Circles

July 21 Belgium's national day.

It was on 21 July 1831 that Leopold of Saxe-Coburg swore allegiance to the Belgian constitution and took the constitutional oath as the first King of Belgium.
Even though Julius Caesar mentioned the Belgae 2000 years ago, Belgium is a young nation. The independent state was created on October 4, 1830 but National day is celebrated as a commemoration of the oath of the first King.
Belgium has been without a government for well over a year now. I therefore hope that the readers of this blog do not mind a little humorist note of Belgian flags, stuck in beach buckets along with other playful things, for sale.

Bonnefantenmuseum

A few shots from this impressive museum in Maastricht, situated on both sides of the Meuse/Maas river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border (with both Flemish and Walloon region within easy reach from the city centre) and near the German border.
The Bonnefantenmuseum combines, in a building by Aldo Rossi, private and public collections with both old master painting and sculpture as cutting edge contemporary art. Furthermore it hosts the so-called Rijksmuseum Maastricht and collections focused both on medieval applied arts (Neutelings) as on mainstream contemporary (Vandenhove).
http://www.bonnefanten.nl/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht

Wedding

Felt like digging up and sharing these black and whites taken with my old second hand analog Canon. I have not used it much since I became a member of the Nikon and Panasonic Lumix  fan clubs. Don't you agree that there is something to be said for analog black and white photography...? If only it would not be such a painstaking job to develop the rolls in the dark room.. or if only I became much better and quicker at it!

How to get to the "Gentse Feesten"?

The weather has been awful these last few days but let that not stop you from attending one of the season's yearly highlights, the Gentse Feesten, a popular festival of music, theater,  acts and everything that comes with that, in the streets of Ghent.
The Feesten run from July 16 to 25 .. "the last day is always a Monday and known as the day of the empty wallets, alluding to the fact that many people have spent their last penny at the festival, and is by the people of Ghent seen as their day while the stream of visitors from other places ceases.The first Gentse Feesten were held in 1843. The modern day Gentse Feesten were started in the summer of 1969 by Ghent singer Walter De Buck and the people from the Trefpunt cafe. In the beginning the festival consisted of one stage near the Saint Jacob Church. Since the late eighties the festival has grown enormously and now covers the whole inner city of Ghent. About 2 million visitors attend the festival every year, making it one of the biggest cultural and popular festivals in Europe". 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentse_Feesten

Quatorze juillet

To salute our southern border neighbors on their "jour de gloire", I chose what to me is a representative picture.

The Parisian "pétanqueurs" are taking a break from their daily afternoon sport near "Invalides".  They are discussing the last game as one man is pointing in the direction of the balls while they other still has the obligatory cloth in his hand.

Seen from behind