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Siste viator!

A warm welcome…

… to whomever visits this website: friends, acquaintances, and coincidental passersby.

“Siste viator” is a Latin phrase meaning “Passerby, hold still”. It was a text found on several Roman funerary monuments, alongside streets outside the city limits, aimed to draw the attention of passersby to the undoubtedly very interesting lives of the deceased. And don’t do personal websites exactly the same thing?

This site has now evolved into a blog, where you’ll be able to enjoy the travel journals I’ll be writing whenever I go on a trip. All posts from before 2020 are either imported from my old Tumblr blogs—with all the peculiarities you can expect from such an operation—or—in case of the pre-2013 posts—just plain photo albums, imported straight out of iPhoto.

Feel free to subscribe to e-mail updates (sidebar/menu) if you don’t want to miss any of my adventures!

About me

I was born in the seventies in Limburg, in the south of the Netherlands, but moved to Brussels in 1995, to study Latin & Greek at the VUB. So by now, I’m a Brusseleir d’adoption, quoi… I’m still an archaeology and Roman history enthusiast, but didn’t end up working in that field (yet). I do teach though (introduction to Dutch), next to my day job—well, actually night job—in security.

After a short stint as a sea scout during my childhood, I rediscovered scouting as an adult, and became quite heavily involved in it. At some point I was even working for FOS Open Scouting, one of the Belgian scouting associations, and I also started volunteering with the Dutch Work Party at KISC, an international scout centre in Switzerland, perfectly combining my love for scouting and the mountains.

My scouting adventures also lead me to the discovery of a clan connection, finally giving me an excuse to commission—and wear—a kilt, something I had wanted to do already for a long time… Inevitably, soon after that I went on my first trip—of many—to Scotland, which lead to the genesis of another passion of mine: craft beer.

Living in Belgium, and even working in a couple of bars, I had my fair share of beer love imbued on me, but it was only when I visited BrewDog Edinburgh during that first Scotland trip, I discovered there was more tasty beer to try, than just the classic Belgian styles. I maintain a blog about beer and food in Brussels, and I recently got my Certified Cicerone certification.

Al that beer drinking can leave its traces, so in 2020 I started running. I still think just running is rather boring, so luckily in 2021 I was introduced to the Brussels Manneke Piss Hash House Harriers,—a “drinking club with a running problem”—adding beer and banter to the mix, and making it a lot more fun! It also led to me seeking out other HHH kennels and running with them wherever I go.

Most of my trips are in some way connected to beer, and will probably involve quite a few visits to breweries and beer bars, without neglecting the usual tourist attractions and musea. Don’t expect far-away destinations only reachable by plane though: I’ve been proudly  since 2007! However, there are plenty of places to (re)discover by bus or (sleeper) train, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing, even if it takes a bit—or a lot—longer…

My next destinations:

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