ħaikus

I’ve been chatting since almost one year with a nice bearcub, Vincent, from Brussels and last weekend we finally met: he’s Italian, his parents are Italian too (from Marche), but they lived in (French speaking) Belgium ever since.
It was very funny to meet him: sometimes we couldn’t understand whose Italian knowledge was worse. Probably I should have spoken French more often: my ears were alredy delighted by listening to that language on the train (I finally travelled by Thalys) on the streets and by him with his friends. I should even say that I could understand him more easily than Jean-François, for instance. I was surprised when he told he’s usually talking in English with some Flemish friends because they don’t speak French as well as he doesn’t speak Dutch. Wow, English as lingua franca between people living in the same country…
I was his guest and I really liked his appartment in the southern part of the city: classy furnished and with love for detail. Quite fast I realized he’s definitively more Bree than me So cool! I finally found someone more cleaning-, order- and control-freak than me!

We had a lot of fun together and I felt like we were old friends. Two pazze in Brussels is probably the best expression

I started this post when Emiliano was visiting because of the IBC, when I watched the 25th and 26th episode of Death Note that somehow mark another (and bigger) change in the plot: they could also work as a first end of the series, almost better then the official one, which surprisingly comes after 11 more episodes and that I watched last Friday.
While most of the best anime are very psychological, the main character is looking for his own ego and true personality (like in Neon Genesis Evangelion or Haibane Renmei as well as in RahXephon, but I didn’t finish it yet), Death Note is definitively more philosophical/political. This is the reason why I’m currently wondering what justice is, what good and evil are, whether they are distinct, who decides that. Yagami Light is going to create a new world by killing all the criminals and everyone else is going to stop him: is this for world’s sake or is this Light’s personal gain? Is really this what people intimately whish, although they publicly disapprove it? Light is mean and manipulator, he’s never going to stop, he’s definitively evil… but he’s got my support and my sympathy… why? Is that easy for a writer, a director, a painter to make people love evil? Amazing… and frightening.

I spent last weekend in Brussels (I’m going to use the English name throughout the post to avoid the double French/Flemish, Bruxelles/Brussel) for two reasons: finally visiting my Italian-Belgian friend Vincent and the city where he’s living, during the European heritage days.
Funnily, when I wrote for two reasons I remembered this part of the movie Kill Bill vol. 1:

As I said before… I’ve allowed you to keep your wicked live for two reasons. And the second reason is, so you can tell him, in person everything that happened to you tonight. I want him to witness the extend of my mercy by witnessing your deformed body. I want you to tell him all the information you’ve just told me. I want him to know what I know. I want him to know what I want him to know. And I want them all to know, they’ll all soon be as dead as already.

I’m sick, I know Somehow I can’t write a post without some quote…
Anyway, back to the main subject: I was in Brussels, as I said, and I had great time. The city is lovely, hilly and dotted with art nouveau buildings (e.g. from Victor Horta); but Brussels is at its best in the food shops We went to Marcolini to buy some fine chocolate (I had two Java blends with lemon/orange and with pepper/spices): omg, I could have died there. Later we bought some teas and tea related products (like a black tea jelly with rose flavour or a chestnut jam with green tea) at Le Palais des Thés, a chain I already loved in Paris… Mmm, I definitively need to go to Paris: shopping there is much more fun than everywhere else But Brussels is a nice option too.
Because of the European heritage days, the city was full of tourists and it wasn’t always pleasant to stroll around but the Grand Place/Grote Markt was really worth the visit: in a very small place some of world’s finest buildings, amazing.