Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Summer Train

Back to Antwerp again. Three month from blogosphere is like two weeks on the road or one whole year away from home. I left for Vienna toward the end of August, knowing it means farewell to Zomer van Antwerpen: 58 days of music, theater, circus, film, zomerbar…every single day, with of without the blessing of the sun. The whole city – in fact, the whole Flanders region falls into summer mode.

For the first time I felt guilty to stay home. Say tired to Gentsefeesten. Not to party till dawn. Not to celebrate the warmest season of northern hemisphere.

But you never know what is going to happen next summer, or next day (weather in Antwerp); I just couldn’t resist jumping into the summer train. I traveled north up from Vienna to Prague then south bound to Bratislava. My return flight is from Vienna; that means I have to travel further south from Bratislava to Budapest and then north up again.

In the end I missed the legendary one-hour-or-so Vienna – Bratislava train, but nonetheless I had a marvelous round-trip journey. Needless to mention: the European IC (Inter-city) trains are punctual, smooth and the landscapes are wonderful in these regions.

Vienna – Prague train journey. Highly recommended: Kate Nash +
Bauchklang through your ear plugs…
Wouldn’t want to embarrass myself giving historical narration or analyze architecture style of cathedrals as such; nor how Filippo Brunelleschi change the perspective of paintings forever, akin to that little big push Constantine I gave to Christianity, extending empire and perhaps, helping the humanity at large. There’s a hole in my history knowledge: Big part of it being European history and tradition.

Pity thing is one can hardly recall, and definitely no way to record every moment of the journey. You either missed the right moment for your shots or letting an inspiration slipped out of your mind. It’s a matter of that few seconds: You choice is either camera with 0.00001 sec start-up time or get ready to write on your arms, metro tickets and obviously maps.

Post-journey (at least for me) writing depends a lot on the seemingly insignificant notes when you are still trying to figure the street name. Or like myself, I also built it on photo memory – in the memory stick, that is.

It sounds stupid enough to hold the camera all the time; so sometime I just stroll, observing, trying to capture & feel the moment: such moment that might reappear months or years afterwards – with God’s wiling it will be in another post. Or it just becomes part of memory, nothing more and nothing less.

Ichthys - Jesus Christ The Son of God The Saviour
The starting point of my journey is Brussels - I remember the excitment of weeks-long holiday, expecting good weather and feeling rusty with my my old 3.2 MegaPixel faithful. Things (or my photos!) changed dramatically later with a 10.2 MegaPixel plus 10x Optical Zoom but that's another story.

Okay, Brussels feels more like a city compare to Antwerp – pardon me, from where I am and travelled before, you’ve gotta have enough high-rise to call yourself a city. If it’s odd the have century old landmark next to full-glazed high-rise, it’s even better to paint a fish skeleton in between them.

One of the two ‘fishy’ paintings that I notice during my 48 hours stay in Brussels, as well as first discovery of two ‘high-level’ (well, almost 10-storey I'd say) art painting throughout my summer journey.

Next one comes in Vienna – here lies the forces of attraction of Hitler to The Art of Painting

1 Comments:

At 4:47 PM, Blogger HappySurfer said...

Hello Low, how are you? Are you still in Belgium? Thanks for visiting (quietly). LOL!

Btw, a belated Happy Chinese New Year to you and may the new year bring you much happiness, health and prosperity.

 

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