Moni, Andreas and Markus left after breakfast, the parents for work and Markus to get his school reports, he had finished the year on the day before. I could stay at home and write my diary and edit videos. On the way to Brussels, I had forgotten to turn off the gopro and now had 90min of video, so I couldn’t finish this one. But on youtube, I now publish one video everyday automatically and the last one, from Dunkerque to Wevelgem is planned for 19th, this is when I am nearly at home. That means, on my way I only must manage to upload two other videos and it can be a continuous output until August, if I do the rest at home. I am quite sure that this is only important for me, because in average 0-20 people watch them and it will get less and less interesting the nearer I am to Vienna.
The same with the blog, I want to keep it up to date, not only because otherwise I would forget too much before writing it down, but also because of an assumed and non-existent expectation of an audience. But it is better to have this extra motivation to keep things running.
By bike I went to the Parlamentarium. At the Place de Luxembourg was a demonstration against human rights violations of the Uyghurs by China.
China became what it is now by the greed of capitalism and can do whatever the leaders there want, because all countries with potential influence depend on trades with China. No one really wants to stop them anyway but even less because of economics.
In the Parlamentarium, many things work or would work interactive. For me, that started with the lockers, I had no idea how to use them. (Press “c”, then press four digits and the key symbol). In the exhibition, there were symbols, like “i” for information and you had a device with audio and photo function to activate by holding it to that “i”. When it didn’t work you needed to find out if it is the problem of that exhibit, of that device or of your handling of it. So far, I never experienced such a problem with old-school information signs. I find these electronic things less convenient and too prone to disorder and often get the impression they only get implemented because you can and if you don’t do it you are old-fashioned. I also dislike that at school where they want to have beamers in every classroom so you can make “contemporary and up-to-date” teaching. And then, teachers change their material to power-point presentations buzzing around with the beamer and the computer, adjusting the light, balancing the volume of the loudspeakers, it sounds bad, it looks bad and it is a waste of time (and, by the way energy and material) but you can bore the kids on an other level than before, because now it is contemporary. What they only need is an enthusiastic teacher with knowledge and charisma who likes to communicate with children. I guess this will not change even in future times, even when they are very modern times, at least when children grow up like it always was, according to their nature, be that contemporary or not.
So, reading information to the exhibits was more complex and maybe this is better because after clicking, pressing, wiping and swiping for a while the information is more precious and you read it.
Economics must be subordinate to the essentials, not the other way around. Agricultural policy must pursue sustainability as the highest principle.
At the end you can write a message what you find important for EU and Parliament and I wrote two sentences in German and was surprised to see them on a screen soon after pressing “send”, because I thought I would send them “somewhere” and “someone” would read it (or not). I bought a t-shirt “I love EU”, because I love EU although there are so many things that make my upset or desperate.
Through parc Léopold I came to the house of European History with an even bigger exhibition on 5 or 6 floors.
From level 2 on you should have a tablet and I had missed to get one. There was nearly no written information and many exhibits needed information to understand what they should show but I didn’t want to be forced to go back, take that thing and again struggle with tech stuff.
After that I went to the famous Maison d`Antoine on Place Jourdan to get pommes frites and in a bio-supermarket nearby I got some Belgian truffles.
I went back and soon after me Moni and Andreas were back, too.
In the later evening, Madeleine came. She is another former school mate that now lives abroad and came from Luxembourg to Brussels because of the Tour de France start. We want to see that event together. But at 23:00 we gave up chatting and talking, because Moni had a long exhausting week behind her and a tennis morning in front and was looking forward to a long sleep between that.
