Window Box

blue flowers close

I've found that most houses have little decoration in Brussels, but when I saw this window box I thought it made a nice composition.

At least they get plenty of water!

305

305

I've got a growing collection of pictures of house numbers. That does sound odd. I'm not sure how, why or when this started but I've been noticing the sheer variety of numbers, and home exteriors don't often get personalised over here, in fact in some parts of the country it's hard to tell if houses are occupied at all.

Anyway, here's a funky 305.

The Hanging Santas of Brussels

santa on window

I've got to be honest and find this whole 'climbing Santa' to be a bit creepy. Climbing down chimneys is fine, but this looks like a peeping Tom.

It also looks a bit precarious.

51

51

Another house number. I just didn't dare knocking on this door.

12

12

Another old house number in the centre of town

grafitti-wall

grafitti-wall

A really well done tag on a bit of waste ground, overlooked by 'exclusive properties for busy urban professionals'.

23

23

One of many distinctive styles of house numbers to be found in Brussels.

letterbox

letterbox

So. I went to a party on Saturday that meant Sunday just didn't happen. I'm getting old and just can't keep up like I used to. Thankfully I had the self-preservation not to join the group who were looking for a nightclub at 3am.

It was all good fun though.

missing house

missing house

This is a common effect of 'Brusselisation', where there has been uncontrolled development, resulting in sheer vandalism of the architecture and the wildly inappropriate 'filling in' of vacant spaces.

This is one example. The central house was left to rot and a smaller house was built - you can see the outline of it at the rear. Then the roof was lowered.

The people on the left were confident that things would stay like theis that they even built some windows into what was once an ajoining wall.

Junk Mail

junkmail

One of my pet hates is the sheer amount of junk mail produced in Belgium. In Brussels, at least all the crap has to be produced twice - once in French and once in Dutch and everyone gets both copies.

It's generally delivered by old men skulking around the streets. I'd been in Belgium for a week or two when I saw one of these guys marching up the street with a bag full of newspapers. As I was collecting the mail I waited for him to reach me and he passed me a copy of the newspaper.

It was in Dutch, so I apologised that I didn't read Dutch and asked for a copy in French. The guy snatched the newspaper off me and wandered off in a huff.

So that's the story of when I first met the Vlaams Blok .

yellowpinkgreenhouse

yellowpinkgreenhouse

Near Sint Guido, I happened across this small street. Each house was decorated in tribute to a particular artist and painted in different colours.

I've got a couple more photos in my Flickr stream and I liked the Miro house.

Something strange, unusual and delightful when you least expect it. Wonderful Brussels!

long time no see

long time no see
Originally uploaded by Dez & Jude.

I haven't really had time to take pictures in Brussels lately, but yesterday I finally got to walk around downtown with my parents who are visiting us from Hungary and shot some photos. This one was taken right next to Notre-Dame du Sablon, some office buildings with the reflection of the church just in the corner. What I like about this one are the angles and the blue of the windows.

Downtown contrast

downtown_contrast
Originally uploaded by Dez és Juci.

This is the backside of the European Parliament building. I simply love the brick building - shiny-glass-metal structure contrast. check out the flowerpots on the side of the garage, too :) But no matter how funny it looks, I would not like to live there. I would surely feel intimidated going out my own back yard and having that monster of a building stare down on me.

Satellite Dishes

sat-dish-housev

I've noticed the massive rise in satellite dishes over the last few years in Brussels. Many of the new users are, like myself, expats wanting TV from home or international channels. Belgian TV doesn't broadcast on satellite yet.

One of the really strange things about Belgium is that there's no competition for many services. For TV we have the choice of Telenet... or nothing.We used Telenet for cable TV until recently. They're switching to digital and it's another example of fleecing the public.

They are charging 200 euro for a 'digibox' plus another 30 for actually connecting you... Then you've got to buy a 300 euro recorder as your old video won't work anymore.

So we chatted to this guy and got satellite TV installed and we get to watch all the free to air channels. Trust me, I'm a very happy customer.

I've noticed new dishes almost every day and I can tell if a houses occupants are English, French, Italian or Arabic by the way their dish points!