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 :-?

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

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.

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 !!!

Potpourri - 2

A haunted house ???

The sunrise near the river Rhine.
There was a slight bend in the road - as a result the trails of the rear lights (red) appear tapered from right to centre ... & those for the front lights appear tapered from left to centre