Bye bye, Ixelles

Hey,

I'm sitting between my packed bags, moving out today to crash at a friend's place for the last few days. Actually, I'm just changing beds as I'm still ill with the flu...
So gone is...
...the last night of lying aslope-asleep in a broken bed with a way too small mattress. Clonk. Another bar out.
... the last night in a room filled with daylight even at midnight --> street light
... the last day having a hole in the bathroom where water's dripping on my nose while toothbrushing
...the last time to take a dirty mouldy shower (luckily, you always get clean, though)
... the last day of having housemates with the worst taste in music ever and the least respect regarding the volume
... the last day in a police-barricaded house
... the last time to get squeezed in bus 95
but also
... the last time to stand in the queue of our hot bald Colruyt cashier ;-)
... the last day to have Katha and Adam around, which is actually some more meaningful.
Anyway, there are still a few nice days left for me in Brussels.
Have to hurry now, cu

Mit einem Taxi nach Paris...

Hey everybody,

finally, (hi Marie! :-) ) here's my promised Paris post! I didn't have the time or leisure until now, the more so as, this weekend, a very good friend of mine from good old Germany came along to visit me, which made me really happy. But finally I'm making it!

Actually it was rather the TGV than a taxi which brought us to the French capital. Was faster and cheaper anyway... We stayed in the city from Friday to Monday morning; our accommodation was at Montmartre in a very lively quarter near Moulin Rouge and Sacré Cœur, over and over painted in lavender, our room occupied by ants that ate up all our Arab sweets - and my bed rather a hammock, but we enjoyed staying there very much.

Of course, we did some of the "classical" stuff that assumingly every tourist in Paris does (such as eating burgers at Quick, haha), but besides we did some other stuff that obviously not all the tourists have on their schedule. That was very relaxing as those places were not that crowded...

In details: Sacré Cœur at daylight time as well as Sacré Cœur by night (is there any tourist in the world who does not possess a Sacré Cœur photo???). We walked through the dark and mouldy catacombs with all their bones and skulls. Great. Took the elevator up to the stormy roof of the Tour Montparnasse, where, although just in that moment the weather turned a bit hazy, we had a marvellous view all over Paris and where Katharina reanimated the last unicorn (see picture). Decided not to clinb onto the Tour Eiffel, which was too crowded (and besides, many years ago when I was even smaller than today, I once jammed my head in the grid trying to have a look down - that's enough...) Spent lunch time in sunny and peaceful Parc Luxembourg. Took a walk along les Champs-Elysées and watched all the Japanese tourists trying to catch a photo impression of the Triumphal Arch. Visited two of the famous Parisian cemeteries with graves of departed idols and intellectuals, such as Heinrich Heine (I owed him that visit as I had been living in "his" street for 6 years!), Truffaut, Sartre and his life-long?? affair Beauvoir, Gainsbourg and Beckett. I must admit, these cemeteries were really worth a visit with their nice, peaceful, calm and autumnal-sunny atmosphere, but finding the graves was sometimes as exhausting as searching Easter eggs! Our biggest challange was finding Maupassant, whose grave was obviously not at the place that the map showed... So, as we couldn't spend the whole weekend at Parisian graveyards, we did not go on to the Pierre Lachaise cemetery, albeit it must be really beautiful and plenty of celebrity fame, such as Morrison and Wilde, is located there. May they rest in peace until I'll come back one day to visit them.
And... we did succeed finding the location where Bertolucci shot his scandalous "Last Tango in Paris" in the Seventies: the bridge and the appartment house at Métro Passy... where is Marlon Brando`s grave btw??

So, I will stop gabbling. Just enjoy some more pictures!






















(P.S.: No housing news lately. Just rumors about fire, and about tiles that are supposed to fall from the roof. The police barrier however is meanwhile being ignored... I think I will survive without any problems, though.)

Weird!

Help! Our house has been barricaded! Steel fence and police barrier tape in front of the facade, just our house and nothing else around! They left not more than a small pass to the front door - what's that??? Dubious. Did we miss a crime? Did the other guys sell drugs on a grand scale? Was there an accident? Did anyone find out about our illegal mould breeding? Does this house not only have urine scale but also skeletons in the closet?
uhuuuuu... Nightmare is calling ;-)
Or it's presumably just our landlord who is finally getting trouble 'cause of national building laws. No matter how lax they are, he probably violated them.

...amendment (12th): We still haven't found any corpse. Maybe we'll find some human ashes (see comment) which would actually be much better as it won't start to stink... ;-)
Thanks for all your compassion btw!

...this and that and that and this...

Hi folks,
a whole lot of work and other things to do, so I'm not too keen on doing bloggery at the moment...
Life in Brussels is going on while time is running away. Work is in progress, aswell the construction in front of my window. I'm putting on a few pounds as I do not have time for sports. Actually I am too stretched with other stuff. Or just lazy, call it as you like. Or spend too much of the little rest of time watching DVD, eating and drinking. Had one more scary experience with our flat, but nothing serious. Highlight of the last week: I visited a horse show, international world class jumping, which did indeed take me a whole lot of persuasive powers. Don't be afraid - I won't bother you with any of these girls' stuff pictures...
That's what's going on at the moment. I'm busy and content. And more fond of reading and hearing from you and what you're doing than writing myself :-)
Despite, excitement will return next week - Paris is calling! I will tell you then.
Greetings and hugs, cu