Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 11 There’s a particular quality to Belgian light in winter—filtered grey, soft-edged, the kind that turns medieval stone into something out of a novel. I experienced this firsthand as our boat glided through Ghent’s canals,…
A Flemish Ritual in the Kitchen There’s a particular magic to Ghent that seeps into your bones—medieval stone reflected in still canal water, the soft patter of November rain on cobblestones, the kind of beauty that doesn’t shout but simply…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 10 Do you remember when you learned how to look at art? Who was your first guide? And what marked your imagination in front of a painting or a sculpture? Was it a parent pointing…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 9 You cannot speak of Belgium without speaking of Art Nouveau. It would be like describing Paris without mentioning Haussmann’s boulevards, or Venice without her canals. Art Nouveau isn’t just an architectural style here—it’s the…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 8 There’s a particular tyranny in the modern insistence that solitude is something to be cured. We’re told constantly that connection is wellness, that community is health, that choosing one’s own company over others’ is…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 7 There are places in Brussels where the past doesn’t fade—it simply changes costume. The Galeries Saint-Hubert, completed in 1847, was Europe’s first covered shopping arcade, a glass-roofed marvel that preceded Milan’s famous Galleria by…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 6 There are countries you love because you were born in their legacy. And then, there are the countries you choose to love with deliberate passion. I should know, since this is precisely my story.…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 5 It wouldn’t be December 5th at The Ritual of Reading if we didn’t speak of Saint Nicholas on the eve of his feast, but this year, since we’re traveling to Belgium, St. Nick offers…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 4 “Every town is a state of mind, a mood which, after only a short stay, communicates itself, spreads to us in an effluvium which impregnates us, which we absorb with the very air.” —…
Belgian Advent Calendar – Day 3 I grew up in Europe’s Eastern-continental climate in the late twentieth century, which meant winters that were unmistakably, uncompromisingly snowy. For me, the spirit of the holidays has always lived in those white-washed days:…
