Mussels in Brussels

Rue des Bouchers is a narrow cobbled street near Grand Place which is lined with somewhat expensive restaurants. On this narrow, gastronomic street, the restaurant doors are always open and, at the first sign of sun, tables and chairs line the alley.

On display lie mussels, lobsters and oysters, all nicely decorated, awaiting hungry tourists.

Also adding to the beauty of the road are elegantly dressed waiters (one from each restaurant) who try to entice customers with details about the gastronomic delights being served inside.

The Atomium represents a unit cell of an iron crystal (body-centred cubic), magnified 165 billion times.

The 103 metre tall structure designed by architect André Waterkeyn for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo '58) was initially planned to last only six months.

It consists of nine steel spheres 18 metres in diameter connected via tubes with escalators as long as 35 m (These are amongst the longest escalators in Europe).

One of the original ideas for Expo '58 was to build an upside-down version of the Eiffel tower.

Funny signs - 2

Respectable people do not sing, dance and swear :-O

Matrimonial - please apply with photograph and vital statistics of motorcycle !!!

Shot inside a train in Denmark.
Next station is ... 'Middel-FART'. A nice place to stay in !!!

Other 'No Smoking' signs are negatively so :-?

Ottignies

Going around in circles

Life is all about vicious cycles ... one trouble leading to another :-(

Louvain-la-Neuve

50^th post!!!

And there could have been no better way to bring up the half-century than a post about LLN – the place where I had the three best months of my life.

Louvain-la-Neuve is not only the newest town in Belgium, but also a quite particular one, as half of its population is currently attending its university, while the other half is made mostly of former students, making it also the youngest town in the country.

The town was created with the sole purpose of hosting the Université de Louvain. One of the main features of the urban design of Louvain-la-Neuve was to make it people rather than automobile centric. The city center is built on a gigantic concrete slab, with all motorized traffic traveling underground. The ground level of the city centre is almost entirely vehicle free.

The architecture which is a mixture of both new & old designs combined in the same building is unusually interesting. There are statues at every nook and corner and the city

Louvain-la-Neuve is looked as a model city by several cities worldwide (as far as Shanghai) interested in modern urban development.

The pains of bondage & confinement

Strange as it may sound, we actually used to call this structure 'The Jetty' -
coz the view of the nearby lake used to make us feel nostalgic about the lakes at IIM Calcutta

Aula Magna

Childhood innocence
- dont u wish u were a kid once again ...oblivious to the wheelings and dealings that make this world a big bad place :-(

The road less taken
- a footpath in one of the Park Scientifiques

The plan

Christmas decoratoins in Rue Charlemagne

God save the residents - a rocket has just crashed into this building !!!
If you are somehow unable to recall where u saw such rockets before, think Tintin.
(Comics are very popular in Belgium. Reme Hedge, the creator of Tintin is a Belgian)

Rue de Haute ( The high/fashionable road)
- behind the bushes is Don Boscot, my home for three months.

Somebody please give him a lift... he has been waiting for years :-(

Grand Place

The Centre Sportif Du Blockry

- with facilities like these, it is never all work and no play at LLN.


Another attraction at Louvain-la-Neuve is the '24 h Velo'.
It is the BIGGEST STUDENT PARTY in Belgium.
Pictures of 24 h Velo were uploaded in another post:
The 24 hour Velo at Louvain-la-Neuve

1000 piece jigsaw puzzle - identify the missing piece

Needle in a haystack

One of the pieces is missing - there are only 999 pieces which have been put in their respective places.

Look carefully and see if you can find the location of the missing piece

Bull's eye

Yeah, I shot these arrows :-)

Two reasons why I actually sometimes do better ;-) :

- these were shot at the end of a two hour session

( when the shoulders tire from lifting the bow

& the arms from pulling the string hard :-( )

- this was after a month long break from shooting

The same view from up front.
With the thin and slender arrows projecting outwards at 90 degrees, it becomes very difficult to figure out where the arrow struck....
... and add to it the fact that you will be atleast 20 metres away from the target unlike this photo which was taken from hardly 2 metres away.

Gent St-Pieters

The bird sitting on this dilapidated statue reminded me of Oscar Wilde's "Happy Prince"

Namur - where Europe converged in 1695

This was after around 5 shots - Getting the bulb directly behind her head and thereby achieving a halo affect took quite some effort as the job of the handloom artist required her to make a lot of quick movements

Dear Santa ... I have been good all year. What do you have for me this year?
( Christmas decorations in the streets of Namur )

Able was I ere I saw Waterloo

The Butte de Lion

The battleground of Waterloo - where Napolean fought his last battle.

And what a battle it was - 150,000 troups fought it out in this very battlefield on the 18th of June 1815.

The Grandest 'Grand Place' on earth - and nearby Christmas Markets

The Bourse ( Stock Market) and a Christmas Market infront of it

Manneken Pis :- Lonely planet terms this as the greatest letdown of this century. I agree completely. The story behind this is just as dissapointing:-(

Ice Monster

Galeries Saint Hubert

Bruxelles - the capital of Europe

The 24 hour Velo at Louvain-la-Neuve

The 24 hr velo (24 hour bicycling) is the BIGGEST STUDENT PARTY in Belgium.

The event, which regularly draws upwards of 100,000 students to the city, runs annually from 2pm Wednesday to 2pm Thursday some time in October.

The starting concept was simple, to race for 24 hours on a bike.

Nowadays, competitiors are separated in three categories:
(i) Racers, that race seriously.
(ii) Folk bikes, including decorated bikes and home built contraptions.
(iii) Charity racers raising money for humanitarian causes.

600 policemen come from outside the city to manage law and order during those 24 hours.
A large number of special trains run to Louvain-la-Neuve on that day.

Photo - Jasvinder Singh

Hurrah ... its a goal finally !!!