Flemish is the language I have wanted to learn for a long time. It should be easy but it is not. And it is not Dutch, not quite. And I cannot speak Dutch very well.

It is a soft language, a rustic, basic one, with many diminutives, which make it sound pleasant and innocent but that's one of the misconceptions of translation. 

Winter morning in one of these old and prosperous Belgian towns, fat cathedral, cobble stones, lots of small shops selling art supplies, antiques, flowers, pottery, books in all languages, a pub with one long and heavy wooden table, scratched and soft. Soup, dark beer, coffee. Snow.

Another day, sunny, no wind behind the high dunes, a narrow road, in straight lines between polders, crossing the border to France and back, tiny villages, a garden centre, a roadside bar with two plastic chairs outside, sticky ice cream.

It's roughly a two hours drive, really. Through the rain on a busy motorway, squeezed between the trucks heading to Oostende and Rotterdam.

Instead, me and the cat and my rumbling belly (thanks to the antibiotics which I had to start yesterday after a night of high fever) watched Antonia's Line once again. This movie has almost everything, it is near perfect.

(Full version avaialable on youtube, click on the bottom for English subtitles.)