Travelogue 852 – May 29
The Strike
I interrupt the Gent journal to report on today’s transit strike. Rotterdam woke on strike day to persistent showers. The rain hasn’t abated yet, and it’s nearly noon. I’ve dug out my rain pants, and I’ve ventured out on the bike so I could experience the town on a day without trams or trains or buses. I found it a singularly and surprisingly difficult thing to imagine, a city without trams. It’s good once in a while to be made aware of the things you take for granted, and clearly I had taken the regular rumble and screech of rail transport all aboard into my psyche. Transit routes were cycles of nature, and train cars were as ubiquitous as canals and cows in their fields.
I can report that the streets were predictably quieter this morning. Life hadn’t stopped, but there was less activity. It felt like summer break. Cars sped by with all their former carelessness, but conspicuously absent was the network of sound underneath, the grumble, the bell, the whine of steel wheels.
I stopped by a Metro station. This seemed the ultimate test of the strike. I had never imagined the Metro stations as anything but open, at every hour and forever. The Metro station was a kind of community centre, where we met together to share our quiet disdain for each other.
Cycling by two Metro stations, I saw the proof. The stations were gated off, closed. It felt wrong. Those long train platforms silent and empty: it couldn’t be. Those were our sacred spaces, comprising a species of catacomb where we buried our sunlight and buried our individuality. Where would we find the day’s cold comfort, the shadowless, concrete dreamscape inhabited by sleepwalkers on smart phones? This was a blow.
I took a moment to stop at the grocery store. Here I found people. The aisles were alive with smiles and activity. There was an atmosphere of holiday.
I had originally thought that calling a strike that punished customers more than employers was a dubious strategy, but here I saw through my American bias. In America, the prevailing ethos is to punish the weakest person in any hierarchy. Wrath over a transit strike would be visited upon wage-earners who arrive late to work, sweaty and soaked by the rain. Here, all is viewed with a measure of indulgence. A strike is like a blizzard. The community shrugs and accepts it as a natural phenomenon, out of their control. That could never be countenanced in the America I remember.
Still, I wouldn’t recognize the attitude as support for the transit workers, either. I asked a few people about it in the days before the strike. Most only shrugged. Some were cynical. That was yesterday. Today, it’s a holiday.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Travelogue 851 – May 28
The Square
Outside Sint-Baafs cathedral, there is an open square. On one side is a line of café-bars with outdoor seating. That line drifts away in a curve to open the square wider at the opposite end, where stands the Lakenhalle, the Cloth Hall, which was built during the first half of the fifteenth century. The Lakenhalle is situated right underneath and adjoining the Belfry, Gent’s famous bell-tower.
Picture Gent in the 1430s. While the Vijds were finishing their chapel in the ambulatory of the church then called Sint-Jans, and while Jan Van Eyck was completing his masterpiece, the cloth merchants were busy building their hall across the square. Perhaps they were already using the space for business, storing cloth, conducting their inspections, negotiating daily. It’s hard to imagine how townspeople went about their business in a town centre dominated by multi-generational building projects. The square must have been a mess. Sint-Jans (later Sint-Baafs Cathedral) itself was in the midst of a slow-motion transformation from Romanesque structure to Gothic that would take the better part of two centuries.
The Belfry had only been completed some fifty to a hundred years earlier, so recently by medieval standards that the city watchmen hadn’t moved in yet. They still occupied the tower in the neighbouring Sint-Niklaas Church. These three towers, Sint-Baafs, the Belfry and Sint-Niklaas now form (as they did then, I suppose) a line of heights that give Gent its signature skyline. Tourists are advised to stand on or near the western Sint-Michiels Bridge crossing the Leie to get the finest view of these three towers standing together.
The imagination struggles to picture the city amidst all this change and growth. These days, there’s such generous space accorded these monuments in the centre of town, and there have been such extravagant efforts made to medievalize, that it’s hard to visualize the chaotic and crowded activity that would have been the fifteenth-century experience. It’s safe to say that business and life went on. The churches were open for business, regardless of the stage of building. The cloth trade carried on; it was the life blood of the town. If there was so much open space then, it was put to use, for markets or ceremonials. It’s hard to imagine Gentenaars sentimentalizing the open square, sitting for quiet beers at clean tables overlooking the well-swept flagstones of the square.
Today, the curve of Sint-Baafs Square continues past the Lakenhalle and into the next square, which is fronted by the old city hall and Sint-Niklaas. The square also contains a few curiosities from later times, including the modern City Pavilion, tall and intriguing, a structure that would have baffled the hard-bitten cloth merchants of old Gent. ‘What purpose does it serve?’ they might have asked. Well, it’s beautiful, and it provide shelter for concerts and events. They would have shaken their heads at the waste of space.
There is also an eighteenth-century gateway built into the corner between the Belfry and the Lakenhalle, an entryway into a city jail housed in the basement of the Lakenhalle. A very conspicuous relief was carved into the tympanum, depicting the Roman myth of Cimon, an old man sentenced to starvation but kept alive by his daughter, who breastfed him on prison visits. You can only stand below and laugh or scratch your head, wondering what the city fathers were thinking.
The Square
Outside Sint-Baafs cathedral, there is an open square. On one side is a line of café-bars with outdoor seating. That line drifts away in a curve to open the square wider at the opposite end, where stands the Lakenhalle, the Cloth Hall, which was built during the first half of the fifteenth century. The Lakenhalle is situated right underneath and adjoining the Belfry, Gent’s famous bell-tower.
Picture Gent in the 1430s. While the Vijds were finishing their chapel in the ambulatory of the church then called Sint-Jans, and while Jan Van Eyck was completing his masterpiece, the cloth merchants were busy building their hall across the square. Perhaps they were already using the space for business, storing cloth, conducting their inspections, negotiating daily. It’s hard to imagine how townspeople went about their business in a town centre dominated by multi-generational building projects. The square must have been a mess. Sint-Jans (later Sint-Baafs Cathedral) itself was in the midst of a slow-motion transformation from Romanesque structure to Gothic that would take the better part of two centuries.
The Belfry had only been completed some fifty to a hundred years earlier, so recently by medieval standards that the city watchmen hadn’t moved in yet. They still occupied the tower in the neighbouring Sint-Niklaas Church. These three towers, Sint-Baafs, the Belfry and Sint-Niklaas now form (as they did then, I suppose) a line of heights that give Gent its signature skyline. Tourists are advised to stand on or near the western Sint-Michiels Bridge crossing the Leie to get the finest view of these three towers standing together.
The imagination struggles to picture the city amidst all this change and growth. These days, there’s such generous space accorded these monuments in the centre of town, and there have been such extravagant efforts made to medievalize, that it’s hard to visualize the chaotic and crowded activity that would have been the fifteenth-century experience. It’s safe to say that business and life went on. The churches were open for business, regardless of the stage of building. The cloth trade carried on; it was the life blood of the town. If there was so much open space then, it was put to use, for markets or ceremonials. It’s hard to imagine Gentenaars sentimentalizing the open square, sitting for quiet beers at clean tables overlooking the well-swept flagstones of the square.
Today, the curve of Sint-Baafs Square continues past the Lakenhalle and into the next square, which is fronted by the old city hall and Sint-Niklaas. The square also contains a few curiosities from later times, including the modern City Pavilion, tall and intriguing, a structure that would have baffled the hard-bitten cloth merchants of old Gent. ‘What purpose does it serve?’ they might have asked. Well, it’s beautiful, and it provide shelter for concerts and events. They would have shaken their heads at the waste of space.
There is also an eighteenth-century gateway built into the corner between the Belfry and the Lakenhalle, an entryway into a city jail housed in the basement of the Lakenhalle. A very conspicuous relief was carved into the tympanum, depicting the Roman myth of Cimon, an old man sentenced to starvation but kept alive by his daughter, who breastfed him on prison visits. You can only stand below and laugh or scratch your head, wondering what the city fathers were thinking.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Travelogue 850 – May 26
Hats Off
The canons from Sint-Baafs Abbey were made homeless by the emperor’s vengeance on the city of Gent. They were allowed to relocate to Sint-Janskerk in town. John the Baptist was the patron saint of Gent, and so for centuries the church was named for him. With this shift, the church became known as Sint-Baafs. Today it is still known as Saint Bavo’s, and it’s most famous as home to the Lamb of God triptych painted by the Van Eyck brothers.
When I’ve visited Gent in the past, I’ve gone directly to the cathedral. I’ve stood in that small, sacred room off the nave, where dozens of tourists shuffle around the masterpiece, listening to their audio guides. Now I’m back. I’ve heard the lectures before. I’ve read extensively about the piece. I’ve examined reproductions of the painting closely on the page and on the web. None of that makes me an expert, but this is no introduction. The triptych like an old friend, and I’m just happy to be in the same room. I circle it, looking closely at a handful of details. What you don’t get in books is a sense of the object’s dimension, the air it displaces.
We tour the cathedral, taking in the towering space of the interior and the rich decoration accumulated over centuries. We stroll back to the chapel where the altarpiece was intended to stand. The painting would have dominated this small space built by and dedicated to the Vijd family nearly six hundred years ago.
Much has been written about the adventures of the triptych since the fifteenth century, barely surviving the iconoclasm of the Reformation and subsequent wars. It was claimed by the Nazis and nearly lost among German caverns full of treasure and art. One panel was stolen in a high-profile, mysterious and still unsolved case.
We need reminding how fortunate we are to be able to see the piece. So many artworks from that era are lost. And among the ones that have survived, how many people have had had the privilege to view them? The triptych was produced to serve a specific purpose in religious ritual. Its panels were only opened on holidays.
After we first entered the cathedral, I was idly walking in circles, looking for a place to park the buggy and looking up into the heights of the space. A guard caught my attention and with a friendly wink, gestured a suggestion that I remove my cap. I nodded and complied, of course. How many times a day does he have to remind people that this is still a church?
Hats Off
The canons from Sint-Baafs Abbey were made homeless by the emperor’s vengeance on the city of Gent. They were allowed to relocate to Sint-Janskerk in town. John the Baptist was the patron saint of Gent, and so for centuries the church was named for him. With this shift, the church became known as Sint-Baafs. Today it is still known as Saint Bavo’s, and it’s most famous as home to the Lamb of God triptych painted by the Van Eyck brothers.
When I’ve visited Gent in the past, I’ve gone directly to the cathedral. I’ve stood in that small, sacred room off the nave, where dozens of tourists shuffle around the masterpiece, listening to their audio guides. Now I’m back. I’ve heard the lectures before. I’ve read extensively about the piece. I’ve examined reproductions of the painting closely on the page and on the web. None of that makes me an expert, but this is no introduction. The triptych like an old friend, and I’m just happy to be in the same room. I circle it, looking closely at a handful of details. What you don’t get in books is a sense of the object’s dimension, the air it displaces.
We tour the cathedral, taking in the towering space of the interior and the rich decoration accumulated over centuries. We stroll back to the chapel where the altarpiece was intended to stand. The painting would have dominated this small space built by and dedicated to the Vijd family nearly six hundred years ago.
Much has been written about the adventures of the triptych since the fifteenth century, barely surviving the iconoclasm of the Reformation and subsequent wars. It was claimed by the Nazis and nearly lost among German caverns full of treasure and art. One panel was stolen in a high-profile, mysterious and still unsolved case.
We need reminding how fortunate we are to be able to see the piece. So many artworks from that era are lost. And among the ones that have survived, how many people have had had the privilege to view them? The triptych was produced to serve a specific purpose in religious ritual. Its panels were only opened on holidays.
After we first entered the cathedral, I was idly walking in circles, looking for a place to park the buggy and looking up into the heights of the space. A guard caught my attention and with a friendly wink, gestured a suggestion that I remove my cap. I nodded and complied, of course. How many times a day does he have to remind people that this is still a church?
Monday, May 20, 2019
Travelogue 849 – May 20
The Heir
I mentioned how once upon a time – actually, for nearly a millennium, – an entry into Gent from the east would have taken one past the lands of Sint-Baaf’s Abbey. Now it doesn’t. Only the meagrest vestiges of the ancient abbey remain, buried among the streets of a rather dreary district.
The story of why the abbey doesn’t stand where it used to – why not even a real ruin survives to greet us – is a dramatic one. It leads us back, like so many threads in European history do, to the disappointing figure of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and first Habsburg king of Spain.
This energetic and earnest, yet somehow inadequate, man poses a kind of riddle in history. I’ll be forced to return to him, reconsider him from a few perspectives. In regard to Gent, he serves as a figure from Greek tragedy, born in the city but returning to it as destroyer.
Gent was perennially in rebellion. Resistance against their lords was a kind of sickness among cities in the Lowlands. Charles’s response in 1540 was vicious and decisive. City rights were revoked, city walls torn down. and the abbey was torn down to make way for a Spanish fort with a permanent garrison. Gent never really recovered. It was to be Antwerp’s time in the sun.
Charles is one of those totemic figures made possible in cultures mesmerized by blood lineage. At birth, with no bigger challenge before him than survival to an age of majority, Charles embodied the intersection of so many bloodlines with so many properties and allegiances attached, that he was destined to inherit a kind of leadership over most of Europe. He was the culmination of centuries of alliance and breeding. No one would ever inherit so extensive a European empire again.
Charles took his role seriously, probably to his detriment. He might have achieved as much and been better loved had he lived the life of a medieval monarch, drinking and jousting, leading picturesque campaigns for booty, and planting rebel heads on pikes as cautions.
Charles apprehended himself an emperor from another time, perhaps Hadrian’s or Charlemagne’s or Frederick the Great’s. But it wasn’t to be. The fact was, though he was feudal lord to all, he was king or conqueror to none. Where he saw an empire with far borders to defend (or expand), his people saw the patchwork quilt for what it was, hundreds of loyalties and alliances concluded on individual terms. This disparity in perception may account for Charles’s impatience with Gent.
The old man failed, somehow having had the worst instinct for nearly every occasion. He quietly acknowledged as much when he abdicated and retired to a monastery after forty years’ rule. Circumstance was not kind to this Caesar. The Reformation began under his reign, breaking out with the vehemence and unpredictability of a California forest fire. He waffled when he should have been ruthless; became ruthless when the Protestants had use for martyrs. He eventually resigned to it as a permanent affliction, like his gout.
The Heir
I mentioned how once upon a time – actually, for nearly a millennium, – an entry into Gent from the east would have taken one past the lands of Sint-Baaf’s Abbey. Now it doesn’t. Only the meagrest vestiges of the ancient abbey remain, buried among the streets of a rather dreary district.
The story of why the abbey doesn’t stand where it used to – why not even a real ruin survives to greet us – is a dramatic one. It leads us back, like so many threads in European history do, to the disappointing figure of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and first Habsburg king of Spain.
This energetic and earnest, yet somehow inadequate, man poses a kind of riddle in history. I’ll be forced to return to him, reconsider him from a few perspectives. In regard to Gent, he serves as a figure from Greek tragedy, born in the city but returning to it as destroyer.
Gent was perennially in rebellion. Resistance against their lords was a kind of sickness among cities in the Lowlands. Charles’s response in 1540 was vicious and decisive. City rights were revoked, city walls torn down. and the abbey was torn down to make way for a Spanish fort with a permanent garrison. Gent never really recovered. It was to be Antwerp’s time in the sun.
Charles is one of those totemic figures made possible in cultures mesmerized by blood lineage. At birth, with no bigger challenge before him than survival to an age of majority, Charles embodied the intersection of so many bloodlines with so many properties and allegiances attached, that he was destined to inherit a kind of leadership over most of Europe. He was the culmination of centuries of alliance and breeding. No one would ever inherit so extensive a European empire again.
Charles took his role seriously, probably to his detriment. He might have achieved as much and been better loved had he lived the life of a medieval monarch, drinking and jousting, leading picturesque campaigns for booty, and planting rebel heads on pikes as cautions.
Charles apprehended himself an emperor from another time, perhaps Hadrian’s or Charlemagne’s or Frederick the Great’s. But it wasn’t to be. The fact was, though he was feudal lord to all, he was king or conqueror to none. Where he saw an empire with far borders to defend (or expand), his people saw the patchwork quilt for what it was, hundreds of loyalties and alliances concluded on individual terms. This disparity in perception may account for Charles’s impatience with Gent.
The old man failed, somehow having had the worst instinct for nearly every occasion. He quietly acknowledged as much when he abdicated and retired to a monastery after forty years’ rule. Circumstance was not kind to this Caesar. The Reformation began under his reign, breaking out with the vehemence and unpredictability of a California forest fire. He waffled when he should have been ruthless; became ruthless when the Protestants had use for martyrs. He eventually resigned to it as a permanent affliction, like his gout.
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Travelogue 848 – May 15
From Dampoort
The view of Gent from the Dampoort train station is not the most flattering. You see the skyline from the train platform. It’s not a big-city skyline with glass towers. It’s not a Gothic skyline, except for the tops of the three famous towers of medieval Gent. It’s a common view on Belgian towns, plain and perhaps tired, rows of high, windowed boxes in various faded colours with roofs slanting steeply away, their gables turned toward the narrow cross streets, flat and square building fronts turning rather blank looks outward.
In medieval times, the traveller in this spot would have looked westward into the precincts of the old Abbey of Sint-Baaf. I imagine that in the fifteenth century, it would have presented a more inspiring view than this one, the abbey being a complex of ancient buildings, gathered around its own steepled church, nestled in an estate surrounded by canals.
The medieval buildings we see are beautiful, but I question how attractive medieval towns would have been in their own times. I sense that, glimpsed from a distance, perhaps seen first as one rode horseback over the last hilltop, those towns would have been quite pretty. The picture of the town would have been dominated by the biggest and most enduring of structures, the churches, monasteries, guild halls and castles. Houses would have presented only rows of tiled or thatched roofs.
Closer acquaintance with the town might have been a different experience, confronted with the poverty that is hidden by distances, and with the ephemeral quality of most human production, like the ramshackle shelters built into the city walls and into the walls of the cathedral; or the oddly enduring footpaths become roads, still made of mud, mixed with all sort of excrement and waste.
We made no slow entry into town, at the packhorse pace of medieval pilgrims. We sped in a taxi past the twentieth-century squalor occupying the land of the old abbey and across the Scheldt. The centre of old Gent occupies a bit of land caught between the Leie and the Schedlt. The former river circles coyly around a peninsular jut of land before joining the Scheldt on the east side of the town centre. We wound among narrow streets, past old Sint-Jacobskerk and the famous Vrijdagmarkt, and then across the Leie to arrive underneath the walls of the twelfth-century castle of Gravensteen.
Below the castle is the Veerleplein, a square surrounded by historical facades, including the venerable gateway to the Fish Market, an institution probably as old as the castle, even though the rococo façade dates to the late seventeenth century. The square retains no atmosphere of the Middle Ages, though, with trams trundling by and troops of tourists choosing among the outdoor cafes. Baby has been excited about seeing a castle all day, so we pose for selfies in the busy square.
From Dampoort
The view of Gent from the Dampoort train station is not the most flattering. You see the skyline from the train platform. It’s not a big-city skyline with glass towers. It’s not a Gothic skyline, except for the tops of the three famous towers of medieval Gent. It’s a common view on Belgian towns, plain and perhaps tired, rows of high, windowed boxes in various faded colours with roofs slanting steeply away, their gables turned toward the narrow cross streets, flat and square building fronts turning rather blank looks outward.
In medieval times, the traveller in this spot would have looked westward into the precincts of the old Abbey of Sint-Baaf. I imagine that in the fifteenth century, it would have presented a more inspiring view than this one, the abbey being a complex of ancient buildings, gathered around its own steepled church, nestled in an estate surrounded by canals.
The medieval buildings we see are beautiful, but I question how attractive medieval towns would have been in their own times. I sense that, glimpsed from a distance, perhaps seen first as one rode horseback over the last hilltop, those towns would have been quite pretty. The picture of the town would have been dominated by the biggest and most enduring of structures, the churches, monasteries, guild halls and castles. Houses would have presented only rows of tiled or thatched roofs.
Closer acquaintance with the town might have been a different experience, confronted with the poverty that is hidden by distances, and with the ephemeral quality of most human production, like the ramshackle shelters built into the city walls and into the walls of the cathedral; or the oddly enduring footpaths become roads, still made of mud, mixed with all sort of excrement and waste.
We made no slow entry into town, at the packhorse pace of medieval pilgrims. We sped in a taxi past the twentieth-century squalor occupying the land of the old abbey and across the Scheldt. The centre of old Gent occupies a bit of land caught between the Leie and the Schedlt. The former river circles coyly around a peninsular jut of land before joining the Scheldt on the east side of the town centre. We wound among narrow streets, past old Sint-Jacobskerk and the famous Vrijdagmarkt, and then across the Leie to arrive underneath the walls of the twelfth-century castle of Gravensteen.
Below the castle is the Veerleplein, a square surrounded by historical facades, including the venerable gateway to the Fish Market, an institution probably as old as the castle, even though the rococo façade dates to the late seventeenth century. The square retains no atmosphere of the Middle Ages, though, with trams trundling by and troops of tourists choosing among the outdoor cafes. Baby has been excited about seeing a castle all day, so we pose for selfies in the busy square.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Travelogue 847 – May 14
The Break
I’ve grown to enjoy the ritual of the European break. You get the feeling that the whole population takes its holidays together. It’s not true. Business chugs away in offices and shops and train stations all year round. But most everyone in university and everyone with kids has a plan for the breaks. The timing does vary slightly region to region, at least in the Netherlands, but all school, universities, daycares centres and dance schools close their doors, and my city grows quieter.
I used to reserve a measure of contempt for this phenomenon, the conformism of spring breaks and mass migrations to the sea in August. But after all, there is something appealing about the idea that we share cycles, follow the rotation of the year together. I suppose it has grown very naturally from calendars based on communal experience, whether religious or seasonal. Holidays are signposts in a narrative. It might be the narrative of nature, or a New Testament narrative.
Consumerist and individualistic America sees vacations as personal choices only. Holidays on the calendar are party dates, but vacations are personal possessions. In that group mind, all experiences are individual.
I think my own resistance to travel during communal break times has had less to do with dogma than with habits of mind. Travel makes me anxious. Imagining travel at the same time as many thousands of others across the country was enough to raise my heart rate. But I’ve found, with conservative experimentation, that it’s not so bad.
Sitting at home, all the people out there, the atomized mass of action, emotion, instinct and will, all surging just outside the door, might be a cheery and reassuring notion, or it might be depressing, or even frightening. But the experience of humanity is more complex. Contact is an alloy, never satisfying any purity test, emotional or intellectual.
On the way home from Gent, we boarded a fast Thalys train in Antwerp to find that some English boys on their way to Amsterdam had taken our seats. They were a large group. The tables were littered with beer cans. We expected the worst, but there was nowhere else to sit. They were polite, though, vacating two seats for us. We were supposed to have two more for the girls, but no matter.
The lads continued their fun, their loud conversation and laughter, but I did mark that their language was censored for the family. They had adjusted. And the conversation was rather entertaining, after all, a discourse among public school lads about old teachers, about rugby, and about the what had happened to old friends and acquaintances. They indulged in an interesting digression about boys on steroids, pausing to shake their heads drunkenly about bad choices.
I was fond of the lads by the end, though the trip was short, and though no words had been exchanged after we had sunk into our seats in Antwerp. God knows what sort of outrages they performed upon the weary carcass of old Amsterdam, but they were (relative) gentlemen on the train.
The Break
I’ve grown to enjoy the ritual of the European break. You get the feeling that the whole population takes its holidays together. It’s not true. Business chugs away in offices and shops and train stations all year round. But most everyone in university and everyone with kids has a plan for the breaks. The timing does vary slightly region to region, at least in the Netherlands, but all school, universities, daycares centres and dance schools close their doors, and my city grows quieter.
I used to reserve a measure of contempt for this phenomenon, the conformism of spring breaks and mass migrations to the sea in August. But after all, there is something appealing about the idea that we share cycles, follow the rotation of the year together. I suppose it has grown very naturally from calendars based on communal experience, whether religious or seasonal. Holidays are signposts in a narrative. It might be the narrative of nature, or a New Testament narrative.
Consumerist and individualistic America sees vacations as personal choices only. Holidays on the calendar are party dates, but vacations are personal possessions. In that group mind, all experiences are individual.
I think my own resistance to travel during communal break times has had less to do with dogma than with habits of mind. Travel makes me anxious. Imagining travel at the same time as many thousands of others across the country was enough to raise my heart rate. But I’ve found, with conservative experimentation, that it’s not so bad.
Sitting at home, all the people out there, the atomized mass of action, emotion, instinct and will, all surging just outside the door, might be a cheery and reassuring notion, or it might be depressing, or even frightening. But the experience of humanity is more complex. Contact is an alloy, never satisfying any purity test, emotional or intellectual.
On the way home from Gent, we boarded a fast Thalys train in Antwerp to find that some English boys on their way to Amsterdam had taken our seats. They were a large group. The tables were littered with beer cans. We expected the worst, but there was nowhere else to sit. They were polite, though, vacating two seats for us. We were supposed to have two more for the girls, but no matter.
The lads continued their fun, their loud conversation and laughter, but I did mark that their language was censored for the family. They had adjusted. And the conversation was rather entertaining, after all, a discourse among public school lads about old teachers, about rugby, and about the what had happened to old friends and acquaintances. They indulged in an interesting digression about boys on steroids, pausing to shake their heads drunkenly about bad choices.
I was fond of the lads by the end, though the trip was short, and though no words had been exchanged after we had sunk into our seats in Antwerp. God knows what sort of outrages they performed upon the weary carcass of old Amsterdam, but they were (relative) gentlemen on the train.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Travelogue 846 – May 11
Train Travel
It was May Break. Teachers and students had a week off. Our plan was to spend only a few days in Gent. The purpose was two-fold: have fun and do some research. I’m writing a story based in Gent during the fifteenth century. We’ve been to Gent before, but too briefly to see more than a few tourist spots. Too briefly to get a feeling for the geography of it.
We packed our clothes and we packed our babies and we headed to the train station. It’s fortunate I had recovered from my April case of pneumonia. I was going to need all my strength. Train travel with babies can require something of the stamina of a half marathon. I had cancelled my spring half marathon because of the pneumonia.
This trip would be my contest. Ren was still travelling in the buggy. Standing on the platform behind a buggy while the train pulls in can feel like waiting for the sound of the starting gun on a hot day, with twenty-one kilometres ahead of you.
When the train pulled into the station, we manoeuvred anxiously for a door. People are nice, but there’s a powerful herd instinct that takes over. People press in, and they jockey for position. They want you out of the way. Rushing things with babies gets the adrenaline going. It always feels like you might lose your grip on the buggy, or like you just might end up with one child on the other side of the closing doors.
Making it onto the train was more than negotiating the first stairs. We signalled each other and split the team, like TV cops entering a dangerous building. Menna and Jos headed for seats. I pushed the buggy out of the way, while people continued to stream in. It was like weathering a sudden flood. Once they were all in, I could position the buggy safely and take Ren out.
We had to change trains in Antwerp (Anvers). An hour’s rest on the train, and then we were piling out again. We rode the interminable series of escalators up into the terminal. Though we had another train to catch, I pushed the buggy as far as the grand waiting room of the station, a magnificent space that I wanted the girls to see again. We have a lot of memories here, coming to Antwerp to see Yohannes and his family.
We should be greedy for beauty. I exhorted the girls to look, soak it all in. They stared for a moment, not sure what I was so excited about. Then they returned to their own occupations. Menna and I stood on the marble floors and looked into the depths of the dome, rising some sixty metres above.
W.G. Sebald made of this station a meditation in his book ‘Austerlitz’, its monumentalism and strange eclecticism, combining medievalism with Renaissance styles, Muslim with Byzantine, and adorned with references to “the deities of the nineteenth century – mining, industry, transport, trade, and capital”. Laughable, he says. But haunting in its grandeur, inspiring the kind of impulse to reverence that a cathedral does.
Train Travel
It was May Break. Teachers and students had a week off. Our plan was to spend only a few days in Gent. The purpose was two-fold: have fun and do some research. I’m writing a story based in Gent during the fifteenth century. We’ve been to Gent before, but too briefly to see more than a few tourist spots. Too briefly to get a feeling for the geography of it.
We packed our clothes and we packed our babies and we headed to the train station. It’s fortunate I had recovered from my April case of pneumonia. I was going to need all my strength. Train travel with babies can require something of the stamina of a half marathon. I had cancelled my spring half marathon because of the pneumonia.
This trip would be my contest. Ren was still travelling in the buggy. Standing on the platform behind a buggy while the train pulls in can feel like waiting for the sound of the starting gun on a hot day, with twenty-one kilometres ahead of you.
When the train pulled into the station, we manoeuvred anxiously for a door. People are nice, but there’s a powerful herd instinct that takes over. People press in, and they jockey for position. They want you out of the way. Rushing things with babies gets the adrenaline going. It always feels like you might lose your grip on the buggy, or like you just might end up with one child on the other side of the closing doors.
Making it onto the train was more than negotiating the first stairs. We signalled each other and split the team, like TV cops entering a dangerous building. Menna and Jos headed for seats. I pushed the buggy out of the way, while people continued to stream in. It was like weathering a sudden flood. Once they were all in, I could position the buggy safely and take Ren out.
We had to change trains in Antwerp (Anvers). An hour’s rest on the train, and then we were piling out again. We rode the interminable series of escalators up into the terminal. Though we had another train to catch, I pushed the buggy as far as the grand waiting room of the station, a magnificent space that I wanted the girls to see again. We have a lot of memories here, coming to Antwerp to see Yohannes and his family.
We should be greedy for beauty. I exhorted the girls to look, soak it all in. They stared for a moment, not sure what I was so excited about. Then they returned to their own occupations. Menna and I stood on the marble floors and looked into the depths of the dome, rising some sixty metres above.
W.G. Sebald made of this station a meditation in his book ‘Austerlitz’, its monumentalism and strange eclecticism, combining medievalism with Renaissance styles, Muslim with Byzantine, and adorned with references to “the deities of the nineteenth century – mining, industry, transport, trade, and capital”. Laughable, he says. But haunting in its grandeur, inspiring the kind of impulse to reverence that a cathedral does.
Monday, May 06, 2019
Travelogue 845 – May 6
Spelling Issues
What’s in a name? I’m set to write about a family trip during the May Break, but I’m stuck on the name of the city. I’m struggling with the spelling.
In English, the name of the town is Ghent. In Flemish, it’s Gent, pronounced with a hard initial ‘H’. In French, it’s Gant, pronounced something like ‘Gone Girl’ (without the girl). We recover the G sound, lose the T sound. The latter goes some way toward explaining the origins of the Shakespearean name, ‘John of Gaunt’. The place name descends from a Celtic designation, Ganda, that refers to the confluence of the two rivers, Scheldt and Leie.
Americans find it surprising that names in other parts of the world can be mutable. A name to us is something beyond debate or interpretation. Place names in our country were dreamed up by some pioneer while planting his claim, certified by the state, and that was that. There’s something essential in a name. You don’t mess with it.
I’ve observed this mental struggle while I worked in Ethiopia. For one thing, some places in Ethiopia had several names, according to which ethnicity claimed it. For another thing, the main Ethiopia language, Amharic, used a different writing system, so all names were transliterated before we learned them. And we were living through a time when Ethiopians were periodically adjusting spellings in the Roman alphabet. You could date an American’s entry into Ethiopia by the spellings they insisted on.
In Europe, a name exists in a set of overlapping fields, overlapping in time and geography. The French might feel a right to the city. It was founded in the times of the Frankish empire and came of age under the Count of Flanders, who was a vassal of the French king. Modern Belgium is bilingual. The English, too, might have some rights to at least a nickname. They were key trade partners with Ghent for centuries. If they didn’t feel ownership, they felt kinship. This is Europe; many old towns have a set of names.
So I struggle. I want to spell the city’s name ‘Gent’. That feels most natural to me. But will it seem pretentious or arbitrary? Does it matter that I live in Dutch-speaking territory? And won’t Gent have other associations for English speakers, as in ‘ladies and gents’. (The Gent Ladies, by the way, is the name of the women’s football club in Ghent.)
I could simply opt for ‘Ghent’ because I’m writing in English. That makes the most sense. But I do find that spelling grating. While anglicizing the sound, we affects an Italianate or French spelling, ‘gh’ for the hard g sound, something unnecessary for English. I don’t ghet it.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to go for ‘Gent’.
Spelling Issues
What’s in a name? I’m set to write about a family trip during the May Break, but I’m stuck on the name of the city. I’m struggling with the spelling.
In English, the name of the town is Ghent. In Flemish, it’s Gent, pronounced with a hard initial ‘H’. In French, it’s Gant, pronounced something like ‘Gone Girl’ (without the girl). We recover the G sound, lose the T sound. The latter goes some way toward explaining the origins of the Shakespearean name, ‘John of Gaunt’. The place name descends from a Celtic designation, Ganda, that refers to the confluence of the two rivers, Scheldt and Leie.
Americans find it surprising that names in other parts of the world can be mutable. A name to us is something beyond debate or interpretation. Place names in our country were dreamed up by some pioneer while planting his claim, certified by the state, and that was that. There’s something essential in a name. You don’t mess with it.
I’ve observed this mental struggle while I worked in Ethiopia. For one thing, some places in Ethiopia had several names, according to which ethnicity claimed it. For another thing, the main Ethiopia language, Amharic, used a different writing system, so all names were transliterated before we learned them. And we were living through a time when Ethiopians were periodically adjusting spellings in the Roman alphabet. You could date an American’s entry into Ethiopia by the spellings they insisted on.
In Europe, a name exists in a set of overlapping fields, overlapping in time and geography. The French might feel a right to the city. It was founded in the times of the Frankish empire and came of age under the Count of Flanders, who was a vassal of the French king. Modern Belgium is bilingual. The English, too, might have some rights to at least a nickname. They were key trade partners with Ghent for centuries. If they didn’t feel ownership, they felt kinship. This is Europe; many old towns have a set of names.
So I struggle. I want to spell the city’s name ‘Gent’. That feels most natural to me. But will it seem pretentious or arbitrary? Does it matter that I live in Dutch-speaking territory? And won’t Gent have other associations for English speakers, as in ‘ladies and gents’. (The Gent Ladies, by the way, is the name of the women’s football club in Ghent.)
I could simply opt for ‘Ghent’ because I’m writing in English. That makes the most sense. But I do find that spelling grating. While anglicizing the sound, we affects an Italianate or French spelling, ‘gh’ for the hard g sound, something unnecessary for English. I don’t ghet it.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to go for ‘Gent’.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)