Lille, 18.07.2008 (Omega house)
Lille has a stunning number of beautiful houses spanning all of the last centuries and possible styles. Sometimes, you do not know where to look first. My three favourites you can see here. The Coilliot house is by Héctor Guimard, who also built the famous Art Nouveau métro stations in Paris.
Lille, 18.07.2008 (Place du Lion-d’Or)
Lille, 18.07.2008 (Coilliot house)
Lille, 18.07.2008 (Jardin Vauban)
Lille, 18.07.2008 (Jardin Vauban)
Yes, I have a problem. I admit it. Understanding is the first step in getting better. Do you know if there are meetings of anonymous photoholics or so? I am addicted. I went to Lille on Friday. I arrived there at ten o’clock, and eight hours, 288 pictures (of which 198 survived the cut so far), an empty battery (how many pictures if I had not had to pay attention to that problem?), 3 churches, 1 palace, 1 stock exchange, 1 garden, 1 zoo, 1 citadel, 1 museum (the most important in France outside Paris), a lot of squares and even more beautiful buildings later I took a train home.
Pictures here are from the area of the citadel. It is the biggest of France, and was of course constructed by Vauban, the architect of the roi-soleil Louis XIV. You cannot access it since it is still used by the military, but in all the green area around it, they did put several parks. I went into the Jardin Vauban with a nice little artificial grotto. Just pleasant to walk around. The second park I went into was the zoo. For free! Have you ever heard of any zoo being for free? I mean it is certainly not one of the supersized zoos like Munich, Hamburg or the combination of Planckendael/Antwerpen, but it is also not a small fish petting zoo. Major plus for Lille on that!
Lille, 18.07.2008 (Zoo)
Lille, 18.07.2008 (Zoo)
Antwerpen, 04.05.2007 (Astridplein)
When I posted about Royal de Luxe, I thought about some other elephants as well and coincidently read news about them the same day, too. Last year the zoo of Antwerp bought these elephants made by the South African artist Andries Botha and put them on the entrance of the zoo. Very nice. They loaned them to the park of the Central Africa museum in Tervuren this year, and last week there was a news report that one of the elephants burnt down because some teenagers were playing with fire…
On another note, I do not know how regularly I can post the next weeks since my Internet is completely breaking down. I suddenly have Internet again since 30 minutes after two days with nothing,;no idea how long it will last and how long it will take to repair my modem. So either there will be a lot of posts (a lot to tell about the last and the following days!) or you will not here from me very often. If so, you will know why!
Antwerpen, 04.05.2007 (Astridplein)
My Internet is not working again, but luckily I have a post where no pictures are needed for once… If someone has a picture for that topic, sent it to me! Yesterday I found a very small gossip note on the splitting up of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and his nude model girl-friend. Apparently his mother did not like her. The author cites a small paragraph from Ruth Gall who wrote a book about mother-in-laws (Wege aus der Schwiegermutter-Falle - ways out of the mother-in-law trap):
“Es gibt Schwiegermütter, die nicht verstehen können, dass ihre Erziehungsaufgabe irgendwann vorbei ist. Sie glauben, ihren Nachwuchs fehlerfrei großgezogen zu haben und sprechen ihm die Fähigkeit ab, selbst einen Partner zu suchen. Mit allen Mitteln kämpfen sie um ihre Vormachtstellung, was sich massiv auf die Beziehung eines jungen Liebespaares auswirken kann. Der Sohn muss in diesem Fall ganz klar sagen: Mama, du hast alles für mich getan, aber jetzt ist dein Part der Erziehung vorbei!”
Roughly translated: “There are mothers-in-law who cannot understand that their upbringing task ends sometime. They believe they raised their offspring without faults and deny them the ability to find a partner alone. With all means they fight for their supremacy which can have massive influences on the relationship of the young lovers. In this case, the son has to say clearly: “Mum, you did everything for me, but now your part of the upbringing is over!”
Absolutely perfect comment. I really have nothing, nothing, nothing to add to that than a lot of personal experience… 
Antwerpen, 08.07.2006 (Royal de Luxe)
Antwerpen, 08.07.2006 (Royal de Luxe)
Yesterday I mentioned that the theatre company Royal de Luxe had been to Antwerpen already two years ago. Well, then they created a spectacle! They came with the story of the elephant and the giant; and there is not so much to tell about the story, but about the performance. You see this huge elephant they created to do the show in the city. It lasted three days, on several places throughout the city, and there came ca. 600′000 visitors to see it. It was an awesome show and I am happy that I did watch it although I normally try to avoid huge crowds. Like you can imagine, the city was turned upside down for three days with this amount of visitors and many, many streets closed. They said that they had to invest about a million Euro to prepare the city by cutting trees, pay the salaries, etc.
Antwerpen, 09.07.2006 (Royal de Luxe)
Antwerpen, 09.07.2006 (Royal de Luxe)
Antwerpen, 13.07.2008 (Seven Dwarfs)
Antwerpen, 13.07.2008 (Hunter)
The renown theatre company Royal de Luxe has returned to Antwerpen. On a less gigantic scale than two years ago, they show the Rebellion of the Mannequins through several shop windows in the main shopping street. It is surprising how entertaining it can be to look at motionless dolls in windows. There are ten shop windows; and for ten days each day the dolls in the window will be moved into a different position, so that they tell a complete story by the end of the performance. For a lot more pictures or to follow the story of the mannequins (just small texts, but in Dutch), you can visit the official blog.
Antwerpen, 13.07.2008 (Fire brigade)
Antwerpen, 13.07.2008 (Fire brigade)
Antwerpen, 11.07.2008 (Rijnkaai)
Antwerpen, 11.07.2008 (Rijnkaai)
Scheveningen, 08.10.2006 (Beach)
I just finished reading The Stranger by Albert Camus again. I bought a book with a collection of his works some years ago and it really was a very good bargain. The Stranger is set in Algeria in the 1930’s with the protagonist mostly being busy doing nothing, e. g. going to the beach in the hot summer (hence the pictures…). The only bigger storylines are the death of his mother and his shooting of a man and its consequences. It is a character where I always swing between acceptance or refusal of his thoughts. I like the fact that his mother is in a nursing home and his comment that it is better for both of them since he could not care for her and she now has friends around her and is not alone. You still think nowadays that this is something like a deportation which really has not to be the case. On the same time I dislike the protagonists indifference (hear, hear, about who else do I complain with that…) towards everything. Hey, you have a life (not even a bad one I would say), live it, defend yourself, have an own opinion of something. But of course I like his non-belief in god. Plus, the ending is fitting for his indifference. I really liked the novel although the writing style with short main clauses is probably not the favourite of everybody.
Scheveningen, 08.10.2006 (Beach)
Antwerpen, 10.07.2008 (at home)
Happened just half an hour ago. Seems Thursdays are good for sunsets. It is already rare to have a sunset at the exact same time as a rainbow, but having such a sunset and such a rainbow at the same time is just marvellous. On the left side rainbow, in the middle I standing in the rain at the open window, on the right side sunset. Just nice.
Antwerpen, 10.07.2008 (at home)
Antwerpen, 10.07.2008 (at home)
