u/euro60

Hello Hull CIty fans, greetings from Cincinnati, Ohio. Congrats to your return to the EPL!

Before I delve into the matter at hand, I should point out that I am a native from Belgium (but now a longtime resident of Cincinnati, OH, and that I was at the Hull City-Sporting Lokeren Europa League game in your fair city in 2014, and what a game that was! I loved my experience in Hull, and I am excited for your return to the EPL!

As to Hull City's bid for Kevin Denkey, a No. 9 player for FC Cincinnati in MLS, I don't understand what Hull City was trying to achieve. FC Cincinnati acquired Denkey from Belgian side Cercle Brugge for $16 million in early 2025 at that time a record in-coming transfer for MLS. Why would Hull City offer $15 mill (with some add-ons) for Denkey, clearly a footballer on the rise, less that what FC Cincinnati acquired him for 18 months ago?

Maybe I am missing something?

Interested in your thoughts.

My son (who works at P&G) and I met up for lunch today at the new Skyline on Fountain Square. This Skyline location has a number of items that are not available anywhere else within the Skyline universe, including loaded potatoes but what caught our attention was the Skyline chili dip pizza ($18.99), so we ordered that. Let me tell you: it is exactly as advertised, basically a 12 inch thin crust pizza with loads of chili and cheese. It was da best! Super messy to eat, which made it ever yummier. What a great addition to the Skyline universe! I'd readily recommend it to anyone.

As an aside, this place is doing gang-buster business. This was my third time coming to Skyline on Fountain Square in recent weeks since it opened, and this place is HOPPING

Hello again Seattle,

Some of you may recall that I had visited Seattle with my son in mid-June for the Belgium-Egypt WC game. After that 2 day visit I wrote a "thank you Seattle" post that was much to my surprise received amazingly well by you all:

A massive thank you, Seattle! : r/Seattle

In case anyone had been wondering what happened afterwards, let me fill you in. You may recall that Belgium by the skin of their teeth won WC Group G, and as a result had another game in Seattle, in the knock-out round of 32 against Senegal on July 1. I knew that I couldn't miss that and hence my daughter and I flew out from Cincinnati to Seattle for that. She had been to Seattle a couple of times on tour with her punk-pop band Leggy (also based in Cincinnati), and she loves Seattle as well. It was so great to be back, and you may recall that Belgium staged a comeback for the ages, down 2-0 into the 85th minute, and then scoring twice in the last 5 minutes, and then again in the extra time of the extra time, winning 3-2. Insane! With that win, Belgium was set to play Team USA 5 days later on July 6, and I decided right then and there that it made no sense to fly back again to Cincinnati, only to fly back out yet again to Seattle a few days later.

My daughter was staying with a friend for a few more days and then flew back to Cincinnati, so I was on my own. I had the long July 4th weekend ahead of me, and I decided to make it an impromptu mini-vacation and exploring Seattle was objective No. 1. In those 4-5 days, I did a lot of different things, including these highlights:

-- Mariners game against the Toronto Blue Jays. The stadium was basically overrun by Blue Jay fans who had come down from Canada en masse.

-- Pioneer Square (to watch a WC game on the big screen)

-- Capitol Hill (to sample more local breweries)

-- taking the downtown streetcar all the way back and forth, including seeing the Jimi Hendrix statue

-- taking Light Rail line 2 all the way out to Redmond (imagine my surprise seeing Bellevue downtown, which is bigger than, say, downtown Dayton in Ohio)

-- Pike Place Market (in more detail than the first time)

-- water taxi to Vashon, which turned out to be the best possible surprise for me of all the things I did. First of all, I was mentally not prepared how, on the way out to Vashin, when sitting at the back of the boat, you have this insane view of the Seattle skyline. I couldn't get over it. But then came an even bigger treat: a clear view of Mount Rainier, right then and there in front of me. Hello!

And then, to top it all off, there was the USA v Belgium match on July 6. I was wearing the Belgian team jersey and was just a little nervous about sitting in the stands by myself, surrounded by masses of Team USA fans. (And remember in the 24 hrs. before the game, Trump has pressured FIFA to withdraw the one game suspension given to US attacker Balogun, which was not well received by the Belgian Football Association and UEFA.) But I needn't have worried, as it turned out that Belgium was far superior to Team USA, even with Balogun in the line-up. And to be fair, quite a few Team USA fans came up to me after the game to congratulate Belgium.

I caught the red-eye flight back to Cincinnati later that evening right after the game, and I can honestly tell you that I have had a BLAST in your fair city during those 2 visits. Cheers!

It's all over the internet. Seems likely to happen. This is how it's supposed to work. FCC gets a great player from a feeder league (in this case: the Belgian Jupiler Pro League), brings him over here and expects him to play well, which he does, so that in turn the MLS becomes a feeder league for one of the top 5 leagues in Europe, in this case LaLiga. Everyone is happy.

Todays was the 2026 Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame induction ceremony, the 4th year in a row that I have attended this splendid event at the Brady Music Center. If you are not aware, the Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame, the brainchild of Hamilton County Commissioner Alicia Reece, is located at the corner of Race and Mehring Way, where the Brady Music Center and the Bengals stadium intersect.

I stumbled onto this free event in 2023, really not knowing what to expect. As it turned out, this was a blast, celebrating Black music with ties to Cincinnati and Ohio. This yearly event takes place at the same time the Cincinnati Music Festival happens at Paycor Stadium. I must point out that I am Caucasian, and the event is attended 99.9% by African-Americans.

This year's event started with the house-band (2nd Wind) cranking out Motown and R&B classics in the run-up of the official start, per the usual, just great.

The 2026 inductees were Heatwave (from Dayton, best known for their massive hit "Boogie Nights" and WCIN 1480 AM, the second oldest black radio station in the US (started in 1953, sadly went off the air in 2007)

But the highlight for me was the 2026 Legacy award to Regina Belle. She performed 4 songs, including her best known hit "A Whole New World", from the 1992 Disney movie Aladdin. Regina choked up before starting the song, explaining that this would be the first time she would perform the song without Peabo Bryson (who passed away last month). The singer of the house band 2nd Wind stood in for Peabo. It brought tears to my eyes.

After the induction ceremony, Midnight Star put on a free show at the ICON stage of Smale Park.

I was one of the very few Caucasians at the entire thing. Did I mention this is a free event? This is one of Cincinnati's best secret events, year after year. Won't you join me in 2027?

Hello Seattle,

We just returned from Seattle after visiting your city from Sunday morning to Monday evening in the context of the Belgium-Egypt game. It was my first time back in Seattle in at least 20 years, and it was the first time altogether for my son.

We cannot thank you enough for the wonderful experience that we had in your fair city (we both live in Cincinnati, although I grew up in Belgium). After we arrived, we picked up our rental car and drove into Ballard, to a coffee shop called Artemis Coffee, which came recommended by a friend. Damn fine place for a Sunday morning coffee, and the fact they have the Financial Times to peruse just added to the pleasure. Afterward we headed to the Museum of Pop Culture, and it was fantastic. Better than the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in my opinion. We then dropped of our rental car near the hotel across from the airport, and took the Light Rail line 1 back to the stadium area where we had a great lunch nearby. Afterwards we checked into the hotel and took a nap. Early evening we took Line 1 back into Capitol Hill, which we really liked A LOT. Got some beers at The Last Drop, a great craft beer place.

Sunday morning was all about the soccer game. The fan zone around Lumen Field and the Mariners stadium was great. We participated in the fans march to Lumen field, a lot of fun. The game itself was a surprise to me on several levels: it was sold out, despite the ticket prices. There were thankfully no ICE or other immigration irritants. Everyone was just enjoying themselves. We (Belgian fans) were sitting next to fans form Egypt but other Belgian fans were nearby. Not a single issue. Everyone was cheering for their team.

I must add a word about the merch: we got to the stadium at 10:30 and immediately stood in line to buy a commemorative scarf. It sold out before we got a chance. How is this possible? That's like selling out of beer at a beer store. But then after the game, by some miracle, the scarf was available again and so we scooped two of them up.

After the game, we decided to check out the Pike Public Market. What a sight! We could only dream about that in Cincinnati.

By the time we headed to the airport in the evening for our red-eye flight back to Cincinnati, exhausted as we were, we were elated with out experience. You cannot believe the amounts of conversations we struck up with people from both of Seattle and elsewhere. People couldn't have been friendlier.

Bottom line: THANK YOU SEATTLE, you gave us 2 days we will never forget

Hello Seattle, my son and I live in Cincinnati but we have both Belgian-US dual citizenships (I myself grew up in Belgium). We are super excited to visit Seattle for the Belgium-Egypt WC game on June 15.

I Googled some things including "Belgian cafe or pub", and the top result was The Stumbling Monk, on East Olive Way in the Capital Hill neighborhood. From the looks of it, that is the place we would love to hang out on Sunday evening (evening before the game). But then I saw that this pub is closed on Sundays-Mondays-Tuesdays.

Does anyone know whether the Stumbling Monk plans on being open more during the World Cup?

Alternatively, if the Stumbling Monk is not open, what bar/pub/cafe would you suggest that has a wide choice of foreign beers?

There was the double-header Reds v Cardinals game, there was Taste of Cincinnati, there was FCC v Orlando.

At about 4 pm I walked from my place in OTR to the main library and I could just sense the vibes going through it all.

We went to the FCC game, which was sold out. Great game all around (6-2 win over Orlando).

So great to see the city HOPPING

Ik ben origineel van Antwerpen maar woon al jaren in de VS. Ik kom wel 2-3 keer per jaar naar Belgie voor zaken en dan verblijf ik in Antwerpen. Ik ben nu net terug van mijn meest recente verblijf in Antwerpen. Een van de plaatsen waar ik 's avonds graag een biertje lust is The Northener, een bar op de Wijngaardstraat niet ver van de Grote Markt. The Northener had altijd voetbal op de TV schermen in de bar. De bar werd gerund door een norrige maar deep down wel sympathieke Brit of Schot genaamd Paul. Stel je mijn verbazing voor toen ik er deze keer weer kwam, want The Northener is niet meer. Het gebouw staat te koop en binnen is het totaal leeg. Ik kon het niet geloven. Weet iemand wat daar gebeurd is?