belgium

photo taking in front of brussels’ lucky statue is very popular:

see how it’s been worn to a shiny smoothness:

just before i saw the glove i took a proper tourist picture. i like the bear bulb effect.

brussel’s always seems to have something exciting going on in their grand-place when i come a visiting.
the whole of this month it’s done up like a winter wonderland with some very eeery music and fancy light show.

here a dark little video containing the scarey soundtrack of kids giggling:
Download movie (480KB)
there was a life sized stable with real sheep in the middle of the square too:

here is a self portrait of me in the chapel in my beligish hotel a while back. it was set up for a wedding and looked mighty fine.

(you know what, this doesn’t really look like me ! i set this to auto-update but i must have put the wrong photo in. never mind, this looks better than me. although the hotel chapel did look very pretty dressed up for the wedding)

on my recent trip to Beligium i had one afternoon free to do the tourist thing. so i went to a mental asylum. for most of the time i was the only one there, except for some very strange man who was looking very suspicious (and acting even more so, but not in a way i can retell on this blog!).
anyroadupdown, it was a museum, but i think partially a working one. it’s an amazing place and definately worth a visit. visit their website for more info
this was one of my favouritist exhibits. click for a big version. it’s just so extreme !

the day i went to brussels was liberation day. the grande place was full of pretend GIs smoking cigars pretending to be Colonel Mustard from the A-team (might have got my reference wrong here).

there were marching bands and a strange mix of old and new law enforcement:


this was a british band who seemed a bit worn out from all the blowing and marching they’d had to do in the name of liberation.

belgian is the country of cartoons so it was no surprise to see that this was the medium used to describe the serious process of smashing a window to escape from a bus in an emergency.

i’m back home now. i tried to change my eurostar ticket to come back 8 hours earlier but they wouldn’t let me even though the 10am train was quite empty and my 6pm train was quite full. my fault for saving my company money by buying the cheapest ticket !
when i woke up this morning i decided i’d rather spend the day with my family than doing more sightseeing, but it wasn’t to be. so, expect lots of photos of brussels (and a few more from Ghent) over the next few days.
i had my lunch this afternoon in a park in brussels. i very carefully ordered ham and chips from the menu. but ended up with papprika flavoured crisps and cheese on cocktail sticks. cheese is quite a challenge for a non milk consumer such as i myself am [was that a proper sentence ?].
i think this is what happens after 5 days with an average of 5 hours sleep/night. oh well.
best get to bed as in 7 hours time i need to get up for another week of work … and the nights/mornings are getting dark. ho hum.

there’s a music fair going on at the moment in ghent with all sorts of side entertainments. one group of entertainments had obviously finished work and had gone in to a bar leaving their instruments and heads in the street.

it seems shoes are the gloves of belgium.

click to inspect

Light bulbs and boxes of plasters:


and a baby statue:

did you know that ghent has its own version of manequin pis ? i didn’t. but here he is. i’ll go in search of the actual one on sunday for you.