Moving cities, moving countries. Again. At least this time I’m home, kind of. Brussels is not like any other city. In this miniseries, I explore The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly sides of my now home. Starting with: The Good!

I didn’t travel to Sakhalin, and eye-balling current geopolitics, I never will. Turns out, it’s more difficult to get there than you might think, and if you still decide to try and get there, what you find might not be what you expected. Unless you read what I have to say.

This graduation is both an ending and a beginning. Years of study have amounted to this day. I wrote over one hundred pages, rewrote every sentence in my text, and stayed up late for weeks. Then why is our guest of honour missing?

A contemplation on the difficulties of starting and finishing a project as large as a Master’s Thesis, and my inability to decide when such a text is ready for judgement by my professors.

Arriving in Tokyo was daunting. I was in a foreign land, didn’t speak the language well, and soon my classes would start. Everyone in suits, speaking a kind of formal Japanese that I was not used to. Little did I know just how unnecessary my doubts and nerves would turn out to be. Little did I know just how welcome I would feel.

Two years spent writing my thesis, coming up with ideas in Belgium, gathering sources in Japan, and writing most of the text in The Netherlands and Italy. Now that it’s done, what do I do next?

I don’t know much about Germany. I only know I’ve never liked it. I’ve ‘never liked’ it for such a long time, that I kind of forgot why. I must have had a good reason though. Prejudice is always built on strong foundations. Obviously.

Isaac Newton famously said: “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”. This holds true for countries as well, and in England’s case, we can most definitely speak of a Belgian Giant.

When my sister and I were kids, our parents often brought us to the flea markets of Brussels. As they searched for plates and vases, we scanned the cobblestone pavement for hidden treasures. I think all that staring at the ground left me nearsighted.

I’ve often talked about the unusual geography of Japan. It stretches like a string of pearls dangling from frozen Kamchatka to the North, over rugged mountains and dense cities, all…