Valentine's Day Weekend

Valentine's Day weekend was pretty eventful. It was quite nice because we decided to take two day trips instead of one overnight trip. This meant I was able to stay in my own bed and get possibly the best night of sleep I have gotten since arriving in Louvain-la-Neuve.
Saturday we went to Antwerp. This is probably the prettiest city we have visited thus far. The architecture is just amazing and all the buildings have gold on them. This building right below is actually just a bank but it looks like it is something much more amazing.


There was hardly any graffiti which was a nice change from LLN and Brussels where there is an abundance of graffiti. Not that I really mind for the most part. I actually find graffiti to be very cool and add character to a city if it's done right. Those who really take it as an art form are able to really make a plain building beautiful. It's only those who decide to scrawl random curse words on the sides of trains that really ruin the way something looks.
There were also a lot of street performers in Antwerp. Here's my favorite. This guy was riding a giant unicycle and in this picture he has just finished juggling flaming sticks.

Amazing, right? Even more awesome, this guy could speak three different languages, English, French, and Dutch (or Flemish, whatever). His English and French were perfect and I'm assuming so was his Dutch. It's just amazing how everyone over here know how to speak at least two, if not three, languages fluently. It's such a big deal to know more than just English if you live in the United States, yet here, it's just everyone.
There were random things going on Antwerp, but none of it compared to the random street performances I saw in Maastricht on Sunday. Everyone seemed to be dressed up in costumes and there were several random parades. But the parades were just people dressed up and playing instruments but it didn't even really sound like they were playing together. Everything about what they played was wrong by American music standards but it actually worked. Here's one of the random parades:


There were also stages set up around town where people (also in costumes) were just standing around and waving to the crowd who were playing instruments. It was probably one of the most interesting things I've seen since coming to Europe. It's something I'm sure I would never see in the United States. I know part of this is because Carnival is coming up very soon. There were a lot of decorations around town in red, yellow, and green. I assume this is for Carnival or some type of festival they have around Maastricht.
Also, keeping up with ads, here's an ad I found in Maastricht:


I'm not sure what it says or what it is for but I personally find it creepy. I'm not sure who it is appealing to but it is not me. Ok so that's all for this weekend!