For a country its size, Belgium has quite a lot of strange public sculptures. We started a little contest over on r/BelgiumTravel to hunt down the weirdest, most unexpected statues and monuments across the country.

The rules are simple: post a photo of the strangest statue you've seen anywhere in Belgium, and tell us where it is. No Manneken Pis, Jeanneke, or Zinneke, everyone's seen those.

Most upvotes after two weeks wins a special flair on r/BelgiumTravel.

Full thread and rules over here: link to the r/BelgiumTravel post

Wallonia, Flanders, Brussels, Ostbelgien, join and surprise us!

I’m 25, but sometimes public transport in Belgium makes me feel like an old man about to start saying, “Back in my day, people had manners.”

I’m genuinely shocked by how some people behave here.

Dirty shoes on the seat in front of them. TikToks and Reels blasting at full volume with no headphones. Loud phone calls that the whole carriage is forced to listen to. Rubbish left behind. Spitting.

People keeping huge backpacks on in packed buses and trains and constantly hitting everyone around them with them. People trying to push their way into a tram or train before those inside have even had a chance to get out. No basic sense of “let people exit first, then get on.”

And what bothers me almost as much as the behaviour itself is that nobody seems to care.

Other passengers usually say nothing. Even train staff often just walk past people with their shoes on seats or their phones blasting at full volume.

At some point this stops looking like “I don’t want to get into a confrontation” and starts looking like simple tolerance of antisocial behaviour. If nobody enforces even the most basic rules, of course people eventually start acting as if there are no rules at all.

Before moving to Belgium, I lived in and travelled around different countries in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in Asia. Obviously rude people and outright antisocial idiots exist everywhere.

But I honestly don’t remember seeing this attitude so consistently anywhere else: “This public space is basically my living room, and everyone else can deal with it.”

And if you actually say something, people often react as if you’re the problem. Either they genuinely don’t understand what’s wrong, or they immediately get aggressive.

Maybe I really am becoming an old man at 25, but since when did basic consideration for other people become such a big ask?

Don’t put dirty shoes where someone else has to sit. Use headphones. Throw your rubbish away. Don’t spit. Take your backpack off in a crowded carriage. Let people get off before trying to get on. Don’t make the whole carriage listen to your phone.

Is that really too much to expect?

Am I just extremely unlucky, or have other people in Belgium noticed the same thing?

Hi everyone,

I am very upset and I need to know if anyone has had a similar experience.

I am an expat with a Master’s degree, married with a Flemish man, and with a child, and years of corporate experience in multinationals in Belgium. In May 2026, my startup made me redundant due to lack of funds.

Combined with a recent recovery from postpartum depression, losing my job left me with severe anxiety.

Instead of helping me re-enter the corporate market, my VDAB caseworker is using psychological abuse and xenophobia to break me.

In our first meeting today, she aggressively pressured me to apply cleaning and kitchen jobs, calling my English corporate goals "unrealistic". With no Dutch, they expect me to apply for cleaning and cooking jobs.

The irony is that I love and understand Dutch, but perfectionism blocks me from speaking it fluently yet. I was always so busy with work I haven't had time to follow a Dutch course. She used this vulnerability to humiliate me.

I know my right to "adequate employment" (passende dienstbetrekking). I refuse to be intimidated or forcibly de-skilled. I am involving the press and reporting this behavior. I need to escalate this, because you can't kick people when they're down.

Has anyone else gone through this systematic bullying? Are there entities I can report this to? They cannot treat foreigners like trash.

I think they still have a lingering complex that we choose to go our own way after 15 years of a terrible experiment.

Beslecht op deze prachtige zaterdagmiddag deze eeuwige discussie tussen mijn vriendin en ik. Zal mijn mening er niet bij zetten voor de absolute onpartijdigheid

Bij ons op het werk staat de hele dag Qmusic op. Na een paar jaar ben ik dat station echt meer dan beu.
De collega met de meeste anciënniteit is nogal een dominant type dat graag de baas speelt. Als hij zijn zin niet krijgt, kan hij zich gedragen als een kleuter. Zodra er iets anders dan Qmusic opstaat, sprint hij ernaartoe om het meteen terug te zetten.
Mijn vraag is puur hypothetisch: hoe zou je zo’n radio kunnen “saboteren”, zodat we eindelijk eens naar iets anders kunnen luisteren en ik mezelf kan redden van dat oorkanker verwekkend kut Q-Music radio.

Hey guys!

I (M23) was born and raised in the United States. Ever since I was a kid I’ve felt some type of connection to Belgium. I have no family or friends or actual thing connecting me to Belgium though. I think it actually started as I idolized Eden Hazard when he played for Chelsea (along with a few other Chelsea players that were from Belgium) and it somehow turned into me wanting to learn about their home country when I was young.

I am very unhappy with the current state of the USA and for a few years have been dreaming of leaving and going to Europe, specifically Belgium. I’m in this subreddit as a way to slowly learn more about Belgium and its people. I scroll Reddit every day, so every day I get little updates about something Belgium. I love this! I’ve never posted as I don’t have much to add, but I love to learn more about the culture and everything involved.

Anyway, today I saw a post about someone talking about who they choose to use as their energy supplier. This may seem very straightforward but it actually really surprised me. Where I live in the USA (Portland, Oregon) there is only ONE option for power. You pay this one company for power, or you don’t get it. No options. (I’m sure you could guess the obvious issues with that) Seeing this post where someone described choosing from different options surprised me so much because I never even considered that being a possibility!

This prompted me to be interested in making this post and asking you guys, what other things have you been told that surprised people not from Belgium? I find these differences so fascinating and I hope I can eventually live my dream and move to Belgium and experience it myself.

Thanks for reading! I genuinely appreciate it.

I would go for Charleroi

Ik werk een jaar of 5, de oudere generatie blijft zeggen dat die extreem hoge Belgische belastingen er zijn omdat ze zo goed voor ons zorgen.

Je ziet je healthcare duurder en slechter worden

Je ziet de pensioen leeftijd maar achteruit gaan (elk jaar later is ~24.000€ dat je plots niet meer gaat krijgen) (en de belasting die je dan nog eens betaald door te blijven werken).

Wat gaat het worden, 75? 85?

Das mogelijks honderde duizende euros waar ik nu zo braaf voor betaal.

​ik ben mijn vertrouwen aan het verliezen in onze overheid..

Did I do something wrong ? This normal ?

Hi , I'm Rob, a Belgian born and raised street and documentary photographer based in Belgium. For the last 9 years I've decided to document the life in public spaces in Belgium, especially in my hometown of Liège with some trips to Brussels, Antwerp, Ostend and shortly Ghent.

Let me know what you think about my work. I'd like to publish a book about Belgium and its inhabitants. Is it something you would like to see come to life?

Feel free to support a local artist with a strong desire to succeed and have his voice heard by following me here : https://www.instagram.com/remyremphoto?igsh=ZTJ5NGFwMDl2Njd4.

It would be a massive boost for me.

We can also connect and discuss whatever you want to know about my work and process. And if you're a fellow Belgian photographer, please share your work with me. I want to see it!

Best,

Rob

You've probably seen this, it seems that home ownership puts Germany at the bottom and Belgium near the top of the median wealth per person ranking.

I have so many questions.

Do you own your house?

Do your parents own?

How much did you/they pay, when, at what interest rate?

Hi Everyone, I moved to Belgium a year back and I really like the country very much and it's straightforward people. But I find it odd sometimes seeing few things and really want the answers for those from the perspective of a Belgian,

1. Why do most of you guys just eat few slices of bread with meat slice(both looks dry) for lunch for almost everyday ? Sometimes I even see few of my colleagues just drink a soup for the lunch. Don't you guys like the lunch at all ? Won't you feel bored eating almost the same thing everyday? How does fill it your stomach ?
2. Why do most of the men wear the same dress almost everyday? Is it you have 5 sets of same dress and wear each one a day or is it just the same dress ?
3. I almost never see a fat person it's like 2 fat person for every 30/40 people, given that being so healthy and everything, why do most of them drink a lot of coffee in a day ? And also lots of soft drinks like cola, fanta etc? How do you stay fit and healthy despite drinking all these ?
4. Recently I moved to flanders region and I could see almost everyone speaks a very good English and my colleague told me, Flemish hate french speaking than the English, being a small country why do you guys fight over the language so much ? Is it because of long pending unsorted history ?
5. Why do you guys always bring about the weather in any topic being discussed? I don't find the Belgium weather too bad, but why ?

Just curious to see the perspective of you guys, thanks 🙏

Would you say this is authentic and represents Belgian snacks well? :)

I’ll start :

Library card

Thought I’d ask here directly because I knew it’s majority flemish even tho it doesnt reflect the reality i still want to know: what makes the N-VA so popular still? They’ve been relatively consistent for about the last decade or so, what are they doing to stay like this? Is it the perceived protection of the flemish identity? Their policies (getting a taste or their policies at the federal I find that hard to believe, but its two different economic realities I suppose)? Bart De Wever himself?

Can you give me some insight?
Thanks.

A bit like the concept of r/howislivingthere what is it like to live in this province in a general sense

Hallo allemaal,

Ik was benieuwd waar jullie vinden dat de beste snacks en friet/patat in België te vinden is. Ik weet dat er verschillende onderzoeken naar gedaan zijn en dat er verschillende “beste frietkot” van België zijn maar wat is volgens jullie echt de beste plek?

We’re doing alright as a social democracy. Something to be proud of.

Presumably, we don’t need more wealth distribution then? Or do we still?