Heipei

Yesterday, Katrin and me visited Lüttich (Liège) in Belgium. With 200.000 habitants, it is one of the closest big cities to Aachen, a little more than half an hour drive from us. Lüttich’s history is rooted in coal mining and a large steel industry, something which still shows today, underlined by the fact that the city is home to one of the largest inland ports in continental Europe. The city center of Lüttich is a mixture of many small, old and cute brick houses, sometimes even timber framed. In between, huge and incredibly ugly apartment buildings have been constructed in the recent past, some of which posses a certain soviet flair. In general, a lot of the city center is convoluted, dark and downright filthy, but you can clearly see the efforts undertaken to improve the appearance of the inner city by incrementally removing some of the most appalling sights.

In conclusion, while I wouldn’t book a hotel room in Lüttich, it is well worth a visit. There are many interesting streets and squares, and just the view over the city itself is breathtaking. If you go on Sunday, you can also experience the large (flea) market along the river Maas and grab something fried to eat.

I also tried geotagging my photos for the first time yesterday. The process is really simple. Just activate your GPS tracking device, later transfer the GPX track to your PC and use software like “gpscorrelate” to match your photos to your track. A certain offset between the cameras clock and the GPS time can’t be avoided. To most easily discover this offset simply take a photo of the exact time on your GPS using your camera, and compare the content of the photo with the EXIF time tag before you start.