Metis Maven — The wisdom of exploration. Essays on travel, premium mobility and conscious style across Europe. By Gabriel Goldberg from Brussels.
This week, three people told me they no longer eat meat, each for a different reason. I love meat. Here is a respectful case for chosen meat: ethical, delicious and nourishing.
Near Porte de Namur, Elbow brings a New York lunch counter to Brussels. Open kitchen, welcoming stools and remarkable pastrami: why I keep returning.
On 19 September 2026, Hangar transformed Place Poelaert into a monumental open-air dancefloor for Solomun. Invited by TheMerode, I witnessed Brussels celebrate its newly revealed Palace of Justice faç
On 13 September 2026, I listened to Matthieu Ricard discuss happiness and altruism inside Brussels’ Villa Empain. A first-person account — and the full story of the scientist, monk, photographer and h
Two countries, two philosophies, one stubborn fact: Switzerland and Japan are the only nations able to build an entire watch — down to the hairspring and the oil — without depending on anyone. History
Between the Knokke sea dyke and the Zwin meadows, a crown of white antennas sits in the middle of a stubble field. Almost nobody notices it, yet hundreds of aircraft line up on it every day. Portrait
They are green, they are everywhere, and almost nobody knows their story: after the siege of Paris, an English milord paid out of his own pocket for a network of free drinking water for the poor. A hu
Since 1998 a masked artist has been cementing pixel mosaics onto the walls of Paris. There are now more than 1,500 of them in the capital, turned into a worldwide hunting game by an app. The history,
A day of business meetings in Paris, and one striking realisation: wherever you start, it takes thirty minutes. The story of a city crossed between appointments — metro corridors, the Louvre courtyard
Arriving a day before a run of business meetings, I spent a late-August Sunday walking Canal Saint-Martin and Bassin de la Villette. Locks, the Rotonde, street art, Paris Plages and an urban swim-and-
Standing in front of the egg fridge in a Scottish Marks & Spencer is a small cultural education. White shells, brown shells, pale blue shells, duck eggs in lilac boxes, and the word Scottish printed n
Scotland is not only Edinburgh. It is a vast territory where you drive for hours between villages, where the light changes every ten minutes, where you walk between the ridges to grasp the scale — and
A curve of painted shopfronts between George IV Bridge and the Grassmarket, a suspended upper walkway, tweed makers, whisky merchants, cheesemongers and a Masonic regalia shop: Victoria Street is Scot
In Edinburgh, street performance is not a pleasant extra: it is the beating heart of August. From Japanese fan dancers outside St Giles to the drums of the Grassmarket, from troupes playing their own
Twenty-three years after studying there, a return to Edinburgh in the middle of August: the Fringe, now the largest arts festival on earth, the professional actors selling their own show in the street
Copenhagen is no longer a quiet Scandinavian stopover — it is one of Europe's most desirable capitals. World-class museums (Louisiana, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek), architecture that breathes, a food scene
Ten minutes from Knokke, just across the Dutch border, Fieret's Vishandel has occupied Kaai 18-20 in Sluis since 1994 — and has been in the trade since 1948. Three generations, a family of Scheveninge
Christopher Nolan's film is not a documentary: it is a door. Behind it lies a ten-year siege far more carnal than Hollywood suggests, a Briseis reduced to slavery, a forgotten Telegony where the son k
Christopher Nolan shot his 2026 Odyssey across five countries — Morocco, Italy, Greece, Scotland, Iceland — and not in the real Ithaca. Here, with pictures, is each filming location, what it stands fo
One summer spent crossing the entire Ionian Sea: ten stops, ten stories, one shared Venetian geography. From Corfu to Zante via Parga, Paxos, Lefkada, Ithaca, Kefalonia, Kastos and Meganisi — here is