nicolasdecorte.be

6 800 ways to say cheers

Nicolas — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:28:17 +0000

Language is what made us climb out of the trees and start walking straight, it’s one of those fundamental differences between ourselves and every other creature on this planet.

Somewhere between 50 000 and 200 000 years ago there must have been a human - or Homo Sapiens as they called themselves those days - who wanted something more than basic communication.

Indie traveling for dummies

Nicolas — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:13:54 +0000

What was indie again?

The only thing that Wiki could teach me about this subject is that indie is short for independent. Interesting, but I had expected more from professor Wiki.
There are a lot of links though, to indie art, indie games, indie music, indie film and indie everything else.

Indie is a term that can be used for everything that is not mainstream, or - very important - everything that does not want to be mainstream.

BootsnAll Indie Travel Challenge 2012 - New Year's Resolutions

Nicolas — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:00:49 +0000

About a year ago, I’ve entered with my blog in the 1000-1000 Travel Blog Challenge. The purpose of that contest was to improve SEO, advertising, page ranking and other very nerdy stuff, in order to end up with a blog that has a 1000 visitors a day, generating an income of a 1000 dollars a month.
I failed terribly.

The exercises had very little to do with creating good content, I am sure that the techniques really work if you stick enough time in them, but they were so boring that I soon decided not to proceed.

Story behind the photo: Men at Work

Nicolas — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:27:58 +0000

It was somewhere near Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous crossing point between East- and West-Berlin during the Cold war, that I spotted this setting.
Even though the Berlin wall has been pulled down for over twenty years by now and the checkpoint is nothing more than another tick on the to do-list of every Berlin visitor, I found that this image resembles the general German post-war idea.

Photo Essay: Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps

Nicolas — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:12:23 +0000

As a follow up of my previous photo essay about the East Side Gallery, I wanted to bring you another piece of Eastern European tragedy.

Photo Essay: East Side Gallery (or the Berlin Wall anno 2011)

Nicolas — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:49:21 +0000

If I asked you to name two famous walls, what are the odds that you will say “the Chinese Wall and the Berlin Wall”?
One or two rock fans among you may also note Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, but with that we've named the most known walls I guess. Even though WiKi teaches us that there are many more.

For those of you who have just arrived from another planet or have been sleeping through most history classes, I’ll give you a short explanation of what the Berlin Wall is.
Stick with me, it’s not that much.

New travel article: Impressions of Pristina

Nicolas — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:15:57 +0000

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you might have noticed that I’m quite in love with the Balkans. But I’m not the only one. The last three years, Croatia had an average of eleven million tourists per year. Yes, Croatia is also part of the Balkans.

But I like my travel destinations to be a bit uncommon, “off the beaten track” as we travelers say. So I gave Bosnia and Herzegovina a shot, I had a look at Montenegro, I went to Serbia, Albania started to get close to what I had in mind, but this time is was going to the most mystical country of them all. Kosovo.

Excuses, apologies and photos

Nicolas — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:47:36 +0000

Excuses
Great weather is not always a good thing in every context, it appeared to me a couple of days ago. And boy, did we have a piece of great weather this spring.
Any of you living in some tropic paradise might wonder what else I’d expected but you must realise that living in Belgium most of the time means living in cloudy, rainy and windy weather.
But not this year, oh no.

To enjoy this to the most, I’ve been spending most of my time outdoors. Campin’, city trippin’, chillin’, relaxin’, (way too much) beer drinkin’ and certainly not... bloggin’

Which type of traveler should you not be(come)

Nicolas — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:14:29 +0000

All individuals have their own personality, which is good, or life would be boring.
All individuals have a natural aversion of certain other personalities, which is also good, or life would be incredibly boring.
But there are certain personalities that are just plain irritating, annoying, disturbing and aggravating to everybody. Which is bad, because they will ruin a place for everybody else.

What’s up next?

Nicolas — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 06:03:18 +0000

What’s up next?
Good question, glad you ask!
Because next is an 18-day-Western-Balkan-trip waiting for me.
Yay! Whoohoo! And more of that.

To be more specific, on the evening of the 29th of March I’m flying to Belgrade, Serbia and I have a flight back home on the 16th of April from Thessaloniki, Greece.