Antuerp

We spent 7 days in Antuerp. My sister was graduating from her studies, and we just ough to be there. First of all I booked the tickets three weeks in advance, and I secure relatively cheap ones on Ryanair, to Charlorei - a town about 1h120 from Brussels, and about 2h from Antuerp. From Charleroi you take the train.

Two days previous the trip, I check the booking, to do the online check-in. To my own horror, I had booket ticket to Oslo from Charleroi!

Whan I try to understand, the computer reservers your last purchase, and next time you access the website, you have to be extra attentiou and change that more than once!

Last time I bought my sister her tickets to us…

Now what? Well, nothing more than getting new tickets. And of course, they're now more than double so expensive. But well, mistakes will cost you a lot, they say. In this case it was only the money. Imagine if I had gone to the airport, and only there realised that I had a wrong booking? If I could not be able to attend the grad ceremony?

So, I had to put it together (have I said how much I dislike spending money?, and paid for new tickets.

This time our trip went quite well. Except from the fact that the plane was delayed, as they could not start the machine that controls the boarding passes! Amazed at how technology sometimes tricks a whole system? Me too! Always.

Antuerp was imponent as always. But again in a sort of a negative way. I can not stop seeing the traces of African diamonts, most of them illigally obtained. One more time I had myself thinking, wondering, asking what is so amazing about diamonds that can define the world. The fact that I had recently watched "Blood Diamond" again made it certainly a more vivid occasion for questioning. I find, and have said it before, this to be a sick world, based on wrong pillars. How can stones, as brilliang as they can be, determine peace and war, richness and poverty, ignorance and access to education, lack of basic resources or the opposite? Aren't diamonds just beautiful and shinning material?

beware, I am not saying they are not beautiful and atractive. I am saying it is awkward for me that they have so much power in this world.

Of course, this made me think of my own country… Will Mozambique survive these challenges? Why?

Back to Anwerp, I had not realised before how many mosquitoes there are there. Maybe they all came out because it was raining a lot… I don't know, but my poor daughter god a lot of bites. I had to get her a relieving lotion!

We had fun, we ate out, we even went shopping in town. Yes, I don't possess the patience it takes to shop, but I suddenly realised it was summer sales season, and that clothes are much cheaper than back in Norway. We got a lot of children's clothes, and some itens for myself.

When time came, we travelled back home, and again Ryanair was a story of itself. But I am considering writing a specific post on them - and the cheap flyght companies in general!

But back to Antuerp, it is funny to realise that I may not visit it again. The reason why I went there in the first moment was my sister. Now that she's going back home, I see no special reason to visit, unless, of course, I land a gig there! :)