Quixoticguide
Hi, I’m Maarten Van Den Driessche, a curious human, aviation enthusiast, vexillophile, world traveler, and food lover with over 14,000 days of life experience.
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At the Edge of the Map: Australia’s Western Silence
Dirk Hartog Island There are places where the world feels unfinished. Not undeveloped — unfinished.As if the map reached its limit and decided to stop drawing. Dirk Hartog Island is one of those places. The First Landing In 1616, Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog stepped ashore here and left behind a pewter plate nailed to a…
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Beneath Moscow: Descending Into Bunker 42
There is a version of Moscow that most visitors never see. Not the onion domes.Not the vast avenues.Not the metro palaces. But a Moscow buried 65 meters underground — built for a world that believed the sky could end in a flash of light. Welcome to Bunker 42, one of the Soviet Union’s most secret…
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You Don’t Need a Plan to Travel
There is a strange obsession in modern travel. Spreadsheets.Pinned maps.“48 Hours In…” itineraries.Color-coded Google Docs titled Masterplan – Version 7 Final FINAL. And yet, some of the most transformative journeys begin with a sentence so simple it feels irresponsible: “I’ll just go.” This is not anti-preparation. It is anti-overcontrol. Because sometimes, the most Quixotic way…
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Hachikō — The Dog Who Taught a City How to Wait
Tokyo moves fast — trains every few minutes, crowds flowing like tides, screens flashing with news from a planet that never pauses.And yet, right outside Shibuya Station, Japan’s busiest crossing, stands a monument to waiting. Not efficiency.Not technology.Not progress. Waiting. The bronze dog at the Hachikō exit is one of the most quietly powerful places…
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The Singapore Girl — Memory Worn as a Uniform
QuixoticGuide Addendum No airline symbol has survived the decades quite like this one: Singapore Airlines created a figure that is neither mascot nor stereotype, but ritual — the Singapore Girl. She is not famous because she smiles.She is famous because she repeats. A Brand Built on ContinuitySince the 1970s the sarong kebaya has barely changed.In…
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The Acceleration of the Century
When progress stopped being generational and became personal For most of human history, innovation moved slower than memory. A farmer born in 1200 would die in a world recognizable to his grandparents. Roads were the same roads. Ships were the same ships. War, trade, and distance obeyed identical physics for centuries. Change existed — but…
Where curiosity leads
Travel isn’t about collecting countries, but about understanding them.
These are places that shaped how I see the world — not just destinations, but contexts, encounters, and stories waiting to unfold
Travel Beyond Tourism
- Discover Places
- Understand Cultures
- Travel Better
- Meet the World
- Learn the Context
My Travel guides
- Not instructions, but orientation.
- These guides explain how places work — so you don’t just visit, you arrive.
“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” –
Ibn Battuta
Maghrebi traveller