Belgium is my born place, all my family is here. That's why I am here right now. But I do not feel at home when I come back in Bastogne. I just exchanged some emails with a Belgian friend who now lives in Moscow. It is interessing that the feeling is a bit the same. We are now somewhat strangers in Belgium, even if it is a bit difficult to explain why. Anyway, I cannot deny I am from here, where I was educated. All my childhood, I have mainly seen this small city, well anchored in its traditions, its lifestyle, that modernity does not completely affect. But I have seen too many things, too many cultures, to feel comfortable with such a society where diversity is absent. No Asian, no Blacks, sometimes someone from Turkey (but we will not see them a lot). White culture, with some parts of Christian religion and a cloudy sky over a land that still means a lot to many people. A very small cinema and some pubs, with nearly no change, even in names, since 20 years. The city is evolving, of course, especially in the surroundings. Some efforts are made to improve quality of life, but I cannot reject this feeling that something is outside time, outside the world. A closed society, while there is so many things to discover. Some faces in the street are unfamiliar, but as I was in administration, always the same persons (who knows me, so that I have to recognize that I have an easy access here to various things), always the same routines... A tourism looking to the second world war... A year is going of its end, but when I am here, I have the impression to fall in an intemporal cycle, while so many things have changed in my life these last 5 years... That's perhaps why I am uncomfortable here now, but perhaps I will feel the beed to come back at the end of my life... coz I could find again my starting point, and close the lifetime cycle.