Visited Countries

My 43 countries visited in the world...

Still a lot left huh?

Quick calculating: there's about 190 states recognised by the UN. Some quick math: if I am currently at 43 countries visited, at the current rate I am going:
at 28 I've visited 43
at 84 I would have visited 126!

Hum, who said anything about the need for speed?

If you want to make the same map: www.world66.com

De plek

Je moet niet alleen om de plek te bereiken
Thuis opstappen, maar ook uit manieren van kijken.
Er is niets te zien, en dat moet je zien
Om alles bij het zeer oude te laten.

Er is hier. Er is tijd.
Om overmorgen iets te hebben achtergelaten.
Daar moet je vandaag voor zorgen.
Voor sterfelijkheid.

Herman De Coninck

- 29/7 retour en Belgique,
- 31/7 visite de la famille car anniversaire de mon grand pere. Il a toujours revé de voir le foret amazonien, mais c'est un peu loin... Si Mohamed ne vient pas à la montagne, faudra que le foret amazonien vienne a lui, donc j'ai amené quelques sémences pour son jardin...
- 1/8 a Charleroi, fete d'au revoir de Pedro Ruquoy, un pretre belge qui travaillait avec les haitiens en République Dominicaine, et qui va se rendre en Zambie maintenant.
- 2 et au 6 aout : Paris, retrouvailles avec des amis
- 7 au 9 aout: retour en Belgique a nouveau...
- 10 et 11 aout: vers les Pays Bas... Ca bouge, d'etre a l'interieur de l'europe!
- 12 et 13 aout : a Liege
- 14/8 tout le monde invité pour feter le fameux 14-15 aout a Liege, avec plein de peket (jenever local, a tous les parfums possibles)
- 21 au 31 aout: suivre conference sur migration a Université de Liegé ?
- debut septembre (du 1er au 10 probablement?): petit passage en Angleterre, a Londres, Brighton et Oxford

de santiago de compostella

Du 22 au 29 juillet, je suis avec mon frangin, sa copine et un autre couple dans le nord d'espagne, a Galicia. On a fait le saint Jacques a Santiago, avec le meilleur feu d'artifice que j'ai jamais vu, surplombé par la vieille cathedrale, sublime, meme de trop.

July 25 Feast of St James the Great

This Apostle was a son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, and Salome (cf. Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; 16:1), and brother of John the Evangelist. He is sometimes called 'James the Greater', and sometimes 'Jacob'.

James was apparently a disciple of St John the Baptist and left everything when Jesus called him to be a fisher of men. James was among the circle of people closest to Jesus, was present with Peter and John at the Transfiguration, and again at the Agony in the Garden, sleeping while Christ prayed. He was tried and executed in Jerusalem in the year 44 CE by Agrippa I, son of Aristobulus and grandson of Herod the Great. There is a tradition that James founded an Apostolic in Spain; this tradition was current as early as 700, but no certain mention of such tradition is to be found earlier.

Once, he resurrected a boy who had been wrongly executed, and had been dead for five weeks. The boy's father, notified of the miracle while he sat at his dinner table, pronounced the story nonsense, saying his son was no more alive than the roasted fowl on the table. The cooked bird promptly sat up, sprouted feathers, and flew away. Or, so it is said.

St James the Great is the patron saint of, among other things, apothecaries, arthritis sufferers, blacksmiths, Chile, druggists, equestrians, furriers, Guatemala, horsemen, knights, labourers, pharmacists, pilgrims, soldiers, Spanish conquistadors, tanners, and veterinarians .

He is also the patron of Spain, where he is said to have preached, and it was in Spain that a remarkable transformation came over the legend of this fisherman. At the Battle of Clavijo, 841, between Ramiro, King of Leon, and the Moors, when the Christians were losing, St James appeared in the field, on a charger decorated with scallop shells, and armed, he slew 60,000 of the Moors. In his honour, the Spaniards founded the Order of St James of the Sword (Santiago de Espada).

For centuries, the Spanish army rode to battle with the cry "Santiago!" ("Saint James!"). An example of this was at the Battle of Cajamarca, Peru on November 16, 1532, when only 168 conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro (1471 - 1541) defeated 80,000 Incan warriors led by their emperor, Atahualpa. Tradition has it that over the centuries, James has appeared, and been seen fighting at Flanders, Italy, India and America. Charles V (1500 - 1558) conquered Tunis on St James's Day.

The Pilgrimage of Compostela, Spain is Europe's greatest pilgrimage.
The city of Santiago de Compostela became the seat of the saint, from the legend of his body having been miraculously translated there.
When his relics were being conveyed from Jerusalem, where he died, to Spain, in a ship of marble, the horse of a Portuguese knight plunged into the sea with its rider. When rescued, the knight's clothes were found to be covered with scallop shells.
It might be that the use of the scallop device derives from the pilgrims' using shells as primitive cups and spoons, or it might derive from the earlier Roman festival of the sea god and goddess, Neptune and Salacia (July 23, qv). Pilgrims to the shrine wore, and often still wear, a scallop shell on cloak or hat.
Medieval Galicians (from Galicia, Spain 'the land of the Gaelic, or Celtic/Gallic people' – first cousins to the Irish, Welsh, Scots, Cornish and Bretons; living in northwest Spain around Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain) who were willing to accept passing pilgrims into their homes also hung scallop shells over their doors. In French, 'une coquille Saint-Jacques' – literally, a 'St James shell' – is the term for 'scallop'.

The remains of the Apostle lay forgotten until the year 813, when a hermit named Pelayo was led to their hidden site by a shining star (campus stellae), thus giving the name to the city, or from the latin word for cemetary compostela). The local bishop had the cathedral erected at this location where the bones of the saint lie in a chapel located in the basement of the church.

The pilgrimage to Compostela became almost as popular and important in medieval Europe as that to Jerusalem. Because of this, seventeen English peers and eight baronets have scallop shells in their arms as heraldic charges.

The pilgrimage, known as the Camino, is as popular today as it was in the Middle Ages. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, not all of them Roman Catholic, make the journey on foot. The pilgrimage, probably the most famous on the planet, goes for about 900 kilometres, from France to Spain, and takes about a month.


More folklore
Apples were blessed on this day by the priests, and at Cliff in Kent, England the rector traditionally distributed a mutton pie and a loaf to as many as ask for it.
At the Fiesta de Santiago in Loiz Aldea, Puerto Rico, villagers still act out the characters from the battle of St James against the Moors. Some wear their faces painted white, dressed as Spanish conquistadors, while others impersonate the Moors, who are represented (of course) as grotesques, with carved, horned masks. Some villagers become clowns, and others “crazy women” (men dressed in women’s clothes).
There is an old English saying that “Who eats oysters on St James's Day will never want”. In Britain, St James's Day falls during what also became known as the close season for oysters, meaning that by act of parliament they are prohibited to be harvested until today. We may assume that oysters obtainable so early in the season would be a luxury only eaten by the rich.

Quotes
Omnis homo velox est.[Let every man be swift (to hear).] In art, the motto of St James the Greater
Until St James Day be come and gone
You may have hops or you may have none.Traditional English proverb
If it be fair three Sundays before St James’s day, corn will be good; but wet corn will wither.English traditional proverb
Whoever eats oysters on St James's Day will never want money. English traditional proverb
I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion. Saki: The Chronicles of Clovis

how I felt coming back - sand in my shoes (Dido)

"Sand In My Shoes"

Dido

Two years away

it feels like the whole world should've changed

But I'm home now

And things still look the same

I think I'll leave it till tomorrow to unpack

Try to forget for one more night

That I'm back in my flat on the road

Where the cars never stop going through the night

To a life where I can't watch sunset

I don't have time

I don't have time

I've still got sand in my shoes

And I can't shake the thought of you

I should get on, forget you

But why would I want to

I know we said goodbye

Anything else would've been confused but I wanna see you again

Tomorrow's back to work and down to sanity

should run a bath and then clear up the mess I made before I left here

Try to remind myself that I was happy here

Before I knew that I could get on the plane and fly away

From the road where the cars never stop going through the night

To a life where I can't watch sunset

And take my time

Take up our time.

Two years away,

all it takes to change and turn me around,

I've fallen

I walked away and never said that I wanted to see you again...

I've still got sand in my shoes
And I can't shake the thought of you
I should get on, forget you
But why would I want to
I know we said goodbye
Anything else would've been confused but I wanna see you again