Belgian Oddities

Before we resume our regularly scheduled broadcasts from London, here are a few last favorite photos from Belgium...

Above, Cafe Fatima in Ghent. The big red circle reads "No Air" and shows a cigarette -- whether that means smoking is prohibited or required, I'm not sure!

Colorful jeans for sale in the market in Leuven.

Baby Monkey, Baby Monkey
Riding on Gojira
Baby Monkey

A bar in Ghent. Dig those flowered curtains!

"The cat did it."

Garage door in Leuven -- hey, let's park here!

Big white bra graffiti in Ghent.

A mysterious window full of glass (or plastic?) eggs (or balloons?) in Leuven.

Ghent

When I first went for a walk in Ghent yesterday morning, the fog was thick and the city peaceful. There was hardly anyone about, even though it was after 8 a.m. I snuck out of our hotel room while Dave was still in bed, and spent an hour admiring the views and taking photos.

Our room was right on the main square near the St. Bavo Cathedral, named for a local saint. (Just how many saints are there, anyway? We saw another church earlier in the week named for a St. Remacle.) It was a strange room, shaped like a jigsaw puzzle piece, and we heard the bells of the tram and every loud post-football conversation passing by. But we liked it anyway. Kind of lent to the atmosphere, you know?

As you can see, Ghent is an ornate city, with lots of spires and gothic churches and centuries-old houses with peaked facades adorned with statuary and stained glass. It's not Disneyland, though -- there's also funny graffiti and some interesting-looking shops and other signs of life. Maybe I'll post some of those photos tomorrow.

After wandering a bit, I went back and got Dave, and we went to breakfast at, of all things, Le Pain Quotidien. I felt a little guilty about going to a chain restaurant, but the hotel recommended it and we couldn't quickly find anything else. I ate what felt like six pounds of bread in various forms.

We went wandering some more, through a makeshift flea market full of "junque" and lots of local streets, until we reached a suitable cafe, where we parked ourselves and watched the world go by over coffee and, eventually, red wine.

We went to see St. Bavo's, where unfortunately you can't take photos. A multi-panelled painting by Jan van Eyck and his brother, Hubert, is the main attraction -- in fact, the cathedral is free, but a view of the painting costs €4! It's called "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" (in French Agneau Mystique, and in Dutch Lam Gods, both of which crack me up), and it's accompanied by an exhausting audio guide that I eventually fast-forwarded my way through.

Finally we had steak frites for lunch at a crowded restaurant on the square with an exceptionally harried but nice enough waiter. We saw St. Nicholas, or Father Christmas, descend on the square in costume, in what a woman at the next table told us is an annual event. He was accompanied by scouts who seemed to be selling small parcels of something (cake?).

By this time it was pouring rain, so we made our way to the train station and our journey back to London. It's good to be home! I'm so glad to be drinking a big mug of coffee instead of one of those dainty little cups the Europeans use. (Their coffee is better, though, I admit.)

Atomium

We took a walking tour of Leuven yesterday morning, checking out more of the local sights. They were beautiful -- but by this time I had my heart set on seeing something entirely new.

The Atomium, in Brussels, is a remnant of the Universal Exhibition of 1958, one of those World's Fair-type events that don't seem to happen anymore now that the world is smaller and we all fly everywhere with such ease. The brainchild of architect Andre Waterkeyn, it's supposed to represent an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. It wasn't intended to outlive the Exhibition, but the locals apparently loved it so much that it was never torn down.

By the '90s it had deteriorated quite a bit, so the government decided to fund a full restoration. The new Atomium opened in 2008, and now it has a swanky restaurant at the top and exhibition spaces in each of the "atoms."

Yesterday, after leaving Leuven, we drove to Brussels and made a point of visiting the Atomium. We even had lunch in the swanky restaurant, gazing down at the grounds of the Universal Exhibition, which have since been put to many other uses. There's an amusement park called "Mini-Europe," with tiny versions of the Arc de Triomphe and Westminster Palace, among many other landmarks, as well as a substantial swath of parkland.

This is just the kind of cheeseball sightseeing I really like. Cathedrals are fine, but give me some silly mid-century optimism.

After spending more time than we had intended on a leisurely lunch inside the uppermost iron atom, we drove into Brussels, returned the car and hopped onto our respective trains. Dave and I came to Ghent, where we'll spend the day before heading back to London tonight. All I've seen here so far in Ghent is a big bowl of mussels, but that was a good start!

Wavre and Verviers

When Dave and I prepared for this trip, we expected to stay pretty much in Leuven, a University town in eastern Belgium. The school is bringing its music students here next spring, so our trip is partly to scout out performance locations, hotels and restaurants for the students. Another music teacher and the music tour organizer are both here as well.

It turns out that while Leuven is our base of operations, the school also plans to perform in several smaller nearby towns. So yesterday we took to the highways to visit two of those locations: Wavre and Verviers, both in French-speaking Wallonia.

In Wavre, we visited a large church likely to be one of the performance spaces (middle photo above). And in Verviers we visited another church -- that's the ceiling over the altar in the top photo.

Some of these Belgian towns have cultural agencies that seek to find performers for events in their vast, ornate churches, which are often used these days as cultural and historical venues. I suppose they're still used for worship, too -- in Wavre I saw one gray-haired lady praying in a pew, and in Verviers I saw a poster featuring children baptized this year. But by all accounts, the churches aren't as full as they once were.

In Verviers, we had to wait a while for a key to get into the church. So we popped across the street to a nameless bar, and it was awesome. Redolent of nicotine, with an orangey ceiling, a green algae-coated aquarium populated by unremarkable gray minnows burbling in the corner, and four guys sitting around a table playing cards. Between the four of them, they may have had one complete set of teeth. I loved that place.

The churches were both beautiful, and they'll work well for performance spaces. And I'm glad we were able to get out of Leuven -- nice as it is -- and see more of Belgium.

Thanksgiving wasn't on my radar at all -- but I hope everyone back in the states had a good one. As it turned out, I stayed in last night and got a soup and salad from room service. I'm still suffering from my cold and I wanted to take it easy. I watched bad Belgian soap operas on TV!

Je Suis Malade en Belgique

We rolled into Belgium on an overheated Eurostar train yesterday evening, and by that time it was already dark. It's dark now. Consequently I haven't yet seen Belgium in daylight.

So far so good, except that I'm sick. I'm battling some kind of throat/nose thing that makes me feel like I inhaled sandpaper. It's pretty mild so far, but I hope it doesn't get much worse.

After we arrived on the train we rented a car in Brussels and drove to Leuven, which is where we are now. (I did not drive!) The traffic in Brussels was insane, which I hear is fairly typical. Leuven seems a little more manageable, but I haven't seen much of it yet -- just the Novotel and a quick walk through the city center last night to find dinner. (Beef stew, frites and Domus beer. Doesn't that sound Belgian?)

Not only is Leuven home to Stella Artois, but our hotel is literally right across the street. Our window faces the big, corrugated metal wall of the brewery, or the shipping warehouse, or something Stella-related. Not particularly scenic, but somehow appropriate!

Joe Strummer, and Other Miscellanea

-- Some famous people get roads named after them, some bridges, some imposing public buildings. Joe Strummer, the late guitarist for The Clash, gets a grotty pedestrian tunnel under Edgware Road. Seems like a backhanded compliment.

-- I've finally made my latest photo book public, and you can preview it (and/or buy, if you're so inclined) by clicking on the cover in the widget at right. (Expand the preview to full screen for maximum effect.) You'll only see the first 15 pages, but it's enough to give you a sense of what it looks like. I'm really happy with it.

-- Do you remember a 1980 TV movie adaptation of "Condominium," John D. MacDonald's terrific Florida potboiler? It starred Dan Haggerty and Barbara Eden, among others. I loved this movie as a kid. It is, after all, representative of my favorite genre of films -- the '70s disaster movie! Anyway, I hadn't seen it since the early '80s, but I recently found someone who provided me with a copy on DVD, and I had a great time watching it yesterday.

-- Our friend David left for Paris yesterday morning on the Eurostar. He'll be back again for one night at the beginning of December on his way back home to New Jersey.

-- And finally, Dave and I are off to Belgium today for a long weekend. To Londoners, going to Belgium is a bit anticlimactic, kind of like going to Indiana from Chicago (to use Dave's analogy). But we're looking forward to it. I've been through Belgium but I haven't spent any time there. We're going to Leuven, the hometown of Stella Artois. I imagine beer will be consumed.

Adventures with Getty

So I never told you about this whole Getty Images thing.

Getty, a major photo agency, has a deal with Flickr whereby it can approach Flickr users to make photos available for public licensing, which means they could be sold for use in editorial products or advertising. Getty approached me last week to ask about licensing this photo.

I think it's funny that out of all my pictures, that's the one they want. It's just a snapshot I took on Long Island a couple of years ago. I was riding along in a friend's car near Sag Harbor and I had him pull over so I could get a shot of that bizarre house. It's hardly my most photographically interesting picture.

I know why Getty wants it, though. It appeared in this book, and for that reason I suppose Getty thinks it has some commercial potential.

So a few days ago, I filled out all the forms to sign up as a Getty contributor. Unfortunately, though, Getty wants a signed property release before they'll license the photo -- basically permission from the owners of the house. Not only do I not know them, I don't even remember where that house was! I could find it again using Google Maps, I'm sure, but even then -- are complete strangers going to want to sign a document giving me permission to make money from an image of their home? I doubt it. I wouldn't!

Apparently using it in the book wasn't a problem, because that's an editorial use. But making it commercially available for, say, an advertisement requires a release.

So I think I'm just going to let the Getty thing drop for now. Maybe they'll want something else somewhere along the line, in which case I am signed up as a contributor.

(Photo: Do Not Enter, in Notting Hill.)