Springwinter

The change in the weather couldn't have been bigger from one week to another: last weekend it was so cold and rainy we actually cut our daytrip to Namur short (it just wasn't fun anymore once we were soaking wet) and the following Saturday we have breakfast on our terrace in our t-shirts! But if it's this way round, I definitely won't complain.

I'm making the most out of the weekends I'm spending in Belgium because for some reason there is always something planned. We met up with some friends for a "crafternoon" last Saturday and I managed to work a bit on my Birki cardigan and also made some nice finds in a local charity shop. On Sunday, we went to Namur as I mentioned above but ended up  in the Félicien Rops Museum instead of walking up to the citadel because of the awful weather.

 When we turned up at the museum reception they told us that the entry and the audio guide were for free on every first Sunday of the month - how lucky were we?! And also good to know for future museum trips. The museum was nicely done but to be honest, I'm not a big fan of the artist. His view of women is, to but it lightly, extremely biased. In his personal life he left his wife to live with two (much younger) sisters and had affairs with both of them, but in his art women are depicted at best as objects, and at worst as manipulative witches that are only after the men's money or even in a pact with the devil. Definitely some issues there!

But Namur is still a very charming small town. Originally we had planned on going there because Thomas, even though he is Belgian, had never been and I only remembered it vaguely from a daytrip a few years ago. The conclusion of the trip was that we should probably go back in summer, when we can enjoy it a bit more. Also, literally everything in town except for a few restaurants and the museums was closed so there wasn't much else to do.

The following weekend (let's skip the boring week, shall we?) we had more museums on our agenda: Museum Night Fever in Brussels, one of my two favourite cultural events of the year - the other is the car-free Sunday and Open Monument Day by the way. I think I haven't missed a single edition since I arrived in Brussels and loved it every time. Although this time, I found the activities on offer not quite as interesting but that might also depend on which museums we went to. Still  fun night though and chapeau to the Brussels museums for organizing a major event like this with so much success!

Now I think I've had enough museums for a while and I hope we'll have real spring here soon so we can spend some more time outdoors again.