Day of grieving, les Enfoirés

This is a quick up to date update. As in, this is for today, March 16, not me trying to catch up from 3 months ago (uggghhhhh)
    A bus full of Belgian primary school kids crashed in a tunnel on the way home from a ski trip with the school this past week in Switzerland.  22 children and 6 adults died.  It is international news here in Europe.  Today Belgium had a national day of grieving, called a "deuil" (which means grieving),  in which at 11 o'clock, in principle, everyone stopped everything for 1 minute.  The cars pull over, class stopped at school, and all the church bells in the entire country, Flemish and Walloon, ring for the minute.  My host dad told me in the car today that in all his years of living in Belgium (his whole life), he has only known 3, one of which was the death of the last king.  So it's a big deal.  And I think the way they do it, and the rareness of the event (as opposed to where I lived in the states, when we had a moment of silence every single day, sometimes multiple times a day) really really added to my appreciation of the gravity of the situation, and the specialness of it.  It was a nice moment anyway.


    Tonight also, live from Lyon, France, les Enfoirés played!  It's comparable to the Grammy's in America, but then again, completely not.  Les Enfoirés are more like the movie guild at the oscar's actually.  But I digress.  They are a "guild," for lack of a better word, of all the best and most popular francophone, (and just French) artists that all put on a concert together every year now full of strange chorus and changing solo arrangements of popular songs sung in context of silly skits.  But the show is really spectacular, and the names that are there are just so impressive to see all on one stage.  It is in fact a charity concert, started by the original "enfoirés" (which means bastards, [it's a sort of joke]) for the "Restaurants du coeur" (restaurants of/from the heart) which collect and give food to hungry people in France, and around the world.  It's a great thing too.  They release a cd and a dvd every year and all benefits go to this charity!  It does however manage to stay so much less commercial than the benefit concerts from the US, I find.  At least, during the concert, I didn't feel like I was watching public television that would ask me to call in and order for 15 minutes ever 10 minutes of programming.  Good stuff.

    St. Patrick's is tomorrow.  I'm going to Namur with my green sunglasses, green hat, and rain jacket!
Happy St. Paddy's day!

lol

Standard with Cyril (26th Jan)

Cyril, my current host brother, and I went to a Standard game.  Standard vs Mons at home.  This one was quite a bit fuller, and the seats were in a different place.  The Pollains have 2 season tickets spots, so we went!  It was cold, and rainy, but fortunately, we were up under the covered section.

it says "Standard de Liège" up there.

That's the view out the window towards the south/west.  the Arcelor factory is that way.

before it started

Enter: the crowd.  They had flags sitting on the seats in the fan section.  I was sitting about where the white flags in the middle are for the first match.

official symbol, Standard de Liège

Enter: the teams

Standard supporters on both sides of the stadium!  They lit red smoke bombs right there in the seats!  

How much smoke the fireworks made before the security guards confiscated them

2 goals right in a row!

dizzy yet?

Arcelor again.  They are the giant metal-works factory that is all along the Meuse from almost downtown all the way out to Flémalle.  They had MAJOR cuts last fall, I think I may have blogged about it.  They say it's all closed, but I still see smoke coming out of the main factory, so, I don't know what's going on with it now.  They let so many people go that they demonstrated in the streets there in Seraing.

Halftime. We got chips and I got a coffee.

Standard is red.  One must know this.

(what would eventually be the) Final score!

Cyril advised us to skip out early so we could avoid the huge crowd in the huge cement staircase with no windows that leads out to the exit.

La Meuse.  I recently learned, (as in here in March) that I've been wrong the whole time about which direction the Meuse flows!  This is upstream towards Huy (and Arcelor and Flémalle).

That's downstream to downtown.  Cyril showed me a barge that sunk here near the bridge (Pont d'Ougrée) a few years ago.

After the match, Sylvie, my host mum came to pick us up, and we went and got a quick Quick.  I got a milkshake!
lol

Liège in January

These photos were just to remind myself what Liège looks like.   In winter.

On the way to Liège in Seraing.

The graffiti wall.

The factory.

Standard.

La Meuse direction Liège (up stream)

Destination:

OPERA

The road on the way out of Guillemins

The bus across the Pont d'Albert 1st near the library that I've never been to.

Médiacité

in the mall. They are in the process of building a pool or skating rink thing off to the side of it.  Primark is here.  So is Jules and one of the 3 or 4 H&Ms in Liège.

Home of The Voice Belgique.  A spin off of the French spin off of the Voice from the States.  Compared to the French one, the Belgian one is more anglicised, as in they use slightly more English music on the show.  There is even an English judge, who speaks French with a horrible accent.  But this show is very popular, and it's filmed right here in Liège.

I mean, there it looks like I was taking a picture of the sign there, but that is nothing.  It's just the silhouette of the building is cool.  (We can see Primark in the black windows there on the right)

A part of Liège that I had not yet explored, Outremeuse, that is, the island in between the Meuse and the derivation canal.  Lots of neighborhoods. Apartment buildings, not much to do from what I saw.

But it's pretty.  This is the derivation.

I found a secret graffiti tunnel

They must have meetings and stuff here.  So I left pretty quickly.

Palais des Congres.  And there's a church way up there behind Guilly there.

I don't know what it is.  But now I have a picture of it!  Of to the side of the Bridge of Albert the 1st

The parc with il Toro in it

Parc D'Avroy.  There's a big work of art there in the middle!

The peacock has blooms even in the middle of freezing temperatures!

Pont D'Avroy

Pont D'Avroy

Place Cathedrale with it's current (in January) gargen deco.

Republique Française

Opera house, under constuction

All the streets and sidewalks in Liège are made up of all these little bricks

Rue St Gilles

Jonfosse

Pont D'Avroy the other direction than usual.

Somehow I ended up back at school... I don't remember why.