Wolvendach = Wolvendael

My friend Marjan was right. Wolvendach is indeed Wolvendael! (see one of my June blogs, where I discussed the post card below:



Mademoiselle Lucie Noérenne (Nérenne?) must have been a servant there. I managed to find a picture postcard of the chateau. So, here it is:



It's a beautiful 19th century chateau in Vijlst Brussegem. At some point it was owned by the baron Léon de Viron (1866-1925). It's still private property and it's hard to find out more about it. All information is welcome. To be continued...

Rzewski: sequel

I finally managed to find a recording of 'The People United Will Never be Defeated, played by Marc Hamelin. One of my husband's favourite piano players.

In brussels

While strolling in Brussels, I witnessed a rather unusual and surrealist scene.

'Bag'

This is a very pretty portrait by the Dutch photographer Hendrik Kerstens. Needless to say he is inspired by Johannes Vermeer. Very beautiful.
www.hendrikkersten.com

Deutschland im Herbst

I recently went to Berlin to participate in a conference on 'Der Erste Weltkrieg im Film'. The conference was very interesting and we had some time left to discover autumn in Berlin.

A tall tree

La plus belle...

The most beautiful Gabrielle Petit post card is without any doubt the following. I saw it on ebay a couple of weeks ago but I was unable to buy it (I decided to go to the swimming pool with my son, instead of waiting for the deadline of the auction, and of course someone else bought the item). Too bad, but I am very happy with this scan too.



It's an extremely special post card.
First, it's a picture made by a photographer during her life and duplicated after her death in 1916 (maybe as late as 1920). The picture post card is much rarer than the ones of her statue(s). Curiously the verso site of the card is blank. There's no name of a publisher, nor are there any other printed items (lines or squares). This is rather strange and may suggest it's a real photo or a memorabilia. Since I don't own the object, I can not tell.
Second, the stamps, King Albert (national hero of the Great War par excellence), dated February (?) 1920 and stamped in Brussels. Six different stamps. Same image, but different value (5c, 15c, 25c, 30c, 40c). I don't know anything about stamps, but the buyer propably does. Maybe the stamps are rare; the fact that there's a whole series of them on the same card might makes them especially valuable as a collector's item.
Third, the post card was sent to a gentleman named Jules Gasthuys living in the '4 Rue Cachet' (rue Cadet?) in Paris. Both the man and his address are unknown today.
Fourth, the text. Underneath the picture there are two texts. The first one is a hand written text saying: Gabrielle Petit, 24 ans, notre héroïne nationale. Fusillée par les Allemands le 1er Avril 1916'. Below this text, the sender of the card added 'Si à Paris il y a de jolies femmes, en Belgique il y a des femmes courageuses. Vive Gabrielle Petit'. The name of the sender is not mentioned, so one can assume the addressee would probably know who it was from anyway. Maybe this person was his only acquaintance in Brussels. Intuitively I think the person sending this postcard was a woman, not very young, around 30 maybe? If you think of it, the second text is rather strange. Why would anyone send this as a personal message to a friend in Paris? One may even read some jealousy in it... Anyway, such passionate expressions of patriotic fervour are truly wonderful. It demonstrates that Petits memory was still very much alive in 1920, 4 years after her death. It may also demonstrate that Parisian women were still considered the most beautiful in the world.

Anyone who knows more about this post card (or similar post cards), do contact me.

Never stop smoking cigars

More Gabrielle Petit memorabilia. I managed to get hold of a cigar band figuring her portrait. The cigar band with her portrait actually exists in 5 different colors: yellow, blue, red, purple and green!



The Petit band is part of series of bands with 12 women's portraits. I found it rather curious to find out who the other women were:

Cleopatra (obvious?)
queen Astrid of Belgium: born in Sweden, she was married to king Leopold III and died in a car accident in 1935. Mother of our present and previous king
George Sand: writer, unhappily in love with Frederic Chopin
Sarah Bernhardt: during the First World War - at the age of 70 - she supported the war effort by playing in patriotic theatre plays and films
queen Victoria: she was one of the first women to go to the French Riviera for holidays
Marie Curie: Maria Salomee Skłodowska-Curie, discoverd polonium and radium
Catharina II of Russia: her full name is Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, which sounds quite Dutch to me
Edith Cavell another heroine from the First World War
Pearl Buck: the first (American) woman to win the Pulitzer and the Nobel prize for literature
Mme de pompadour: mistress of Louis XV of France

This does make me wonder who makes up this kind of lists and on what criteria? It is rather strange to see Gabrielle Petit listed next to Cleopatra and George Sand. Another remarkable thing is that the people connected to the First World War are kind of over overrepresented in the list (Petit, Cavell, Bernhardt)

The series of cigar bands was issued by 'Principal' (=brand of cigars) in 1987. I always thought Gabrielle Petit was completely forgotten in Belgium until she was rehabilitated in 2005 through the national 'Grootste Belg' election. But I guess she was never forgotten by true cigar lovers. Never stop smoking cigars.

First time

Yesterday, my son and I had a hair cut for the first time. Meaning: he had his hair cut for the first time; and I cut hair for the first time. He's two, I''m thirty. I decided not to be too drastic and I think it worked out quite well.

1927

I finally managed to go to the city archive to look up the official file of our future house. Very exciting!! I was thrilled and happy and found the dossier quite remarkable: next to boring administrative letters and forms, it also held the original ground plans of all the floors (some alterations were made while building), a letter from the 'Comiteit voor stadsschoon' and an etching of the façade. I will get copies of most of the document next week.
The approval of the plans dates from February 1927 (the dossier was submitted right before Christmas 1926, on December 21st). So I assume the house was build in 1927 or 1928. The architect was a Mr. Boon from Leuven (F. Lintstraat 111), his client was a Mr. Malfait, living at the time in the nearby Corbeek-Loo (Chaussée the Tirlemont). I was actually surprised the house dates from the 1920s, since our architect guessed it was from the early forties because of the materials used in the basement (concrete). But I'm happy, the older the better for me!


Before the city council approved the building plans, the 'Comiteit voor Stadsschoon' had to give an advice too. The commission was active in the years after the Great War and saw to the uniformity and stylishness of all new buildings. The advice of the commission was quite remarkable (and very funny). Since the plan indicated a lot of little windows would be used (as you can see on the picture), the commission complained: ' le menuiserie en petits bois de toutes les fenêtres donnent à l'ensemble un aspect un peu prison, qui n'est pas riant du tout' and would therefore not approve the initial plan. I don't know what happened then, but the little windows were realised after all. While planning the renovation, it was only with pain in the heart that we decided that we would have to get rid of the charming 'menuiserie en petits bois' because it would be too pricy to have those restored or replaced. 'les goûts et les couleurs...'.

I also tried to find out what was there before our house was. I don't find any traces of another builing and my hypothesis is that the land was part of a park belonging to a huge house a couple of houses down the street. This house was - as most houses in this street - almost completely destroyed in September 1914. After the war it was rebuild and the park may have been divided into different lots. I have seen some pictures indicating this, but I still want to check this in the document archive. The city archive hold the complete photo collection inventorying the damage done by the German army in 1914. Nearly every house in the city was photographed as evidence and to assure German reparation (money) after the war.

The archive is really fascinating. While there I started looking at the files from our neighbours' houses and thus found out when they were build, rebuild, when their pergola's, kitchens and bathrooms were added. I need to go back there anyway because I also found out they have a rather big collection of film posters from 1932 on. I may find some interesting illustration for my book.

The past three weeks in a nutshell

Nieuwvliet (The Netherlands) - one week
Antwerp (home) - five days
Darmstadt (beautiful Mathildenhohe) (Germany) - one afternoon
Mittelberg (Germany) - two days
Würzburg (Germany) - one afternoon
Fischl am See (Austria, Salzkammergut) - two days
Vienna (Austria of course) - three days
Passau (Germany, I think) - one day
Antwerp

Documenting our move

Since we will be moving to Leuven in the spring, I started documenting our move. Meaning that I've been trying to find out more about the history of our house and the lot it was build on. I've been looking at postcards from Leuven in 1914-1918. There are plenty of postcards of the damage caused by the invasion of the German army in 1914, but I haven't found any of our street yet.

This is a picture from the Diestsestraat in ruins. 1915:


A lot of houses in our street were severely damaged too, but it was not one of the central disaster eras. According to our architect our house probably dates from the late 1930s or early 1940s. I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of the many houses being rebuild after the First World War, since most of these have a special remembrance stone built in their facade. The previous house on the lot may have been destroyed (as was the villa a couple of houses down the block) and not rebuild for a decennium or more. I'm planning to go to the city archive to find out more about this. But this'll have to wait till after the holidays.

Jacqueline Harpman

I am reading 'Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes' by the Brussels writer Jacqueline Harpman (1940). She's a psychoanalyst and her books are surrealist, bizarre and absolutely fascinating. If I remember correctly, most of her books are written in the style of a kind of 'monologue intérieur'. This one's about a young girl whose name, age and appearances are unknown to both herself and the reader. Together with forty other women she's locked up in a cave without windows. They have no idea how they got there and what the purpose of their imprisonment might be.

I've also read 'Orlanda' and 'La plage d'Ostende' by the same author. So far, the latter is definitely my favourite.

Sweden in pictures

Chicken pox follow-up

The chicken pox episode turned out not to be so easy as I thought it would be. After travelling to Sweden, our son became quite sick and more and more (and more and more and more...) red dots appeared. On most of the holiday pictures he looks quite sad, pale and in a bad mood. Albeit we had a good time.

Chicken Pox

My son suffers from chicken pox. Luckily he doesn't seem to feel really sick.

Rzewski

In between the dishwasher and the half-packed suitcases I heard a very beautiful piece of Music on Radio Klara: Frederic Rzewski: 'The People United will never be defeated' (1975) (played by Ralph van Raat, piano). I'd never heard of this composer but apparently he's an American (°1938) based in Belgium. His piece 'The People United will never be defeated' consists of 36 virtuoso piano variations on the Sergio Ortega song 'El pueblo unido jamás será vencido'. It is conceived as a companion piece to Beethoven's 'Diabelli Variations'.
I certainly put this one on my wish list.
As well as the Swedish jazz musician Jan Johansson.

Sweden

On Saturday we'll be leaving for a short break in Sweden. We're heading to the South Swedish province of Skane. Seemingly a very beautiful and rural area near the East Sea. This is what the holiday house looks like:



It's an old schoolhouse built in 1855. It was used as a school until 1902, when it became too small. It reminds me of both Strindberg and Bergman.

The picture comes from the web site I used to book the house: http://www.bureauscandinavia.be/

Chateau de Wolvendach, Brussegheme

The postcard story continues. Instead of receiving the two Gabrielle Petit postcards I bought on e-bay, I got one Gabrielle Petit postcard and one of the 'Monument de Mérode' in Brussels. Apparently the second Petit postcard became victim of an over-active toddler and a cup of coffee and the seller sent me the Mérode card instead. At first I was somewhat disappointed. But when I took a closer look a the postcard, I saw it was presumably sent on the 9th of January 1918. For a World War I adept, this is thrilling enough.



The card was sent to a Mademoiselle Lucie Nérenne by her friend Madame Marie Ost (?) of St. Gilles. (St. Gilles now happens to be the district where Petit was imprisoned before her execution.) But hat made me curious most was that Mademoiselle Nérenne lived at the Chateau de Wolvendach in the Belgian town of Brussegem (previously and in French called Brussegheme), part of Merchtem. I doubt she was a noblewoman; probablye she was a servant there (she is addressed as 'Mademoiselle', so she is unmarried + her first name 'Lucie' sounds rather common). The white pages learn that today there's no one with that name (Nérenne) in the whole of Belgium, so she probably wasn't a descendent from a noble family. I did some research on the 'Chateau de Wolvendach' in Brussegem. First, there only is the Castle in Ossel (a part of Brussegem), but exept for the presence of two huge and very old trees (called 'mamoetbomen') in its neighbourhood, it doesn't seem a major tourist attraction. So far I haven't found any more information about it. The name of 'Wolvendach' - which sounds very very German - doesn't ring a bell either. No hits when I google it. :-( If I link the name to the wartime period, I guess the castle (or manor) could have been temporarilly requested by the German army; and Mademoiselle Nérenne could have been a servant there, 'sous le joug allemand'. A young girl who left her home (in St. Gilles maybe) before the war to go and work for a well-to-do family outside the capital) Madame Marie Ost (?), the sender of the postcard lived in the Rue Neufchatels in St. Gilles. Today, a 'Rue de Neufchatel' exists in St. Gilles, not exactly the same name, but maybe just some minor spelling changes made of the years. It crosses de Chaussée de Charleroi. From the postal stamp, I deduct the postcard was stamped in the postal office of the Chaussée de Charleroi. It seems only logical that in the winter of 1917-1918- while Brussels was occupied by the Germans - a married woman would mail a postcard to a friend from the nearest post office or postal box.



Curiously - but not completely uncommon those days - there's no message on the postcard. Only the two addresses. What would to women - old friends maybe - write to each other in the midst of the war. While the youngest of the two (?) was working on a Chateau out of town? Surely the German censor would read along. On the front side of the postcard there's the statue of Frederic de Mérode on the 'Place des martyrs' in Brussels. It was made by sculptor Paul Dubois and erected in 1898. Now, Frederic de Mérode - Compte Louis-Frédéric-Ghislain de Merode - born in Maastricht in 1792, was deadly wounded in the city of Berchem on October 24th 1830, during the Belgian independence 'battle'. In 1830 the Belgians freed themselves from the Dutch occupier and became independent. So in fact, this is another postcard of a Belgian national martyr! I don't think it is too bold to suggest now that Marie Ost (?) sent a warm patriotic sign to her friend. Remember 1830: the Belgians have overcome foreign occupiers before!

Moving hands

My friend 'Memento' is trying to capture movement in her picures. (Reconstructingmymemories.blogspot.com)
This is how far I got:

Hand movement related to a sock throwing contest

< this picture has been removed >

Clapping hands in an old aluminum box

< this picture has been removed >

This reminds me I have to ask Memento once again how to include internet links in the text.

More Gabrielle Petit

I finished the book by David Van Reybrouck I mentioned earlier: Slagschaduw. It's been a long time since I finished a book in less than three days. It was really catching. When I said it's a historical novel, I wasn't really right. It's a contemporary love story about a young journalist trying to overcome his love sickness over a girl who was the model in the sculpture classes he took. They had a relationship for 18 months. Struggling to get over her (and over de death of a friend a few years earlier) he decides to investigate the life the woman who modelled for the Gabrielle Petit sculpture in Brussels in the early 1920s. To save her (and himself) from oblivion. Interesting historical details are interwoven with suspenseful love scenes and sad reminiscences about his deceased friend (a press photographer). The book seems autobiographical. But maybe that's only what the reader's supposed to think.

The sculpture on the place St. Jean is made by Egide Rombaux (1865-1942). He also made the statues for Edith Cavell and Cardinal Mercier, both World War One heroes, in Brussels.

Unknown soldiers

Today I got another World War One postcard in the mail. This time, no bold heroines but real soldiers. Fascination again.

Seeing old pictures wakes up the historian in me : who are these soldiers? Some research suggests they're French (I knew this) and that the picture is probably made in 1916 (or possibly later). The helmet they wear - the so-called 'casque Adrian' - was only introduced in the French Army in September 1915. Looking at the picture with a looking glass you can see the 'infantry' emblem (a grenade with flames) on the front. Good headwear was particularly important in a war that was fought semi-underground. (http://www.world-war-helmets.com/fiches/Casque-Adrian-Mle-15.php)
The uniforms they wear also date from 1915. They're 'feldgrau', while the uniforms of 1914 campaign were still napoleontic red (trousers!) and blue (jackets). Although it's not a luxury when you fight a trench war in the rainy and foggy North of France region, few of the soldiers wear boots. As of 1915, The Belgian army suffered from a chronic shortage of boots at the Yser front. Maybe in France they had the same problem. I don't know. From the number on the collar of their overcoats, you can tell they're from the 154th Line Infantry Regiment. In 1916 this regiment was fighting in Verdun, one of the bloodiest battles of the Great War (163.000 death in the French Army alone). There's a group of 23 men on the pictures. This suggests it's a half-section. In 1915 a half-section counted 25 men; in 1916 a half section was reduced to a number between 15 and 25 men. So this again situates the picture in 1915 or early 1916. Two of the soldiers are wearing a black ribbons around their arm. Is this a sign of mourning and remembrance?

The postcard was sent to me from Charleville Mézières in the North of France. There's nothing written on the back.

Gabrielle Petit

Yes! Someone made a nice bid for the marble fireplace I put on e-bay the other day. This is quite exciting, two more days to go. I also bid on some objects myself. I placed a bid on several postcards related to the First World War, a subject I am interested in professionally. My favourite war heroine, Gabrielle Petit (1893-1916), is on three of the cards. (http://www.ww1-propaganda-cards.com/gabrielle_petit.html).





She has a statue on the Place St. Jean in Brussels. The statue was erected in 1923. A friend / art historian who specialises in female sculptors, told me lately that Petit was probably the first contemporary woman to get a statue in Belgium. Only in 1923!! Imagine that! She's not a queen, nor a noblewoman.. just a poor shop assistant who happened to be shot by the Germans for alleged espionage! There's something curious about the postcards that were made of her statue in the 1920s. Several versions exists. Of course the picture is taken from more or less the same vantage point (people buying the postcards want to see her face, right - moreover, the buildings in the background ask for symmetry), but the background/foreground is different. Different people are standing around the statue to look at it - or to not look at it (in one postcard, there are no people in the picture). In one of the cards there's even some policemen safeguarding the statue. Some people are touching the statue, others are looking at it from a distance. On some postcards there's a flower piece at the foot (what may suggest the picture was taken at the inauguration or a special commemoration), in others there isn't. There's no objectivity here, the pictures always seem to tell more than they intend to. This is something I really want to look into. At first I thought statues could only be photographed in very similar ways, but thanks to my friend-art historian I'm starting to see the nuances.

Recently a Belgian writer, David Van Reybrouck, wrote a historical novel about the women who modelled for this statue. (as Gabrielle Petit was shot by the Germans in 1916, she couldn't model herself). The book is titled 'Slagschaduw'. I bought the book only last week, and I still have to read it. It promises to be another fascinating thing since the author mixes fact and fiction. Another issue I'm particularly interested in.

Swedish

Our house project is becoming more and more real. Today I went kitchen shopping with my mother. In this stage it was more like window shopping since we merely wanted some advice and an idea about the costs we could expect. Last week we'd already gone to Ikea. I saw one kitchen I kind of liked and decided to settle for an Ikea kitchen (instead of spending a fortune). But afterward my mom suggested we'd go to a fancier kitchen story nearby, just to have a look. Of course, I saw a kitchen I liked much better. So today we went back to the latter store to discuss the possibilities. After a two hour talk - in which we discussed ovens, micro waves, drawers, kitchen hoods, colours, marble... - we all agreed on a certain design. The shop assistant will now further develop the plan and get back to us in a couple of weeks. I was quite happy with it ... until she made (at the very end of the talk) a quick calculation and told us the kitchen would cost at least 3 times as much as the Ikea one. What a disappointment! (although this is what I could have expected) It was much too expensive for us. I was quite sarcastic about it all for a while and then decided to call a friend who'd recently renovated her house. She said something really helpful. The disappointment goes away once you've decided (even on the cheaper option) because you stop comparing. It's only at the moment of the decision that you can be quite dissatisfied with your options. I thought that really made sense. Ikea here I come!

E-bay

I've been quite lazy as far as blogging is concerned. Now my son is taking his nap and my husband is at work, I have no more excuse.
As I mentioned before, we are renovating a house. Before we can add all the new things to the house (kitchen, bathroom, living room extension...) some old things have to go. One of them is an antique marble fire place. Because I don't want to throw it on a container, I decided to try to sell it on e-bay. I am very proud now because I just managed to get the ad online. I know their interface is very (extremely) user-friendly, but I'm usually not good at these things. You can have a look at the ad through this link:
http://cgi.benl.ebay.be/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320258659392
I sell it very cheap (compared to similar objects on e-bay that are being (unsuccesfully) sold for 10 to 20x the price). This is quite exciting, although chances to sell it are rather limited.
I'm also planning to sell our old kitchen (1950s style in mint green). I love this kitchen so I hope someone else will like it too. I don't want much money for it, I just don't want to throw it away. That would feel awful.

So this is

So this is what weekends of young families look like: taking the kids (in our case: kid) out to go and play with the kids of our friends. The parents can (in my case of a rather worried mother) kind of relax and have some wine while the children enjoy themselves. This hasn't always been my idea of a great exciting weekend, but I must admit, it was not bad, not bad at all! This was one of the first really sunny weekends and I enjoyed sitting in the garden a lot (or in our friends' garden to be exact).
It's wonderful to see our boy interact with other kids. He really looks up to bigger kids and tries to play with them (which they themselves don't always appreciate).

Tomorrow, it's back to work again. Difficult, after four days of holidays. But today I'm optimistic. I am investigating a possibility to (finally) publish my PhD. Kind of exciting. It's probably the only thing I ever wrote and still feel proud of after three years. We'll see if this is going anywhere. I'll also be going to a conference this week, something I haven't done since my son was born; and I'm working on a new research project. It's been a long time since I felt at least some (work related) ambition. I kind of gave up on that when I got pregnant, almost two and a half years ago. Having so stay at home (on the couch) for four months during that pregnancy probably didn't help. Not that I've been miserable all this time... not at all. I just felt very happily focussed on being a mother. Maybe I'll find my way again, in being several things at the same time.

Three To One - One Two Three

When our friends asked us a while ago, we were both thinking the same thing. Were we drunk when we promised this or what on earth got in to us? Situation: they have two kids and a strong wish to visit an exhibition and some Michelin rated restaurants in London. As they mentioned, the combination of those three things is not the best one (meaning: the children don't match with the London activities), we volunteered to look after the kids for a weekend. All this was put in the conditional tense at the time ('if you ever make it to London, we could look after the children...', 'piece of cake', 'what friends are for'...), but soon became reality. This is why we spent the weekend at their place, looking after their (and our) kids. Three alltogether. I must say I always thought the life of a 'mother' of three must be something like a hectic disaster. I was surprised to find out it's nothing like that at all. It was a lot of fun, seeing the kids play together. Because they had each other, I didn't have to play along, as I usually (have to) do as our son is an only child. Even the rituals of daily life (feeding, bathing and cuddling) were no problem at all. Fordism has proved its merits in many industries.
Since the youngest kid is only a year old, my son (who'll be two in July) kept referring to him as 'the baby', a predicate that obviously singled him out from the big kids. Very funny. All of a sudden he seemed like such a big boy himself. I could tell he really enjoyed not being the smallest kid around.

The weekend also made me wonder about what it would be like if you raise children that are not your own, like in foster care or adoption. Would/could you love these children like they were your own? Would you feel different about them than about your own child? I really don't know. Maybe someone has a blog about this, I should look it up maybe.

The weekend was a success. Right now, I still don't long for a big family of my own, but my son doesn't necessarily have to an only child for ever. There are many options.

Damage control

The day before yesterday my assistant sent me the grades for the exam my students took a couple of weeks ago. It turned out that only 25% of the students that took the exam managed to pass it. This is not only their problem (as you would expect), but also mine. Unfortunately I can't afford to have 75% of the students fail the exam. So I did something that only a year ago I swore I'd never do: give extra marks. Every student got some extra points for free. Just like that. The average is still very low, but the situation is no longer dramatic.

As I love my research field, I do find it a pitty the students still hardly know anything about it, even after sitting through my lectures, making two assignments and taking the exam. Quite discouraging sometimes.

'The horror, the horror'

Yesterday, I read an article in the paper about sexual violence against women in the East of Congo. It was an interview with a woman (Lisa Jackson) who went to Congo to make a documentary about this war tactic. Her film, 'The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo' will be out soon. But I doubt I'll have the courage to go and see it. For the first time in my life, a newspaper story about something happening at the other side of the world, made me cry. Not tears welling in my eyes, but really cry. It was so horrible that I just sat there at my kitchen table and cried. Even now, the story kept popping up in my head over and over again; I nearly started crying in a shop yesterday. One story in particular, about a mother who had to witness the killing of the child she was wearing on her back, completely devastated me.
I mustadmit that since I am a mother myself, stories involving children easily get to me. Even silly weekend movies on tv can make me sob. But never like this, never like this story about a mother carrying her baby on her back.

Train

The other day - the sun was shining - I decided to take my time to fetch my boy from the day care centre. Usually we have to hurry, at least if I want him to eat something and take a bath before going to bed around 7.30. Hurrying is one thing I really don't like, so if possible I don't do it. I had had a bit of an off day, so I went to fetch him a bit earlier than usual. I took his little 'pulling' train, because I know he just loves to walk around with it on the streets. He was indeed very happy when he saw I brought his train. On the way home, he was showing off his train (and the way he could pull it) to passengers on the street. I noticed a lot of people stopped to look at him. Several praised him and told me how cute and good he looked. I thought so too and I suddenly realised I was really happy that moment, and proud, and totally in love with that little blond boy who calls me mama.

Souvenir from the trip to the Ardennes

A New Start

Lissitski.blogspot.com does not longer exist. That's what I get for being impulsive and disappointed. I may continue, but I'm not sure yet I really want to. I decided to call this blog-in-the-making Imitation of Life, after a film by Douglas Sirk (whom I particularly like), but also, because that's maybe what this is.