting becomes a problem then there would be natural pressure to make service more enticing.

When traveling outside Belgium, I found an optrician who was able to make corrective lenses and install them into the kind of frames that wraps around the head with no space between the face, forehead, temples, and the frame. This is good for cycling and motorsports because the tight fit prevents them falling off and also the lack of air gap protects the eyes from wind and debris.

The frames were not intended for corrective lenses.. they were normal non-corrective sunglasses. The problem is that corrective lenses cannot tolerate much of a curve, so the curve of the frames makes it difficult to install lenses. In my case I got lucky. My prescription did not require overly thick lenses so they just barely tolerated the curved frames. The optrician who produced them was actually uncertain they would be able to pull it off.

Anyway, I need an update. When I visit arbitrary optricians and ask them to replicate my sporty glasses, they say they cannot.

So, does anyone know of an optrician in Brussels who might be more skilled or specialised in this kind of requirement?

The last couple registered letters (par recommandee) were simply dropped into my unmarked mailbox. My name is not even displayed on the box or doorbell, though I think the postal worker has come to learn my name.

Nonetheless, it seems dicey. There are any number of reasons a letter might not reach me but the sender is led to believe I have definitively received their letter to the extent of me being legally responsible for having been informed of the contents.

Email is even more strangely treated in this way. Email is generally unreliable. Email to me in particular is like a crap shoot where some messages get blackholed (no error yet ultimately no delivery). Yet Belgium gives email the same legal status as registered letters. How can this not lead to disaster and injustice?

A murderer might as well send a forged confession from someone else via email to the police.

Anyone using a PYG¹ SIP trunking service to call Belgian numbers? Or a service that sends SMS messages?

Prices are all over the place:

• voip €0.05/min nomado.eu
• voip €0.045/min https://www.belgium-voip.com/fr/tarifs/
• voip us$ 0.259/min telxi.com
• voip €0.025/min https://didlogic.com/pricing/wholesale-international-voice/call-rates/
• voip €0,02478/min http://www.voip-france.com/tarifs
• voip €0.0185/min https://www.voiptiger.com/call-rates/
• sms us$ 0.105/msg (compared to $0.0079 to the US) https://www.twilio.com/en-us/sms/pricing/be

For comparison, Orange prepaid costs: 0,15 €/min - 0,06 €/SMS - 0,24 €/MMS

Orange prepaid is high enough to justify voip and an SMS service. €10 only buys 67 minutes or 167 SMS msgs.. wtf, that’s crazy. Anyone know of any other PYG SIP service for under 2¢/min?

Or an SMS service for under 6¢/msg? Not sure what causes Twilio to charge over 10¢/msg in Belgium but less than a penny in the US for an SMS. In principle it should cost more to send an SMS to the US than to Belgium because the US has a much lower population density (thus fewer people reachable per tower).

¹pay as you go

I figure the moment I turn on the heating the ultimate source for energy is Russia. So at that moment, I would be feeding the wrong side of Russia’s war.

Anyone else trying to see how long you can go without heat? I hang out in a room that has no external walls. I’m probably unavoidably leeching some heat off the neighbor’s wall.

I guess if it drops below 5°C indoors I will have to throw in the towel to prevent water pipes from freezing.

I heard Starbucks offers nitro coffee (which is supposedly a fizzy coffee with nitrogen). But apparently no Starbucks in Belgium offers it, according to staff at the central station store.

Anyone see it served anywhere?

I’ve always been skiddish with the idea of authorising a creditor to grab money out of my bank account, rather than me initiating the transmission. I like to be in control because creditors can be shitty.

But fun fact: it turns out the law entitles payers to claw back the money up to 8 weeks after it leaves the account. Eight weeks to change your mind. This is also written on the sample SEPA direct debit form referenced by the link. To have an 8 week entitlement to a “no questions asked” refund gives more control than initiating a payment on your side because if you send a payment, there is no refund option once it is sent.

Reading the law suggests the purpose of the SEPA direct debit is in fact to give consumers enough confidence to trust the mechanism.

There used to be a Triodos branch here:

50.83856°N, 4.35009°E

But it seems to be a travel agency now. triodos.be still exists but gives no address. This was the only bank that I considered ethical.

Perhaps a consequence of COVID19, customer service is trending toward enshitification across the finance (banking & insurance) and legal industries as it gets increasing rare that you can simply walk in the door and get service. There has been a gatekeeping uptick where you are asked if you have an appointment -- blocked from talking to someone without one.

A pension company lobby desk cop (gate keeper) said call to make an appointment. Then when you call the phone system is broken.

In another case I was forced to call, then they said over the phone “send an email”. Of course their shitty configuration uses Google, which is another barrier to entry.

In another case I entered a building and could speak to someone but only after filling out an application for a visitor badge. There was a little red fucking asterisk next to phone number and email -- required fields. So indeed, I could not simply talk to someone vis-à-vis without having an email and phone number and the will to share that info.

So we have to ask, why all the tight security? Is the customer service so poor that there is a notable risk of outraged customers doing something destructive?

We need a right to be offline in Belgium before the enshitification gets so thick we cannot function.

I found a list of mortgage lenders here:

https://hellosafe.be/pret-hypothecaire/taux#Notre_comparatif_des_meilleurs_taux_hypothecaires_en_Belgique

It’s hard to trust that as a complete list because it seems to be published by one of them (hello). There are only a few that I do not recognize as main street banks (but perhaps they still are nonetheless).

I’m not interested in main street banks. Too much baggage. Too many shenanigans like forcing you into “relationship banking”, where the bundle in a bunch of shit.. unwanted current and savings accounts and forced insurance provider. They get around the law by saying you have “choice” as they give a less favorable interest rate for not taking the bundle. Fuck all that.

Any suggestions on mortgage lenders who are well separated from banks?

Mobile carriers in many countries provide a free email→SMS gateway service, so if you have no SMS capability or credit, or you are outside the country you can still get an SMS to someone using just email.

I had a look at many SMS gateway lists¹, and Base/Telenet and Proximus are never mentioned. Orange has no Belgian gateways, just:

• Orange NL: 10digitnumber`@sms.orange.nl`
• Orange UK: 10digitnumber@orange.net
• Orange India, Mumbai: 9digitnumber@orangemail.co.in

Doing an MX lookup on @sms.orange.nl gives nothing, so the service to Dutch subscribers has apparently been unplugged.

Orange claims to support RCS (Rich Communication Services) exclusively for Android 8.1+ devices. Yet wikipedia shows the Orange service to be discontinued… that it only lasted 2012-2019.

OTOH, an article (fr) claims all 3 carriers (Base, Orange, Proximus) deploy it around 2020.

Indeed that’s absolute fucking garbage that all parties to the conversation must have an Android -- in effect: SMS 2.0 is only for Google patrons. RCS is touted to be an open standard alternative to walled-gardens. But f-droid.org has no RCS app. Nor does Debian.

So, RCS can fuck off. Are there any old email gateways for Belgian GSM subscribers that are perhaps widely unknown?

Orange has this roughly explained service:

https://easymessaging.orange.be/

So you cannot simply send an email. You must register. And registration demands a mobile number (needed because the SMS callerID will be “spoofed” to your number). It does not state whether your own mobile number must be an Orange number. So it’s unclear if senders must be an Orange customer, and it’s also unclear if the recipient must be an Orange customer (though unlikely because you cannot know easily what carrier the recipient uses).

For me, it’s broken. I could not get past the verification step. If anyone else attempts it and succeeds or fails with that, feedback would be appreciated.

① Link farm of SMS gateway lists:
https://www.email-unlimited.com/stuff/send-email-to-phone.htm
https://when2work.com/help/emp/find-text-address/
https://gist.github.com/spangey/518e358959e545bf03fc
https://helpcenter.horizonwebref.com/en/articles/6221095-what-mobile-carriers-do-you-support-for-free-text-messaging
https://web.archive.org/web/20241213132316/https://www.lifewire.com/sms-gateway-from-email-to-sms-text-message-2495456
https://avtech.com/articles/138/list-of-email-to-sms-addresses
https://20somethingfinance.com/how-to-send-text-messages-sms-via-email-for-free/

I believe if you buy a house in Belgium the only people who know are the seller, the lender, insurer, and the notaires. It’s supposedly not public information -- unlike other countries which publish an open database of who owns what property, searchable by anyone.

Even the water provider (Vivaqua) does not know, despite a law whereby if a tenant bounces without paying their water bill, Vivaqua can hold the home owner responsible in some situations. But as a practical matter Vivaqua is blocked because they do not get automatic access to ownership info. They must go through a long beurocratic process to obtain that info (so at some level the gov must know as well.. likely the property tax offices).

Anyway, I just brought up Vivaqua as an example of the extent of privacy home owners are granted in Belgium. If Vivaqua has a hard time getting the info then so does everyone else.

Or so it’s said.. my question: where is real estate privacy written? This whole concept of real estate privacy in Belgium is non-existent as far as my preferred search service knows. I could not find any information about it. Real estate statutes were overhauled in 2021, so It’s unclear if the privacy factor remained.

Orange gives gratis minutes exclusively for calling other Orange/Voo subscribers. Base does the same. So it would be useful to know before calling which network the other person is on -- particularly if call credit is low.

Any tips on this?

In general, prefixes are relevant:

• 049× ← Orange
• 048× ← Base
• 047× ← Proximus

I forgot Proximus. But in any case, this is not reliable due to phone number portability whereby people swich carriers and keep their number. There are also prefixes that are not widely known (e.g. 0491).

The only way I know to check is to place a call then login after the fact and check whether gratis minutes were consumed or whether the balance dropped. Is there a way to check a number without contacting it?

Habillé de rouge, vert et doré, le Tram de Noël circulera sur six lignes du réseau Stib : les lignes 9, 18, 81, 82 et 92. Les passagers pourront ainsi profiter de l’ambiance festive de Noël.

La première nouvelle salle, d’une superficie de 715 mètres carrés, sera dédiée à l’Art nouveau et à l’Art déco belges.

La deuxième salle, d’une superficie d’environ 500 mètres carrés, présentera les Arts décoratifs du 19e siècle.

I ran out of chipotle¹ powder and do not recall where in Brussels I bought it. Mexigo sells it but it’s like over €5 for just 100g (about 5 times the price per unit of paprika powder).

Bottles of Cholula chipotle sauce are easy to find but always over €5 which is still a bit pricey and does not keep as well as powder.

¹ It’s basically smoked jalepeño peppers.

Upon signing up for a 1 year insurance policy, I was told the policy is effective immediately but I have 14 days to pay. I asked if I could terminate the policy at any time and in particular if I could do so in the first 14 days. The answer was no -- that I was locked in for a full year from the very moment of signing with no 14 day cooling off period.

I accepted. But for clarity and knowing my rights I had a look at the law of 04.04.2014, which seems to contradict what the insurer told me.

IIUC, there is a 14-day termination allowance:

(fr) Le preneur d'assurance et l'assureur disposent d'un délai de quatorze jours pour résilier le contrat d'assurance, sans pénalité et sans obligation de motivation. Toutefois, pour les contrats d'assurance sur la vie, ce délai est porté à trente jours.

(en machine translation) The insurance taker and insurer have a period of fourteen days to terminate the insurance contract, without penalty and without any obligation of motivation. However, for life insurance contracts, this period is extended to 30 days.

And regardless of the time of termination (beyond 14 days), it seems consumers are entitled to pro rata refund on the unused portion:

(fr) Art.73) Lorsque le contrat est résilié pour quelque cause que ce soit, les primes payées afférentes à la période d'assurance postérieure à la date de prise d'effet de la résiliation sont remboursées dans un délai de trente jours à compter de la prise d'effet de la résiliation ou, en cas d'application de l'article 57, § 3, à compter de la réception par l'assureur de la notification de la résiliation.

(en machine translation) (Art.73) Where the contract is terminated for any cause, the premiums paid for the period of insurance after the effective date of termination shall be refunded within thirty days from the date of termination or, in the case of application of section 57, § 3, from the date of receipt by the insurer of the termination.

Am I misreading? It seems like this is very basic information that would commonly arise, so it’s a bit unexpected that an insurer would get it wrong. Or is this a case where the contract can supercede the law? I did not read the contract yet (was in a hurry).

When charities like Oxfam ask for donations, they actually refuse cash donations because the practice is banned. Presumably this is to deter the fraud of a beggar posing as a charity.

What’s the deal with the trash collectors, who once per year just before the holidays go door-to-door asking for donations? It seems they are asking for gratuity for the work they did over the course of the year. Questions:

• Are they strictly compensating the scheduled trash bag collection service, or does that also compensate those who pick up litter along the sidewalk and curbs?
• Do they accept cash? If yes, is that legal? I’m thinking there must be a distinction between charity and gratuity, and since it’s still common to tip waitstaff in cash the law may only apply to charitable donations. OTOH, there is no fraud risk with tipping a food server. But anyone can pose as a trash collector and go door-to-door.
• What are people’s thoughts on trash collectors going door-to-door asking for money? Is it fair enough, or is it off?
• What amounts do people give? And what amount would be an insult?

Les parcs, réserves naturelles et bois régionaux, dont la forêt de Soignes, seront interdits d’accès au public samedi à partir de 10h00 en raison des fortes rafales de vent annoncées, a indiqué vendredi Bruxelles Environnement dans un communiqué. Ces rafales pourraient atteindre, voire dépasser, 80 km/h.

Des avis seront apposés aux entrées des espaces verts et les gardiens informeront le public. De manière générale, Bruxelles Environnement recommande d’éviter de circuler à proximité des arbres sur l’ensemble du territoire. Tous les espaces verts bruxellois devraient à nouveau être accessibles à partir de dimanche 8h00.

Link to the video.

Ilham won the title of Best Driver at this year's European Tramdriver Championship.

Un castor s’est installé pour la première fois depuis sa réintroduction en Belgique, à Bruxelles. Cela fait plusieurs mois que l’un de ces animaux a pris ses quartiers au bord de Senne, au nord de la capitale, a rapporté vendredi l’agence régionale Bruxelles Environnement.

Fun fact: If you have credit on a prepaid SIM and you switch carriers, the balance is portable (minus fees of ~€5).

But if you want to switch from one Orange SIM to another, the credit is trapped on the old SIM. In effect, Orange steers customers toward their competitor, inadvertently.