HUMAN CONTACT

L-R: Jo, Lissandro, Yang, Yours Truly

photo cred Tom @ cogcluster

Me, I'm stuck in a half-traveller, half-resident limbo, which to my dismay makes it hard to communicate with either of the groups. Not knowing a soul has been both blissful and painstaking. Thankfully, I've had the chance to meet with some very talented and determined kids from Australia & Central St. Martins. A real fun gang. They're cute. I like them.

CAPITAL!

I took a trip to Brussel the other day. I had good intentions, but:

I had to cut it short because Shoes won in Food vs. Shoes.
And Mrs. Camera died.
Then Global Warming sent me a death threat.
But it was nice. I'd like to go back soon.

Justitiepaleis

Being Brussel and all, there were some awesome graffiti.

Daily flea market, huge mess and creepfest.
But tons of fun if you're willing to dig...

Panoramic elevator at Justitiepaleis

One of them looked a lot like Ash Stymest...

By the Grote Markt

Squiggle

Brussel at sunset

Brussel is a really random city. Nothing really makes sense. After seeing the city the only thing that makes sense to me is why Manneken Pis is the symbol of Brussel... because it makes no sense. In all its randomness, Brussel was perfectly lovely.

Grizzly Bear plays Brussel on August 5th, so maybe then.

OPPORTUNITIES

My time in Antwerp's taken a few surprising turns, in the best way possible. Not too much can be said about it yet but I'll keep you posted when things start to become a little more official.

STAD OOSTENDE

Morning after my trip to Bruges, I decided to bike out to the city of Oostende. The bike trail was an hour-long bliss of peace and quiet, aside from the crazed Belgian cyclists in spandex gear. But you know.

Oostende lies about 25 kilometres west of Bruges, a big-in-Belgian-standards-but-otherwise-small, but anyhow important port city, of about 70,000 people. Despite its size, it serves an important economic function, and it also serves as the summer home for the Belgian monarchs. Me though, I just went for James Ensor and the real beach. Little did I know that it'd be my last day with my iPod though.... I lost my little one on the way home. :'(

STAD BRUGGE

...alias Bruges, the famed city of the (amazing) movie In Bruges.

I'm not very fond of Bruges. It is a city suffering severely from its own vanity. They're so obsessed with their own reputation of being a beautiful medieval city that they destroy perfectly good roads just to put in cobblestones, and they remove what they deem as "disturbing" establishments out of the city centre just so that they can build new "old" buildings. I found it tedious, like every inch of the city is so perfect, it becomes boring after a while. Instead of homelessness there is a copious amount of horse poop, and instead of a local there is a tourist.

Anyway, here be some photos.

By the way, I had my first hostel experience in a very long time, there in Bruges. Those travellin' lads, they are so cute...

STAD GENT

Beautiful, beautiful place. It's the third biggest city in Belgium, after Brussels and Antwerpen. In it lives 50,000 students and a large Turkish community. The whole city is interlined with streams and medieval-gothic architecture. I really liked Gent because Gent is still very well-preserved and has retained a lot of the olden-days beauty, but still you can find modernity here. It was a good balance between Van Eyck's Mystic Lamb altarpiece and the Gravensteen castle, and total bargain one-Euro sandwiches and cute skinny jeanz boys on old bikes.

It has this surreal beauty... as seen in:

On a sidenote, if you're into modern arts, check out the Faux Jumeaux exhibit by the French artist Michel Francois.