I like to move it! (4x)

Technically speaking, Fred and Fred are no longer two guys from Ghent who think a lot about stuff. First of all, ever since the idea to start this blog, the little Fred in us has been thinking more than a lot about things. Newspaper articles, random quotes in books, snippets of conversation overheard on the street - even the vast amount of text messages you have been sending us: our mental notebooks have become flourishing collections of hastily scrawled notes and ideas, simmering to (near) perfection underneath our crania.

Secondly, one of the Freds moved out this weekend. From Ghent to Antwerp, exchanging one university town along the banks of the river Scheldt for another one. When telling people I now live in Antwerp, I sometimes get the following reaction: "Why would you move so far away, don't you like it here?". Not only does the latter question bother me - it's not like you insult the chocolate cake when you order a fruit salad for dessert, right? - but the former one also puzzles me. For many people, the distance between Antwerp and Ghent sounds as insurmountable as a drunk rodeo bull who had a 3d-jigsaw puzzle shoved up the ass. I have colleagues in Japan, living and working in Tokyo, spending more than two hours a day on a densely crowded subway. I've met people in the States, who picked me up from the airport by car "because that is basically around the corner from where we live". It turned out to be a seven hour drive. And I know the scales are different - you can randomly hit a golfball in Brussels and it will land in a neighbouring country, but that doesn't change the simple truth: Antwerp is not far from Ghent.

It was also this weekend, crammed in our rental van, that I realized that some places are easier to leave behind than others. Ranging from very hard (tropical islands inhabited by fluffy rodents serving you food and drinks in large quantities) over moderately difficult (your bed on a rainy Monday morning) to relatively easy (a public toilet which smells like a urine factory). However, one of the most rewarding places to leave behind must be the waste recovery park. People arriving from everywhere - neatly pruned gardens, newly acquired houses and empty attics no longer housing the tons of paraphernalia the previous owners were gathering - throwing all kinds of stuff in appropriate containers, like toddlers figuring out that the star-shaped block does not fit the round hole. And afterwards, everybody goes back home with that same glorious feeling: relief. Ready for a new round of gathering.

I hope they have waste recovery parks in Antwerp...