Prowling my world, camera in hand

17 February 2009

Week 06: Four countries

Filed under: — Administrator @ 22:46

Last week’s PAW spans four countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and of course Spain.

Main
I spent Saturday night at a friend’s house in Grembergen, a village near Dendermonde, which in turn is somewhere between Brussels and Ghent. When I woke up Sunday morning, I went for a brief walk in the very sleepy village. This is what the main street looks like:
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The alternates
:

Alternate 1
But there are some nice places too:
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Alternate 2
My friend’s cat barely tolerated me:
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I then took a train back to Brussels, where I met up with fellow LUG members Michiel and Philippe to prowl the markets with our Leicas (my pictures from the markets are here but please finish this weekly blog first).

Alternate 3
Here they are at the Gare du Midi market. Philippe’s sensor wore out so he had to insert a fresh one:
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Alternate 4
We had lunch at a cafe on Place Jeu de Balles, site of a large antiques/junk market. Here is Philippe talking to me (photo by Michiel Fokkema):
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Alternate 5
Philippe and lunch. The main ingredients are typically Belgian:
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Alternate 6
We then walked back to the train station. Comics strips are a recognised and treasured art form in Belgium:
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Alternate 7
I have no idea what is the story behind this:
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At the train station we said goodbye. Philippe drove back to the suburb of Brussels where he lives, Michiel took the train back to Rotterdam, and I took a train to Luxembourg where I was going to spend the next two days, attending a course on EU law.

Alternate 8
The weather in Luxembourg was not nice at all:
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Alternate 9
And in general, it is a very quiet city (a less charitable person might even call it boring):
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Alternate 10
People shelter as best they can:
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On Tuesday evening, enriched with knowledge, I took the train to Düsseldorf where I was going to spend the night before flying home to Alicante Wednesday morning (Luxembourg does not have very good connections to Spain).

Alternate 11
Düsseldorf proved to be a much livelier place, particularly as regards watering holes:
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Alternate 12
Beer and footie–what can be better on a cold winter night?
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Alternate 13
A pensive girl at Düsseldorf airport Wednesday morning:
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Alternate 14
I never found out if she was wiping a tear from her friend’s face or just correcting some makeup flaw:
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Back in Alicante, life and work resumed. Friday evening we attended a wine tasting at a local wine shop, La Bodega. They have a dining room upstairs, and for € 30 one gets the wine tasting and dinner.

Alternate 15
Explaining the wine:
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Alternate 16
Discussing the wine:
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Alternate 17
Serving a nibble:
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Equipment note: about half of the pictures in this week’s blog (from alt8 onwards if I am not mistaken) were taken with a 40-year old lens on a new digital camera. Lovely marriage of technologies from different times.

1 Comment »

  1. hmmm nibbles 🙂

    Everything okay in Alicante?

    Comment by Bas — 28 March 2009 @ 16:09

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