In more ways than one, I’m the opposite of Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky’s murderer who feels compelled to return to the scene of his crime. I very rarely, if ever, return a place I have lived. I’ve not been back to the area we left to move to Cambridge, there are several houses I’ve not seen again, I’ve never been back to Germany since we left in 1995 and, despite a couple of day visits to Brussels, I’ve not revisited Overijse where we spent three very happy years before we came back to England in 1998.
[Stadhuis, Gent]
We had a total of six years in the EU - Germany and Belgium - with Simon’s work. We just moved over, registered, opened a bank account, rented a place to live, learned a bit of German, had twins in Höchst, visited Frankfurt’s Kleinmarkthalle every Saturday, moved to Belgium, registered, rented a house, managed to not learn Flemish, had a baby in Leuven (the midwife sweeps in and says, ‘so, which language are we going to do this in?’), took the children to school, and made great friends in both countries. It was so easy, and such a wonderful experience, and we never for a moment thought that it wouldn’t be like this for our European children (who nevertheless only have UK passports).
[Bruges in the rain]
But back to Belgium, and its unique atmosphere. I love it, with all its weirdnesses and traditions. It’s a very easy place to live, stolid, slightly anarchic, very down-to-earth, a mix of old-fashioned and modern, French and Flemish. It is slightly surreal - we never understood how there could be a huge traffic jam waiting to go into a tunnel on the ring road and then virtually no cars when you came out - and it’s not too difficult to see where Magritte* came from. However, the country suffers from a lack of outside understanding combined with an image of rules and technocrats, NATO and the EU, all of which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Underpinned by warmth and friendliness, there is a streak of stubborn Belgian independence and a light disregard for rules; drivers would ignore a wegomlegging (diversion) on their commute to work for days until a policeman appeared to turn traffic round, then they would resume the pattern once he was no longer there, we regularly saw children travelling on the parcel shelf in cars, and it seems no-one ever wants their house to look like their neighbour’s, so long groups of houses and terraces display just about every kind of local material and style (this excellent IG account says it’s ‘better to be ugly than boring’).
[‘Landscape in Flanders’ (c1635-40) by Rubens, in the Barber Institute]
[‘Pollards’ (1884) by Van Gogh, in the Art Institute of Chicago]
It’s also flat, full of cows, pollarded trees and dark earth, appealingly gloomy and misty in autumn, and little changed since Rubens and Van Gogh painted the Low Countries landscape.
Where we lived in Overijse, it was a mix of internationals and locals; I was always impressed by the supermarket checkout staff who could count out your change - backwards, the old-fashioned way - in French, Flemish or English. Simon drove on the surreal ring road to work, I took Tom and Alice to kindergarten past masses of enormous greenhouses where they grew big bunches of black table grapes (something of a surprise, given the climate), and Phoebe slept in the supermarket trolley while I stocked up with wine for the tastings I organised. Sundays were particularly good, with a nicely predictable mix of markets, Mass (for some), mussels, mayonnaise and chips. We lived a borderless life as languages and countries just melded into one another; it was easy to drive to Holland to the Keukenhof for a day to see the tulips or to Breda on a Saturday morning for a change of scenery and for larger shoes for ladies (no Belgian woman apparently ever had feet larger than a size 41).
And here we were again, after twenty-four years. The reason we went was to watch two nights of the Six Days of Gent, an endurance cycling event, less brutal than in the past when the six days of cycling were like Depression era dance marathons, but still incredibly tough, especially in ‘t Kuipke velodrome, which is so small and has such steep banking that it’s more like a wall of death. It was huge fun - think beer, hot dogs, loud cheering, partisan support, a local singer doing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at the interval, and immensely exciting cycling.
[‘My Window’ c1910 by Jenny Montigny 1875-1937]
Gent itself is now my Belgian destination of choice: a lovely mix of good cafes with big baskets of bread, newspapers and coffee at communal tables, beautiful canal-side buildings, spectacularly ornate churches with mad triple-decker pulpits, thousands of students and bikes, a bustling, energetic atmosphere, and a wonderful Museum of Fine Arts where I discovered the luminous work of Jenny Montigny (and saw Magritte at his darkest best).
[Grote Markt, Antwerp]
By contrast Antwerp is famed for diamonds and fashion, neither of which float my boat, as they say, although it does have a great COS. It’s a big city which resembles so many others in Europe/UK and, although it is definitely Belgian (the Grote Markt is worth seeing, and the raisin bread from the Goosens bakery est. 1884 is highly recommended), it’s a watered-down version of Belgianness. Except for the Central Station which is anything but dilute.
[Antwerpen-Centraal (1905), entrance hall]
Then a quick visit to Bruges, which you might think would be the most Belgian place of all. It turns out to be very picturesque but more like a film set than a living city.
[front window, Bruges]
This was my first visit, having managed to not see it when we were there, and it may have been coloured by watching In Bruges in preparation for our trip. The film is a mix of dark humour and violence, and it all made sense after visiting the Groeninge Museum which is full of exactly the same sort of humour and violence, this time in C15 and C16 century religious paintings. For Ray/Colin Farrell, Bruges is a form of purgatory, something which came to mind as we made our way through the crowds and past endless tourist menus and Belgian chocolate shops, like upmarket versions of the rock shops of Blackpool. I know Bruges is much loved by many, but I wasn’t wholly convinced by its faux cosiness and rose-gold fairy light twinkliness akin to Woody Allen’s idealised vision of Paris in Midnight in Paris.
[there are also some less violent paintings in the collection]
It was a lovely few days. I shall be more like Raskolnikov, and pay a return visit to Gent for the barmy cycling (especially the Derny races), the more-is-more baroque churches, the art, the chips, the unique Belgian character. Sooner rather than later.
Bon dimanche/Prettige dag!
*My background music for Belgium is the gentle song by Paul Simon with lyrics as surreal as anything Magritte painted.
Now filled with Flanders wanderlust (as well as seething - again - at the barriers now in the way to living in/doing anything with Europe). I was smitten, even thunderstruck by Belgium when I first visted for a work conference. Ho hum, I thought, Antwerp. Not the most exciting of places. The Central Station changed all that , as did the narrow streets, the onion domes, the Plantin Moretus museum, the MAAS. The view from the observation deck of the MAAS over the skyline was an utter dépaysement - I even felt as if I was on another planet. The word that kept coming to me to describe Belgium was 'steampunk'. And how is it possible to fall in love with the typeface of railway station signs? Having been back to Antwerp a few times and stayed this autumn in an Airbnb room in the house of a garden designer en route to our ferry to Newcastle, I can see that Ghent will be next on the Belgium list.
Thanks Jane. Now Ghent has to be added to my list of places to go. Also Jenny Montigny an artist to look out for (not heard of her before, not surprising for a woman artist). Reading this makes me yearn yet again for what we have lost.