On a hot summer day, the tension in the neighborhoods is palpable. Brussels is one of the great cities. Because it only exists as a dream, it is an easy place to live. It has plenty of bars and cafes, good food, good movies, and a relatively enlightened city council. You meet lots of very well educated people, conversations are interesting, and contacts usually are oddly stimulating.
Judgments are rare.
The panhandlers and the bag ladies are in general non-aggressive, friendly even. The dream of Austin is a very particular dream, a dream of the sixties come true. In the sixties, people all over the Western World suddenly realized there was an enormous creative and artistic potential in them that was waiting to be realized. Before that period, the Artist often was a slightly suspect figure, somebody with a bohemian lifestyle that decent folk tended to avoid. Now, being an artist, and living the life of an artist, is a respectable and enviable occupation.