The boglands in the sun

10 days ago my sister and her family spent a weeekend with us and they brought the sun after weeks of drowning in the rain. It was lovely out!

My  nephew became immediate friends with the neighbour's cats & puppies. After all they are so adorable.

Walking through the forrests & boglands at the Signal de Botrange, Belgium's highest point

Sundew plant at Fagne Neûr Lowé 

Hanging out with the dive club

Our weekend was filled with activities, among other with some diving in Antwerp and in Les lacs de l'Eau d'Heure in the south of Belgium. And the sun came to keep us company in between the clouds.  We only got wet due to our own choice ;)

Made in Belgium: Zita Swoon

Zita Swoon always triggers the association with its extravagant singer Stef Kamiel Carlens and his exuberant dressing style. Even though  I have never payed much attention to Zita Swoon until in the more recent years some of their songs attrack my attention for their warm summer feeling.

In 2010 Zita Swoon travelled through Burkina Faso and since then they also bring African influence rock songs which I absolutely love.   I adore Sababu so I bring it here in 2 different versions. I realise I've been underestimating Zita Swoon and they'll definately get much more of my attention.



Sababu (live in Burkina Faso )



 Sababu
 

 Hot Hotter Hottest (live at Rock Werchter 2008)


Thinking about you all the time (2004)



 Don't hold me back by Neeka & Stef Kamiel Carlens

Thalys marketeers are on dope

and now think we are too

....as regular Thalys customers I got multiple (!!) e-mails last week with the request to fill in their survey.
We already know how interested they are in my opinion.  


Anyway, I was happy to fill it in until I saw the questions.   Seriously "imagine Thalys were a planet....what landscape would it have? What would the temperature be on the planet, what color would it have ....? 

yeah right, try again guys. Have fun at your next brainstorm session.

Difficult concepts for a 4-year old

• 'working from home' : I can see you, you are there, so clearly you can play with me
• 'working in general' : what are you doing???? when will you be done?
• 'commuting for work ':  where are you ? why did you leave with your iPad?
• 'I don't play games on my iPad': so what do you use it for? And if you don't play games, why did you take it with you?
• 'colleagues': what is the name of your friend? 

I worked from home yesterday, which was the first time I was 'home' in the neighbour's boy vacation time. He found it confusing that I didn't play with him.  Today it was even more confusing that Jan was home and I wasn't  . The disaster was that I took my iPad along with me.

Rain & napping

2 weekends ago at Center Parcs & the blues festival, I could distinguish to clear themes in my pictures: 

• Blues festivals combined with bungalows filled with little kids is clearly tiring....little naps everywhere (but the camera was awake!)

• And it poured rain   and then some more and then the puddles slowly invaded the festival tent after which it rained some more.
  Now that Western Europe finally has a week of sun and everyone is posting enthusiastically sun pictures, it feels less depressing to show my drowned pictures. 

Center Parcs & Belgian Rhythm Blues festival

The weekend before we went back to the Center Parcs vacation parc; and the nearby Belgian Rhythm and Blues festival in Peer with a group of friends and their kids.  It's a tradition from friends, that we joined for the first time last year (although we've been to the festival before). Despite the huge fatigue from my current workload and the stress with it, and despite the continuous rainy grey weather that after a few weeks has seriously become depressing, it was really nice to hang out with friends, to joke with kids, to sleep in (yeayyyy), to go swimming in the tropical pool or to go and chill in the big tent to listen to blues music.

Little wagons....handy to transport tired kids or suitcases & groceries  :p

Center Parcs Erperheide

kids bowling at Center Parcs

Studying the program at the festival (before the rain flooded the tent)

wink wink

Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Nick Lowe

Made in Belgium: El Fish

Last weekend we were at the Belgium Rhythm & Blues festival and El Fish was one of the Belgian groups playing. They originate from Leuven but I had never heard from them...that is not an amasing fact as I am very blues ignorant. They don't truly fit the blues label, neither country or alternative but are a bit all of that with a strong live reputation. They didn't play anymore in the 2000's but are now doing some reunion concerts.

 All right
 

Visit Dr Boogie

Our summer sucks

Or how other An captures it more beautifully  or Tijdtussendoor shows....The rain is already invading my feedreader, by lack of anything else to do or show lately.

Thistlegorm

One of the highlights of our diving vacation (already 2,5 weeks ago already....I don't have the time to complete all my draft posts!)  was diving the Thislegorm wreck. Previous diving vacation we arrived in Sharm on the day the diveclub went to the Thislegorm, so we missed it but this time we had more luck. 

It takes some effort though...shuttle pick-up at 4 AM to leave the harbour at 5AM.   Sharm's pretty quiet at that time a day, except for Naama Bay where some partiers were still hanging on. 

While leaving the harbour we saw an extremely quick sunrise after which everyone on the boat went back to sleep. 

After an early morning dive at Ras Mohammed and a few more hours of sleeping on the boat, we arrived at our destination...with some oil islands at the horizon. Only 6 more diving boats anchored...pheww, not too busy today. This can be quite differently, so I learned.

And then it was time to go under...to explore this famous WWII museum.

In 1941, the SS Thislegorm was on its way to supply the British Army in Alexandra during its 4th sea journey. It had left from Glasgow but because the Germans were in control of the Mediterrean, it had made the tour around Africa.  In the night of Oct 6th 1941,  2 German bombers returned from a mission and had 2 bombs left. When they discovered the large freight ship and some other ship in the Red Sea, they dropped their last bombs on the biggest target. One bomb was a hit, right on the ammunition stored. There were 9 victims but the rest of the crew survived fortunately (partially by some heroic rescue acts from one of the crew members) and was picked up by other cargo closeby...  The SS Thislegorm itself sunk taking its cargo full of trucks, motorcycles, plane motors, 2 locomotives for the first Egyptian railroad, boxes with rifles, etc... All of it still well visible while diving.

Aaah truly one of the best wreck diving sites in the world! Impressive. They can wake me up again in the middle of the night for another visit to this underwater military museum.

SS Thistlegorm

panzer on Thislegorm

anti-aircraft gun at stern ship...proven useless

Collapsing railway tanker

rifles