NY

Lolipop Story

This is part of a series of images taken while on lunch break. The spot is one that I often go to. Besides having a gloriously good pizza - but that is different story that I will tell another day - it always has interesting people. Some that I know others that just happen to be there. In the neighbourhood of Place Chatelaine it is the better part of the young side if Brussels. Lively and casual it is littered with small restaurants - some really good others just nice - and most of the crowd seams carefree. Today six youngsters and their mothers took over the entire place - not so difficult as it is the size of my office. There was so much joy and passion in their play, smiles, shiny eyes. They ate their pizzas, fought over deserts and just did what children do. There was no nervous shouting, not stress, just pure simple daily joy. It is of course not always so simple but today it looked like it and I have the proof. As there was a spot-light just over their table, the light created this magic colour contrasting the greyish light of Brussels. This particular image looks cinematographic. It has a story to tell. A good one. I have an entire series including some nice portraits about to go up on my Flickr and Picasa pages.

Magritte Sky

This is not my title. A friend of mine, while dining at Chez Oki - a French Japanese Fusion place that everybody loves and I have definitely mixed feelings about - noted this picture in my camera and pointed out that the sky looks just like the sky of Magritte's paintings. How true! Never again Brussels, its lights, its dark blue skies after long days of rain, its contrast trees and art nouveau buildings looked so surreal. The photography above may just as well be called "this is not a tree" or "Ceci nes't pas un arbre". One's life in the city flows with apparent coherence and sense but when you stop it is not even a rat race, it is just a parallel reality where nothing "really is" it is just "represented". On a different note, this may just be my own projection as I decided I live a non-life. I exist and experience but it is a plasticky, artificial reality. Or so it seams at times ...
So this entry is an homage to Magritte and Surrealism, to Brussels and its Expat Purgatory providing for a comfortable Limbo.
http://www.magritte.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Magritte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysteries_of_the_Horizon

Natural Cafe

A favourite hangout for the coffee loving expat community in BXL. The Mediterranean extraction, all Abraham's children, are naturally overrepresented as are the Balkans. I am there all the time. There are several pics on this blog to back this statement. It used to have a smoky side that now disappeared thanks to the new Belgian law banning smoking completely in places where food is served. Thus images like this one are more frequent. 

Berlin fiver

 

Berliner Dom

 

Berlin Silvester 06/07

Unter den Linden at midnight. It is the only place to be in Berlin on the new year's eve! Germany takes over the presidency of the EU. Romania and Bulgaria join the Union ... Fire flows from ontop of the Brandenburg Gate and te fireworks lit the sky. 

Berlin 06/07

 

Berlin '07 International

 

Tacheles

In the 90's it used to be a famous squat. Artists mostly lived there but also the usual floatsome that they breed. Drugs alcohol and sex abounded. It was seedy, dangerous and dirty but alive. Today is a cheesy, dirty and touristy bar, cinema and artists' den. Dirt seams to be the mainstay and the apparent eternal nature of the building itself, It is huge! Those of us that are more familiar with the remnants of communism and the attitude it left behind perfectly understand the concept. Equally I understand the attraction of the place to western tourists and teenagers but for me it is just a pathetic reminder of things we left behind. All this veneration of fake socializmus is boring. There is by the way an incredible number of pro communism signs in Berlin. Trust me they have nothing to do with leftism but everything with the superficiality of packed ideas and ready made slogans. There are comparatively fewer signs denouncing Nazism. I hate that people forget the issues that were really at stake in divided Berlin. Clichés instead of ideas and slogans instead of books and articles. It is of course easier to be" radical" in Berlin by putting up a flag and a silly slogan on the destructiveness of capitalism instead of actually doing something or voting as a matter of fact. But then again ... all this maintains an aura that diminished once Berlin was united and stopped representing the free world facing dictatorship.