tourist.be

This is my fourth visit to this country and like always this trip too would be a lightning visit.

The day started with a lesson in history at the famous battle ground of Waterloo where the English finally managed stop Napolean,
the site today is marked by this impressive abstract conical hill called 'Lion's mound'.

The later half of the day was spent in the capital - Brussels.
Here we saw the city's most famous landmark
- the petite Mannekin Pis -

and had lots of chocolates around the Grote Markt,
the central market square of Brussels.
And also managed to see one of the buildings designed by the Belgian master architect of the Art Nouveau style - Victor HortaSadly there wasn't much time to explore the city further since we had an early morning flight to catch to Geneva.

Is this it?

Is he really that small…? Yes! That’s it. The most famous symbol of Brussels - the ‘Manikin piss’ - is hardly a foot tall.

I have to say that though I really enjoyed a lot of small experiences in the city like
- the ambiance of the main shopping gallery- some mouth watering chocolates (probably the best I’ve ever had)

- delicious seafood (especially since I was going from the land of BORING food – the Netherlands)- and some good art work (based on comics) drawn out building facades,

I was a bit disappointed at the city at large. It lacked a punch I expected from ‘the Capital of Europe’.

Antwerp or anywhere…

The city centre has become a huge pedestrian shopping mall made up of the same shops every 200 meters repeating them selves in almost the same order (Hema, C&A, Espirit, H&M, Zara, McDonalds and so on) sadly this is the present and seems to be the only future of every city in Europe.

Meanwhile, less than a kilometer from this orgy of consumerism one can find the rest of the city (where the old industries and sheds are) today lying either abandoned or being occupied by immigrants who help keep these cities alive.

However, I find these areas a lot more of my interest. And thanks to ‘Globalization’, more and more cities around the world look like somewhere else (and in that sense similar to each other) – so this is the geographies of a globalized world?

So as America gets Latinised, the Middle East gets Indianised; Europe gets Turkeized.

The next four photos of everyday life of immigrants from Turkey were clicked in Antwerp (in Belgium) , but it might as well be from almost any big city in Europe (Berlin, London, Paris, Rotterdam…..)

(strangely the only thing that changes depending on which city you are in the language on the billboard of the shops)