Things I Miss About Belgium - an Occasional Series

I have let this blog slip while preoccupied - which is silly, given that blogging is a pleasure and a relaxation. But when things get really stressful, one forgets even how to relax, or at least I do.

Anyway, in relative calm for a bit, I am enjoying fiddling about, not working on the project I am supposed to be working on, but instead doing things I've put off for ages. One - and it should keep me busy for a fortnight at least - is going through the photographs I've taken over the last six or seven years. Once upon a time, these would have been tossed in a jumble into a cardboard box on a high shelf but, as we live in a digital age, they are instead in a jumble in the ether. 

Anyway, among them are many photographs I took while we lived in Belgium, a place I became extremely fond of. I am puzzled that few people recognise Belgium as one of the most pleasant countries in Europe, and so I think I will try from time to time to pull out from my jumbled photographs examples of the things that make it so pleasant. Mind you, it is impossible with a few photographs to do justice to all the enchanting little Flemish towns no one has heard of - or even those that many have heard of. You have to go there to grasp what delightful places they are.  And I suppose I have to admit that part of my love of Belgium is because of the kind of person I am - someone who is not very interested in always being well-groomed and going to flashy places, but rather prefers the sense that much of Belgium exudes of cosiness and accepting you as you are and recognising that there are more important things in life than clothes and shiny cars. Which seems to have worked well for them, given that, over the centuries, Belgians have proved that, despite not being as a general rule willowy and elegant like the Parisians, they can do the important things - namely producing, time and again, the greatest paintings the world has ever seen. 

But today's example of a thing I miss about Belgium is not a painting, but a merry-go-round. A very special kind of merry-go- round that I've never seen anywhere else. These merry-go-rounds appear for a limited time each year in Belgium, in the lead-up to Christmas. Unlike so much these days, they don't appear to be mass-produced. In fact, they strike me as practically magic. Here is a clip of one in action. I filmed it in the area of Brussels called St Catherine's (one of my favourite areas of the city), way back in December 2015: