A Little Bit of My Life

Given that this is a blog, I'm supposed to share private moments with you, who in a sense are a new kind of voyeurs…

Well, as I don't do anything which is spicy or, you know, well, typical for teenagers (yes, I work a lot for university, apart from writing this lovely blog to help me practise my writing skills), I'm gonna give you a comment about two facts that "rocked my world" not so far away in time.

When you see this picture, you wonder if I didn't turn mad. Not yet. Because this is a wooden leg, or a prosthesis, I should say. My flatmates found it as they were walking back to the Carmel (this is the name of the residence belonging to the University of Namur where there are students' rooms; precisely where I live most of the time now); they found it in a rubbish tin ! Why would the owner have thrown it away? My mum's hypothesis is that the owner passed away and that his family decided not to bury the prosthesis with the corpse… The most wicked element in the whole story is that my friends took it back! Hence the photo and this message.

During the Easter break, in which I was supposed to work instead of sleeping, my parents, my brother and I went to the seaside — that means 2,5 hours of car, then finding a parking lot, then walking 2 km towards the center of the city, then eating chicken at the Koekoek, then walking on the zeedijk, then getting back to the car, then going to Westende, then leaving the car somewhere, then walking on the zeedijk. As we were walking, I suddenly spotted this excavator and I fiercely decided to get into it. What the hell…??, said my mum. The reason why I did it is quite simple: the excavator's door was open, and I really thought we were on Sunday, while we were on a Tuesday… Fortunately, no angry worker came to shout at me that it was forbidden, etc. (If it had happened, I would have pretended that I was 6 of mental age.) Fortunately too, my brother took pictures of it…

My Uncle, Great (Mini)Golfer

Once again a photograph taken on holiday, in Westende. This is (again) my uncle posing as a specialist of minigolf. Usually, when my uncle, my brother and I go and have a game of minigolf, my brother wins the first holes, but gets 7 points for the other, so that he always loses—and my uncle wins, of course. This minigolf of the center of Westende is quite good, in comparison with that in Oostende, in the park, where the little houses have burnt or are movable, or the holes are filled with grass, etc. Anyway, it's always great fun to go to a minigolf with my uncle.

My Brother Buys My Uncle A Drink (Extraordinary)

My brother is pretty cheap. So, when he finally decides to (generously) buy us a drink after we accomplished a 10-kilometres walk, I decided to immortalize that event. In fact, he had just enough coins to buy a drink to me and to himself, and not my uncle… Hence the ironic comments…

Arrival at the Seaside

As I come from Liège, we've got to take the freeway and ride for two hours and a half to get to the coast. When the freeway ends in Oostende, with the famous John Kennedy roundabout, you still have to ride a few more kilometres to Mariakerke, and then you can see the sea, at last! Usually, on this road which links Mariakerke to Middelkerke, you have wormen that repair the rails for the tramway or anything else. If you take the same way when you are riding your bike, you're likely to be blown away due to the wind coming from the sea or caused by the speeding tramways… So, if you're planning to go to Oostende or Middelkerke, just do it only if the wind is with you; otherwise just stay home.
Apart from that, when riding on this road, you pass along the Prins Karels Koninklijk Domein, in Raversijde, a old military domain that was taken (like Belgium…) during the Second World War by the Germans to shoot the English ships… Interesting to visit, if you have two hours to spend. And it's even better if my uncle is around to make (silly) comments.

Coastal Tramways

The Belgian (Flemish) coast is known for its tramways—which underwent a modernization lately, so that they are longer and can sit more and more "white heads" (i.e. old people). (Everything is new in Flanders; while Wallonia is rather derelict, as if we were still in the 1950s.) This view was taken in front of the Middelkerke Casino.

Vereecke

This is the best sweets shop of Belgium. It's in Middelkerke, another coastal town. There, you can find hundreds of different sweets, from chocolate to chewing-gums and so on. What I like most is what we call in French "chiques sûres" (chiques = sweets; sûre = sour). They are little coloured sweets with a kind of sugar that gives a piquant taste. It's in fact difficult to describe tasting effect…

In fact, this shop doesn't exist anymore—I mean they moved 50 metres away, just in front of the Casino. This picture was taken in 2005, and the new shop opened round September 2006. If you ever go to Middelkerke, you've got to go there and by some sweets.