I can never sleep on airplanes, no matter what I do. This time was no exception. The four-hour stop in Barajas meant a return to a first world of signs, gestures and different customs, but the unexpected arrival at a destination was much more interesting.
Hasselt is a place full of unusual technology in Flanders. Flemish-speaking people as in Barcelona or in Quebec resistance passing through the language. Belgium is a country-buffer that separates the Netherlands from France and Germany, although more than a century later no one will feel Belgian, and instead say flamingos. People complain about the weather and rain, but the sides of the road are fields of eternal green cultivated.
From the top of a new-tech Radisson warns the cathedral ceiling and a religious fervor that makes it too easy a joke of Flanders and Flanders. Bloom around IT industries and Content. A hundred miles, in the Somme, are still echoes of both wars. Belgium has always been the backyard where the boys are fighting. Perhaps thinking about this, and identities in war, people drink beer with 10% alcohol. As I surrender to ritual, glimpsing Argentinas fragmented, with no room for beauty or for technology. Beyond the glass is still raining.
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