In this stop-motion Katrien, the sister of Hanne enjoys a family New Year’s Eve of 2010 in Bruges in the company of the two most important men of her life – Gerbert and Merlijn. This day is also the birthday of Hanne’s father André.
Instead of long and boring galleries, this time motion picture which speaks for itself. In the movies you see the New Years Eve 2010 in Brugge, at the house of Hanne’s parents, the New Year’s dinner 2011 in Varsenare, at the house oh Hanne’s grammy, and Hanne & Bronek in the marina of Bruges.
The Volcanic Ash cloud has caused a little delay in our meeting schedule. After all we met during the Polish May long weekend. As for such a date the tickets were strangely cheap. We were willing to spend together as much time as possible so on Monday the 3rd when Hanne had to go to Gent to take an exam in Polish I went along. Hanne was busy all morning so I took the opportunity to sniff a little bit around our old quarters. In the afternoon on the other hand we were so busy with ourselves enjoying the city that we didn’t take any pictures at all.
In the morning I managed to trample the entire city across. I took a look over the canals, the area of Sint-Lucas Hogeschool and Portus Ganda. I walked everything around dropping by our old flat. In Brabantdam, in a furniture store, thinking of Zuza I noted down the address of the manufcturer of “growning desks”. Unfortunately they are quite expensive 😛 Very practical though. I do not publish pictures from my mobile – go to the website yourself.
Our old quarters turned out to be teeming with life in the characteristic, hasty rhythm. What prof. StanisÅ‚aw Fisher named recently in his lecture in arcyARCHIwizje in Åódź ‘flickering facades’ one can observe with bare eyes here. If on a map you would mark every new investment with a blinking dot, a map of Gent would look like the starry night sky. An animated map like this was shown to us in urban design class by docent André Coene. I wondered back then how a map of Åódź would look like, if you animated it like this, taking all the data since beginning of 20th century? Since the 50s – like a collapsing black hole?
On one of the most beautiful water avenues of Gent, the canal separating Graslei from Korenlei they started renovation and reintroduction of Oude Vismijn, the old fish trading hall. Lofting Gorup will transform it in to some merciless commercial miracle. I do not know the new function and a little bit I regret for the wooden part of the building which you can see at this picture. Anyway the building was vastly neglected and it is good that somebody is taking care of it. By the way I captured the covered facade of Design Museum at Jan Breydelstraat. Looks like nothing special, but I find it cool, that pedestrians get a couple of archive pictures as a substitution of the real facade. Why no commercials?? 😛
Another romantic canal can be found at Ketelvest. There you can see the back of recent developments of SumProject, office of the architect Paul Lievevrouw. Residence Kouterhof is a standard which the polish “development” will long strive to reach. And I do not mean here the aesthetic interventions, rather the method of financing. The last apartment here was sold in the summer of 2007, before the constructions started for good.
You also get a look towards the west along the same canal, The Flamish Opera and Handelsbeurs. The first hall we already visited two years ago. It served a very cool Swan Lake performed by the Royal Ballet of Flanders and the Flemish Radio Orchestra. The neoclassical facade of the building dated back to first half of the 19th century hides an operetta interior, lavishly reminiscent of the French theater in a somewhat baroque revival style. The hall pleases with good acoustics, and most of all with the performing team. We hope to visit Handelsbeurs in the future.
Wandering in the area of Ketelvest I came across a very interesting church, which I have never noticed before. I don’t know who was this church of, it is situated at Savaanstraat.
The plague of decorative fowl bands, attacking humans in parks is a kind of local oddity. The problem was described in the local papers some time ago. The birds from Muinpark were happy to pose and seemed innocent… 😉
We spent the afternoon together forgetting about the camera. We had a lunch in the patio of Post Plaza at Korenmarkt. This is another building which somehow missed my attention so far. Once it used to shelter the main post office of the city. Postmans gave way for the introduction of consumption and commercial functions. It is a place worth visiting due to the interesting operation hall with brick-steel detail and a glazed, double canopy, characteristic for this area of the world.
In the stream of new views I also noticed the new quarters of Artevelde Hogeschool at Kantienberg and the Polish consulate still in grief at Lange Kruisstraat.
My legs said ‘no’ around 5pm after the 7th circle around the 300-thousand-citizen town. We spent the evening in Brugge…
Every time I was cooking something this week I thought how many times have I already eaten this with Hanne (ie. white borsch with sousage and egg), or otherwise I thought that actually we’ve never eaten it together (mazurek, babka – polish easter cakes). I thought also in general, how many times and with who I actually eaten them. With my grandmother Zosia, with family, the part which has not eaten with us for long, and also mother, father, brother… Easter 2010 is my first easter home with family since 3 years. I was surprised with the new tradition off hanging easter balls. Must have been invented when I was away :). Among easter eggs I also noticed a historic egg from the time of anthrax fever made by my aunt Zosia Domaniewska.
Things I have not eaten with Hanne yet I promise to catch up with them next year. Meanwhile we are going to see each other already on the 20 of April – I can’t wait for that!!! 🙂
Happy Easter
for you my Hanne
and everybody!
This is a Polish Valentine Potato for Hanne – a Polish solution to the problem of valentine branding.
Update: This is not a stock photo – I have it here and the orange background is my mouse pad 😛
Here are the long missing pictures from Hanne’s parents visit to Poland. As a bonus first goes the picture of my mother and Hanne on freshly refurbished DÄ…browskiego square. There is a new fountain over there, although not visible in the picture.
Then there are group photos from on our terrace: me, Hanne, parents of both of us and some of our animals. It was an official meeting. 😉 The later story is a picture of Hanne and Nicole, her mother from in front of Anatewka, the nice jewish restaurant in Åódź where we ate dinner on the first day, when Hanne’s parents arrived. However, André felt sick after the long trip and stayed at the hotel.
As the trip of parents consisted of two parts one in Åódź and one i Warsaw, Hanne and I we drove them to Warsaw after 3 wonderful days in my hometown. On our way we dropped in The Arboretum, a sort of jardin botanique for trees only, run by the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. Here on the vast area of ~55 hectares of land you can experience a wonderful variety of forestal landscapes from around the world. There is also a unique, so called rock garden presenting alpine flora. On the last picture you may see Mr Van obberghen tasting a polish beer after a lunch we had on a national road next to arboretum. As far as I remember we had a complete lunch over there for as much as €8 – cheap even as for Poland.
Here I present three funny pictures from a photo shoot on 10.01 by my brother. The pictures were made as complement to Zuza’s christmas gift – an alphabet of pictures. In the pictures you get me, just out of bed to represent letter W, you get Lala the handmade doll which Hanne made for Zuza as L, and at last you get Jacek the friend of my brother who came by to get a picture for his graduation diploma and ended up as the letter “Å»”.
Around noon the weather was still all right. A few petals of snow were to be seen. You rarely expect it to happen in October, especially considering the 20’C a maybe a week ago.
It is 3pm now and since than we got loads of snow with some trouble along: A Robinia tree collapsed in our garden. The the terrace tent has folded down under the excessive white mass. We are hoping and struggling now not to let our birches fall. I don’t even try to imagine what is going on the roads in the center…
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