Like this:

In the past week the weather has really warmed up and it’s starting to feel like summer. We’ve noticed a huge change in the overall mood of the city. People are outside as often as possible and they seem much more gregarious. As I’ve mentioned before, Belgians really enjoy being outside. It probably stems from the dark, depressing winters. The houses are even built to take full advantage of light, with loads of windows and skylights.

The summer months in Belgium bring festivals of all sorts. Each little town and neighborhood has its own events and parties. Our friend Jeff was visiting two weekends ago and we stumbled upon an international street musician festival in Torhout (after our visit to the Wijnendale castle). It was really fascinating to see real live organ grinders. Unfortunately, there were no live monkeys!

Endearing organ grinder in his eighties

I especially liked this guy.

Jeff got to see a ton that Belgium has to offer during his short visit. On Sunday we had a fun-filled day of biking, walking, castle-gawking and then sat with some good Belgian beers and listened to street musicians.

Troy and Jeff in Torhout

See more pictures from our castle visit and Ghent wanderings with Jeff here.

Last weekend our neighborhood had a buurtfeest (neighborhood or block party). These are organized all over the city, each in a slightly different way. Ours was very cool. There were clowns and activities for the kids all day. There was a BBQ where you bring your own meat. They grill it for you and provide you with vegetable side dishes. They even had beer and wine for sale for really reasonable prices.

Our next door neighbor invited us to eat with her, which was nice. We met some of the other people living on our street as well. It was an interesting turn of events because we really haven’t met any of the other neighbors. In fact, many of you have heard the story about when we first got here. Troy tried to introduce himself to the neighbor and the guy ran inside and slammed the door!

Later in the evening there was a fun marching band with sassy dancing women dressed up sort of like flappers but also carrying pom-pons. And finally there was a DJ and dancing. Nothing like a block party to jump start the summer!

Here’s a little video clip of some of the action. The quality isn’t so good (I need to play around more with video to understand why) but you get the jist of it.

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