For two months after the Brussels attacks, the impromptu memorial at Place de la Bourse was left to decay. It will finally be cleaned up tomorrow.
In the hours immediately after the terrorist attacks in Brussels on 22 March, people were unsure what to do. It seemed safest to stay indoors, but as the afternoon developed without incident people wanted to come outside to show their solidarity.
Unable to reach the locations of the attacks themselves, they came to Brussels' most well-known meeting point to pay their respects: the steps outside the giant Leopold-era stock exchange, The Bourse. They began laying flowers and candles on the street in front of the steps, writing messages in chalk on the building and draping flags over the intimidating lions guarding the entrance.
A song about Russian-orchestrated genocide in Crimea has won Eurovision. This is more serious than you think.
In 2014, Russia was the unnamed enemy at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Ostensibly, the competition had nothing to do with Moscow. The shock winner was Conchita Wurst, a bearded drag queen from Austria who sang a song about overcoming adversity. All well and good. But the context behind the win was that Russian politicians and media had waged a campaign to discredit her - as a degenerate, and a symbol of a weak, effeminate West.
It backfired.
Austria won in 2014 - largely because of public voting from former Soviet satellite states. The juries of music experts - which count for 50% of the vote - voted overwhelmingly against her in Eastern Europe. But the public in Eastern Europe (the other 50% of the vote) voted for her. Because in the weeks before the concert, she had come to represent an anti-Russian stance (whether she meant to or not).
As tensions between Russia and the West continue, Ukraine fields an entry about the Soviet Union's horrific mass deportations in Crimea. How did it get past the censors?
In 2009, as the war between Georgia and Russia raged on, Georgian public broadcaster GPB tried to pull a fast one on the Eurovision censors.
They fielded a song called "We Don't Wanna Put In", a disco anthem ostensibly about not wanting to stop dancing. The Eurovision organisers weren't having it. Songs with political themes are not allowed in the contest.
The title of the song, and it's main chorus, did not grammatically make sense in English. Though this could be said about a lot of Eurovision entries, this one was clearly meant to be "We don't want a Putin".
Only three out of the 42 entries in this year's Eurovision Song Contest will not be sung in English - a new record. And maybe that's not a bad thing.
When the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956, organisers had not thought to specify any policy for what language the acts could sing in. It was just assumed that each country would sing in their own language.
That changed in 1965, when Sweden showed up to the contest with an entry in English. France was not amused. They convinced the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union, which runs the contest, to impose a rule requiring each country's entry to be in an official language of that country. Otherwise, they argued, English would erode the contest's cultural legitimacy.
The old border between East and West may be imperceptible these days, but Berlin still feels like two different cities.
This week, after I had finished moving into my new apartment in the Neukolln neighbourhood of Berlin, I went to the annual re:publica conference nearby. It's an event focused on the politics of the internet - a subject close to German hearts.
It is held at The Station, an extraordinary event facility housed in a former postbahnhof - a train station for mail. Today it sits under a dizzying intersection of several different train lines at Gleisdreieck Station - where U2, U1 and DB long-distance tracks converge. It has a beautiful outdoor area that faces Gleisdreieck Park.
But this spot wasn't always so lovely. For decades this area was a barren weed-filled wasteland under and along the railroad tracks, separating the West Berlin neighbourhoods of Schoneberg and Kreuzberg.
Puerto Rico has to obey laws made in Washington, but has no say in shaping them. Sound familiar?
Over the past two years, Puerto Ricans have been reeling from a government debt crisis that is throwing the island into near chaos. But for their fellow American citizens, it has gone largely unnoticed.
The incomparable John Oliver did a segment about the crisis last week, and like a lot of Americans I found myself watching it with a sense of embarrassment. I also hadn't heard anything about the crisis before.
Continental Americans have a disconnected relationship with the American territory to their south. Many do not know that it is part of the United States, and even those that do know often forget.
