Here we are in Gent. This wall art is near the street-theatre tent of Miramiro. The scale is beautiful.
It was an odd experience today, I built the house up at the street-festival centre and I loaded the house into the back of a van. I stood in the back to keep it safe so never saw where we went, when I arrived in the middle of the city they let me out, I packed my house in and I sat there suddenly realising that I am in the middle of a massive crowded street with literally no idea where I was. Is this strange? Not in your own house it isn't. Perhaps if you always take your house with you there is no such place as lost. It reminded me of an artist in the 60s I read about, who flew into NY from East Germany (as it was) and ferried in a closed vehicle to the art gallery which he spent the next two weeks in with a wolf. At the end of the 2 weeks they stuck him back in the van and straight out the airport back home, so his experience of that place was entirely of entrapment.
Well my experience was a little milder I have to admit, a throng of festival-goers is slightly less intimidating than a wild dog.
Let me introduce you to some of the folks I met.
This is Charlie, who despite not having been to Australia or New Zealand, possessed a great knowledge of the countries, he also had some interesting views on housing in Europe. Despite our housing market having gone up 400% (I'm guessing that amount), it is still a lot cheaper than buying a house in Gent for example. This is what is happening a lot in NZ, we have foreign owners of a lot of our land, houses, factories. That is not a problem, but what is a problem is that living in NZ we cannot earn the same money as you could earn living in Europe. That means the inflated house prices become more unrealistic relative to the wages in New Zealand. It's a difficult one to resolve because the country has done well out of foreign investment turning the economy around since 1990 (ish).
I enjoyed meeting Charlie, he is a man who is prepared to see things from a different angle.
And this is Dorine and Sabine (sisters of course) who run a caravan called Koffiequeen, currently parked at Boumtown at the festival in Gent. Dorine dreamed up the idea while cycling around on holiday (in NZ as it happens) and now has a life of constant movement, her caravan is her work that she takes wherever she goes. Obviously we had a lot to talk about.
Jonathan is also no stranger to moving, his dad is a diplomat and these last couple of years are the first he has spent in a Belgian school despite being born here. He is about to uproot again and go to Cuba for his final schooling and is clearly looking forward to it. Wherever he goes his schooling is usually in an international school where kids from all over the world are in a foreign country and learn together in English. I always wanted to be a diplomatic kid, they are always great conversationalists and have such a broad experience of the world. So, if I am elected as Prime Minister (you never know) I will insist that everyone gets at least 5 years of international schooling. (We'll pay for it out of enforced slavery from anyone who owns a Hummer)
These guys are local (well from a nearby town) and were in town for the shopping.
And some people came all the way from Spain for this festival
