Qualla: Ostend https://qualla.com/ostend en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:32 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Ostend https://qualla.com/ostend Ostend: Introduction https://qualla.com/ostend/ In 1981, Marvin Gaye stepped off a ferry from England with a cassette of beats and a head full of cocaine, and the Belgian seaside town of Ostend caught him before he hit bottom. He lived here for nearly two years - jogging the dike at dawn, sparring with local boxers, eating frites on the esplanade. Somewhere between those long walks along the North Sea and a borrowed Roland TR-808 drum machine, he wrote "Sexual Healing." The song that revived his career was born in a town that knew something about being broken and put back together.

Read more: Ostend on Qualla

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/5/ostend-wp/u145-ostend-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ostend: The Queen of the Belgian Coast https://qualla.com/ostend/ Ostend earned its nickname in the nineteenth century, when Leopold I and Leopold II decided that this fishing village on the easternmost edge of an old island called Testerep was where the royal family should summer. The Belgian aristocracy followed, and the dunes between sea and...

Read more: Ostend on Qualla

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/5/ostend-wp/u145-ostend-the-queen-of-the-belgian-coast.mp3 0:06 2 full Ostend: Ensor's Masks https://qualla.com/ostend/ The painter James Ensor was born in Ostend in 1860, lived above his mother's souvenir and seashell shop, and almost never left. From his small house on the Vlaanderenstraat - now a museum - he painted the people of the seaside town as carnival grotesques: parading skeletons, leer...

Read more: Ostend on Qualla

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/5/ostend-wp/u145-ostend-ensors-masks.mp3 0:06 3 full Ostend: The Most Bombed City in Belgium https://qualla.com/ostend/ Four hundred and seven Allied bombs fell on Ostend during the Second World War - more than on any other Belgian city. The Germans had grabbed it without a fight on 15 October 1914 and turned the harbour into a U-boat base; the British answered with the disastrous Ostend Raids of ...

Read more: Ostend on Qualla

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/5/ostend-wp/u145-ostend-the-most-bombed-city-in-belgium.mp3 0:06 4 full Ostend: Where Marvin Gaye Got Clean https://qualla.com/ostend/ By 1981 Marvin Gaye was broke, hounded by the IRS, and addicted to cocaine. A Belgian concert promoter named Freddy Cousaert offered him a room above a music bar in Ostend, and Gaye accepted. He spent his Ostend months running on the seawall, lifting weights with local kids, perf...

Read more: Ostend on Qualla

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/5/ostend-wp/u145-ostend-where-marvin-gaye-got-clean.mp3 0:06 5 full Ostend: Coast Time https://qualla.com/ostend/ Ostend in winter is one of the great underrated experiences in northern Europe. The Coast Tram - the world's longest tram line, running 67 kilometres along the Belgian shore - rattles in from De Panne and Knokke. The Christmas market, one of Europe's largest, fills the central st...

Read more: Ostend on Qualla

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/5/ostend-wp/u145-ostend-coast-time.mp3 0:06 6 full