A botellon is an informal gathering of teenagers to drink in public. The concept comes from Spain, where the kids wanted to rebel against bar-prices by organizing massive drinkathons in parks. The largest botellon was held in Madrid with 10,000 participants.
These parties are organizable by word of mouth, and most recently, via social websites such […]

hello blogosphere, can any of you tell me why a city in the netherlands has a french name?

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wikipedia has miserably failed me.  when does hitchhiking weather start up again on this continent?????

 I left Switzerland a passenger in a car of a Flemish acquaintance who was going home to the ‘rents for the weekend.  I pestered with questions on the mothercountry the entire trip north, which made my trip fly by.  We rolled on through the French-speaking bit of Belgium, Wallonia, and decided to get a celebratory French-fries in […]

I took the photos below in a town called Moeskroen in Belgium’s south, about an hour past Neufchateau. On the map, the town has so much potential: the tiny sliver of Hainault protruding into French and Belgian Flanders. On the map its a tough call as to whether Moeskroen (Mouscron) prefers the French or the Dutch language. […]

Saturday night was meant to be a short visit to a buddy in Roeselare, “Roulers” in French.  Ostensibly, my train would arrive at 9pm and i’d leave in the last train to Courtrai at 11pm.  However, my buddy’s buddies were very welcoming and offered a lift back for after the evening was officially put to sleep. 
Who […]

When does this type of fun ever end? 

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I went back from Ypres to Kortrijk in the train, passing through the anomally of “Comines/Komen”.  That town is a French-speaking enclave in Dutch-speaking Belgium.  From the train, however, it looked quite sleepy.  
I had brief flashbacks of my Mouscronite desolation, and decided to stay in the train.  Another tick […]

… had a hankering for something more substantial than my steady diet of french fries and waffles, and thus went out on sunday looking for the definitive home-cooked Flemish meal.  I was recommended to go to the Nostalgie and I was not disappointed.  The website and the menu are only in Dutch (Think Local!).  You can be […]

Am I permitted to generalize?  It is my blog, and I pay the rent, so here it goes.
Here’s a reflection on the Flemish.  Similar to the Scandinavians, a Flemish person’s English is sometimes so convincingly good that I momentarily forget that I’m talking to someone whose childhood was spent not speaking English.  Then, like a mean […]

Last night we went to see Denmark’s finest multipart-harmony orchestral musical export, Efterklang (means “aftertone” in english).
They were really stunning, something like 5-7 people on stage, with an energy not corresponding to the petite-ness of the room. 
The band’s singer spoke in perfeck American English.  Made me want to stand up as yell, “get your own […]