Freelance Photography : Bertrand Celce

Valentine's Day

Will the sun heat us out of the freeze?We had never been to Brugge , and what better time to correct the omission than Valentine's day ... Actually , a cold winter day may be the best time to beat the streets of this beautiful town , as I heard it is overcrowded with visitors in the high season . Braving the cold wind , we walked along its narrow streets, wide squares and windy canals, enjoying changing lights as the sun and clouds alternated, with rare locals and a few foreigners around .Jan Van Eyckplein (square), that is something...This is what we saw after turning round a corner : A canal finishing dead end at the back of a statue. The city is sometimes called the Venice of the north . Wrong . This is the Strasbourg of the north . I see some similarities with my favorite french city . Same circular canal around the city center . Looking at the locals here on their bicycles, winding along the canals on the cobblestones streets, and remembering this experience when I cycled across the scenic urban landscape of Strasbourg , on little bridges on the Ill river, through rue des juifs and past the cathedral to the Petite France and its canals .*****

Winter colours . Reflections . The green tones on the left may be at St Salvatorskoorst , but I'm not sure .
The golden knight on the right is one of the striking statues outside of Heilige Bloedbasiliek ( Holy Blood basilica ) , on Burg .

Military Junkyard

Digging out of my chinese pics, I sorted out pictures shot in a dying open-air military museum, with plenty of remnants of soviet style memorabilia . I was looking at the sea and city of Qingdao from the lighthouse grounds when , walking on the dyke back to the mainland, I noticed this dicreet museum on the side, along the harbour piers .
As chinese cities are being swiftly renovated , this place could be one of the next casualties of the local haste for revamping the city landscape and infrastructures .
This grey rusting plane has a "Casablanca" touch . Except that it never saw Humphrey Bogart . This Ilyouchine-14 military transport plane was one of four planes sent to Mao by leaders of the Soviet Union as a gift for Mao's 65th birthday . Retired from active duty only in 1991 .

This museum lies in the outskirts of the town, with harbour facilities and a few industries not yet moved away nearby . Views like this one are stunning . I love this sort of worn-out industrial landscape . It has some great hidden beauty I'm not sure people are fully aware of : A water tank , a lone chimney, the back of a giant board, a (not-water) tank ... And a few cypresses that punctuate the scene .

As families stroll among the dozens of aircraft, missiles, floating mines and other repainted ordnance, I wonder at the colour alliances of roses with the faded-out colours of the diverse chinese and soviet military products .This place has an uncertain future . Even if the chinese authorities like to play the patriotic tunes of the maoist era, they are probably aware of the potentially counter-productive effects of this sort of worn-out open air museum . Especially now , in a time where it seems so easy to build new and shiny buildings . Plus , this prime location, facing the Qingdao lighthouse and the sea, must have caused some head-scratching among the hotel and property developers .