Author: Maarten Van Den Driessche

On November 16, 2009, I stood among hundreds of awestruck visitors at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, eyes fixed on Launch Pad 39A. The countdown reached zero, and Atlantis — mission STS-129 — roared to life. A brilliant flame pierced the Florida sky, followed by a deep, rolling thunder that shook the ground seconds…

Set in a narrow valley carved by China’s mighty Yellow River, Lanzhou feels like a place suspended between past and present — a river city where camel caravans once stopped to rest, and high-speed trains now race toward Central Asia. Long before highways and pipelines, this was a lifeline of the Silk Road, a vital…

A QuixoticGuide Original Story🌍By Maarten Van Den Driessche 🕯️ Part I — Dinner of Discovery In a candlelit library where maps float like stars, three men from distant centuries meet: They share a table covered in scrolls, sketches, and compasses.Battuta speaks of the scent of spice markets in Delhi; Leonardo sketches flying machines on napkins;…

Lebanon is one of those countries that everyone has heard of, but few people really understand. Ask a foreigner what comes to mind, and the answers are often clichés: war, hummus, or a distant memory of Beirut’s nickname, the Paris of the Middle East. But how much do foreigners actually know about Lebanon? The truth…

John Lennon’s Imagine is one of those rare songs that transcends generations, languages, and borders. When you’re out in the world—walking through a bustling souk in the Middle East, riding a crowded train in India, or watching the sun set over the Andes—the lyrics take on new meaning. Travel itself is a quiet rebellion against…

Two wind-lashed specks in the southern Indian Ocean—Marion Island and the smaller Prince Edward Island—make up South Africa’s only sub-Antarctic territory. Lying roughly 1,900–2,000 km southeast of the mainland, they’re volcanic, treeless, and vital to Southern Ocean science and conservation. Encyclopedia Britannicarsis.ramsar.org What—and where—they are Marion is the larger island, crowned by Mascarin Peak (≈1,230…

Syria’s story is a palimpsest—new hands writing over old ones, never fully erasing what came before. Walk any old street and you’re tracing trade routes, empires, and faiths layered so densely that time feels near-vertical. Here’s a compact, readable sweep you can drop straight into a blog post—built to pair with photos from Damascus, Aleppo,…

Editor’s note — 21 Aug 2025: Marc Santens is flying this route shortly and will update this guide with fresh timings, photos, and a cockpit‑view clip. A detailed trip report will be added below once back on the ground. Fast facts What the flight is like Think bus‑with‑wings: single pilot, tiny cabin, and big windows…

Tucked into the Moselle valley where Luxembourg meets France and Germany, Schengen is a sleepy wine village with outsized history—the spot where Europe signed away internal border checks and birthed the Schengen Area. Start at the freshly redesigned European Museum (Schengen Museum) to trace that story, then step outside to the riverside monuments and flag-dotted…