Tiny Christmas Tales. Part II. Belgium
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December 31, 2013 ... January 2, 2014
Belgium has a very large number of red window frames.
And a very large number of old license plates that differ from the rest of Europe. They all have an advertisement on the left of the plate and a letter B on the right.
Ghent
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The city is so beautiful that I’ll even post a super-touristy picture of the downtown waterfront. It’s so pretty I just can’t stop looking at it.
Ghent is notable for its numerous canals with low moveable bridges of all kinds. Some have swinging platforms, others use complicated counterweight mechanisms. The bridges open and close so quickly and so frequently you’d think they’re ordinary boom barriers.
Antwerp
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A nice city. Pleasant in all respects.
A European tradition: sticking a Christmas tree right into an open sewer manhole on the main square.
An information board above a subway entrance.
A fairly modest post box on an incredibly repulsive leg.
Huy
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It was impossible not to stop by a town with such a wonderful name (to a Russian, it reads like khuy, a swear word whose literal meaning is «penis»). Russian maps call the town Уи (Wee).
A Weener panorama.
Spa
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The small backwater resort town of Spa gave the world the word «spa». For some reason, many illiterate people (at least in Russia) write the word in all caps, as though it’s an acronym. The word «spa» should be written in all lowercase, and the name of the town—Spa—should be capitalized. Never, ever write SPA.
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