[Antwerp ship Anchor, city riverbanks: full size]

Please check out my primary Antwerp blog here.

No Photoshop or any color manipulation, just a recent night shot showing an exclusive perfume store right in front of Antwerp city hall. Photo taken while I walked on by.

I took this photo at night (yes, trying a 1/4 sec exposure was too much for my movement stabilized lens, the full sized eight megapixel was slightly fuzzy), getting an unusual, perfect blue glow on part of the facade, while the whole image made me recall Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.

In Fine is an exclusive “we mix your own perfume” outlet, with this medieval building being their business card location.

While I still regret not having checked the image sharpness, I was quite pleased with the natural blue glow delivering an out of this world atmosphere

By the way, welcome to http://antwerpen.wordpress.com, my photo-only 2nd blog about Antwerp.

Previous post were imported from my main blog over at http://antwerp.wordpress.com, a blog with a much wider scope. I will make an effort to post original Antwerp photos here as frequently as possible, but I won’t make any promises

Thank you America, from all the citizens of Antwerp.
[My photo: forgotten WWII war memorial, Antwerp riverbanks]

“Do every day one thing that scares you” (quote from “The Sunscreen Song” by Baz Luhrmann). Last night I literally followed this well-meant advice by ‘kind of’ gate-crashing a wedding in an affluent eastern Antwerp suburb. I’d only seen the bride and groom once in my life (for 2 minutes), my s/o is only a distant relative of this amazing couple. But I enjoyed some sparkling conversation in the lush gardens, shook hands with people I’ll never see again, congratulated the bride with her stunning appearance and listened to exotic conversations in several languages I’m not fluent in. The hospitality and sincere warmth of this couple was genuinely impressive.

I had a superb dinner (lacking in conversation as the night passed on, as I ran out of “that sounds great!” platitudes) but danced till 4 am with an ecstatic crowd. A less than classy drag queen act, a stunning nipple gate incident and drunken real-old ladies making advances while flashing their jewelry (and underwear, ‘par accident’) were just the icing on the (wedding) cake. Here are some shots I took with my cellphone. These folks truly had a perfect, fairytale-like wedding. Enjoy! [Regarding the 'gate-crashing' part: well, with my s/o being a distant, but surprisingly welcome relative, I simply suggested I'd join him. Two gay men passionately dancing on their straight wedding party: the degree of tolerance of these lovely newly weds sure took my breath away ]

I’m as proud as a five yo child: my first steps, My First YouTube Video – well, we all have to start somewhere

Win some, lose some, the saying goes, but how would you cope when you were to lose virtually most of your long-time friends, almost instantly? I’m currently browsing over 4,000 diving related photos that represent a major part of my life, as I’ve been socializing with divers for a significant part of my adult existence. OK, it took me years to convince myself that I was up to scuba diving (if you knew the cold submerged marble quarries where Belgians train in locally, you’d understand), but diving in Egypt was not the ultimate experience. The ultimate experience was socializing just across the border near the Dutch beaches, where I spent numerous weekends over the past ten years.

These divers (links to a French club I was also very close with) really were a significant part of my life: I spent countless nights looking at the stars on their boats, taking their pictures 30m (100 feet) deep while exotic fish passed me by, joining them on their tropical vacations to yet another ultimate diving spot. I was invited to their baby showers, spent Christmases together, was present at their weddings and funerals: these were my friends, and it felt like home. And now it’s over, and I’m lost, more than the actors from the ABC TV series will ever be. No, I’m absolutely not “desperately alone” – rest assured, I do have a life, but I’m just facing facts.

Sure, I blogged about some of the complex issues leading up to this emotionally disconcerting break-up, but that didn’t change much. Starting early in 2006, I tried to rebuild a new social environment, one not focused on my previous diving buddies. Two years later and much to my surprise, I basically failed, facing an egocentric Belgian society where people live their highly individualized existence, a society that appears only to be into networking and socializing if it results in net profits and gains.

Looking at my s/o, I realized he went through a similar experience: when he lost his business, some ‘friends’ even forgot his name. And much like my s/o, I haven’t got a clue what to do next. In a way, I feel like the main character in The Starter Wife, only my gay scriptwriters haven’t given me that many lucky breaks lately. How would you do it, almost starting over from scratch socially? [My photo: some of my diving buddies, Southern Holland, June 2005]

In need of scanning lots of amateur shots and videos from all over the Antwerp area, interactively presented on a Google map?
http://wiki.worldflicks.org/antwerp.html is a great resource, especially giving the visible link between location/photos and the
material on flickr. Saves me a lot of work uploading/posting my own. But I might reconsider if you really  insist

‘He really sounds like your gay hairdresser, although your hairdresser keeps his shirt on while working’, my s/o said Anyway, the Russians won this ‘European’ quality song contest tonight. Having expected an avalanche of utterly trashy songs, it’s hard to believe this event once launched the carriers of Abba and Celine Dion. Some former Soviet countries sent half-naked, visually wild Barbie dolls with peroxided hair, bleached teeth, fake boobs and a dark spray-on suntan, with nothing worth remembering musically. Most Belgian commenters felt it was basically time to say goodbye to what has become the most campy musical show on the planet. But rest assured, this show will go on: camp has become the crowd-pulling hallmark of the current [YouTube:] Eurovision Song Contest. “See you next year in Moscow!”

I just switched channels. The 2008 Eurovision song contest semi-final, live from Belgrade, Serbia resembled a cheap cabaret show, covered in an expensive high-tech wrapping. Mariah Carey body-doubles from Poland, weird Nordic groups with outrageously loud, atonal mega-show packaging that hurt my ears, no, this was no music contest, this was an attempt by 40+ musically obscure countries (hello Russia, hello Azerbaijan!) to prove they could get away with raping a musical heritage that was not theirs. While I admired the rare Transylvanian (whatever) acts that desperately tried to remain authentic, most countries/acts kept on pretending to be an MTV music video from LA. They failed.

Basically, they all forgot one basic prerequisite to really be that great star: ‘talent’, a commodity replaced by exploding fireworks, fake exotic (but mostly plain weird) charm and equally fake boob-jobs. Time for some real music. Oh, Belgium dropped out almost instantly, after a disgraceful act presented a song in a non-existent language. Really [My screen capture from the 2008 Eurovision song contest website (watch the final Sat May 24 and have a laugh!): Poland tried to sell some lingerie, hoping we wouldn't listen to the music]

Last weekend Belgium saw the annual Brussels gay pride. I’m no longer into ‘gay prides’, not even the Antwerp edition next June. I can post a long write-up, but this single stunning shot by talented photographer Jacques Verees perfectly managed to capture why I avoid these ‘prides’. Take a long look at this shot. Can you imagine that, no matter how tolerant I may be, no matter how comfortable I feel ‘just letting go, being crazy and wild’, I feel like I have nothing in common with these men? That I don’t want to be associated with the public provocative behavior they stand for? Notice they have bad teeth, bad taste, but oh boy, they are sooo proud My significant other rolled on the floor laughing when he looked at this shot – did it induce the same emotions with you? [Image link courtesy of Jaco]