Results for “derek blyth”

Ostend is different. Other resorts along Belgium’s North Sea coastline are small, touristy places. But Ostend is a real city.

Derek Blyth visits the Sahara of the North.

Derek Blyth points out a unique Belgian phenomenon, the trade in paper beach flowers.

Derek Blyth expresses his love for the carillons of Flanders and the Netherlands.

The author sets off on the longest tram ride in the world, all the way along the Belgian coast from De Panne to Knokke: 67 kilometers, 68 stops. A strip of fantasies. Now and then he gets out of the vehicle to glance at a nudist beach, a f...

The plan was to drive from Ghent to Kortrijk on the old Kortrijksesteenweg. Houses in various eclectic styles, hypermarkets, car showrooms, roadside brothels, bars and forgotten hotels, churches and a statue of a caribou perced on a rock. ...

The comic strip started in daily newspapers as a funny story at the back of the page. But is has evolved in the Netherlands and Belgium into a subtle and subversive art form. The Fleming Ever Meulen loves cars, houses and women. His illust...

Derek Blyth goes on a literary pilgrimage in Willem Elsschot’s Antwerp.

Derek Blyth ends up in a deserted village that refuses to die.

Derek Blyth hits the road in a very Dutch phenomenon, the caravan.

Visit any town or city in Belgium and you will find fries. Derek Blyth pays tribute to the humble fritkot.

Derek Blyth lets himself be overwhelmed by the multi-talent Rubens. Or is it by his love for the human flesh?

Did you know there is a Dutch town called Austerlitz with a pyramid nearby, built by Napoleon’s soldiers?

The bicycle and car sharing that we know today can be traced back to the ‘White Bicycles’ and ‘White Cars’ initiated by the Provo movement.

Rotterdam used to be a tough industrial city. Not any longer. It’s now got the energy of New York combined with the liveability of Copenhagen.

Dutch artists painted a giant bookcase on an apartment building in Utrecht featuring residents’ favorite books.

Belgium's oldest city has refreshed its identity. Thanks to the Romans.

In the past 'Praathuisjes' were only used by old men and sailors to catch up with a cup of coffee. Now everyone is welcome.

It's early morning in Mechelen and the streets are empty. Derek Blyth is looking forward to wandering down the cobbled lanes, looking inside gothic churches, passing some time in the municipal museum, and ending up, as everyone does, in one...

In Hasselt there's no big square, no great art collection, none of the sense of ancient history you feel in nearby towns like Tongeren or Maastricht. Yet it's somehow quietly appealing. At the end of his day in Hasselt, Derek Blyth took a f...

Beer drinking in Flanders goes back a long way. The rich heritage of Flemish beer used to be a well-kept secret, but the efforts of café owners and writers have helped to promote the image of Flemish ales. As word gets around, the names of ...

Many Brontë experts have described Charlotte’s impressions of Belgium, but few have considered what the Belgians thought of Charlotte. The Brussels-based writer and translator Helen Mac-Ewan now fills this gap with her second carefully res...

When I visited Middelburg for the first time, back in the early 1980s, the town was an old-fashioned, religious place. It was a Sunday and everything was closed, except for the churches, which were full. It felt twenty years behind Amsterd...

Back in the 1880s, when Van Gogh was plodding through the Brabant potato fields, Eindhoven was just a small Catholic town. Now it is the fifth largest city in the Netherlands, with an acclaimed modern art museum and a world-class design ac...

In December 1516, thanks to help from Erasmus, the first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia came off Dirk Martens’ presses in the university town of Leuven. Originally published in Latin, the fable begins in Antwerp, where More bumps into Gil...