All essays from Metis Maven: travel, premium mobility and conscious style. Personal narratives and long-form analysis 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