Ah, Bruxelles. We’ve spent much of the week promenading all over Belgique and it’s come close to killing me, and in all fairness, still has time to do so. The first several days were rainy and grey and cool and pleasant and we wandered Bruges and a castle in Ghent and then we went troll hunting in the Swamps of Boom and t’was there that I caught my illness.
And so, for the past three days I’ve been struggling with a cold that has been kicking my lungs in the ass, all the coughing has wracked my intestinal tract and that’s added angst to my stomach and in general I’ve spent about 70 hours feeling like a wrung out, inflamed tube.
But still we’ve covered about 6-7 miles a day exploring nooks (with my brother) and crannies (with his wife). The method of exploration is decidedly different betwixt the two. My brother has decided purpose and never admits wrong-direction-doing even when clearly and literally lost in the woods, whereas Del purposely and fearlessly backtracks and uhms and says “this isn’t the rig- wait – maybe – nope… THIS WAY! Oh… nope… let’s get a drink!”
And so with Del I got a beer and a cookie and with George I got a disease, but all-in-all it’s still a wonderful and beautiful exploration, hampered now with high temperatures, too much sun, a wracking cough and intestinal angst that has allowed me to truly have a great appreciation of the European public restroom, which is, I’m happy to say, VASTLY superior to the American experience.
I really, really dig the WC, private stall experience. Often hidden away underground or well above the stairs, often after a labyrinthine hunt, never behind the sign that says “Prive” which is PRIVATE not PRIVY and almost always pristine, even in the dive bar we visited. I had always heard tale of public urination in Europe and had figured people were avoiding a nightmarish plumbing experience, and I was shocked to encounter zero bidets – it turns out that my brother’s FOCUS on the damned things was that he had one that he was trying to give away. And so, I highly recommend skipping out on the public urinals which seem to be everywhere in the city and enjoying the WCs that are available for but the price of a drink at any number of coffeehouses, small cafes and bars.
Explore them. I wish there were WC collectors cards. I would endeavour to collect them all. I would be a connoisseur. Given time, I could be The Expert.
Never once did I encounter a repeated method of drying my hands. Small towels. Big towels. Little blowy things. Little blowy rings. A belt device that angrily snaps back out of reach if you wait too long.
Truly, it is the little things that bring me joy, satisfaction, and a sense of relief.
Alas, you can’t go to the bathroom at the churches. Just one of my many conflicting feelings about these soaring monuments to God, or at least to His faithful, and those Chosen firmly enough to be able to finance these immense structures. Cynicism perhaps, and who knows the fervor of the actual artists and artisans, if they Believed in their purpose beyond getting paid (and they WERE paid, and generously*), but in truth, I can’t help but be moved as we explored every cathedral foolish enough to leave their doors unlocked.
I’ve always been fascinated with churches and cathedrals – only a little longer than I’ve had contempt for organized religion, a contradiction I freely admit. I think as a young child I didn’t really differentiate them effectively from castles: spires and old stone, doors of dense wood and iron. The churches of my parents and grandparents seemed such paltry things compared to what I’d seen in David Macaulay’s books… books that had me obsessing over Cathedrals and Pyramids and Castles and putting them in similar mental spaces.
Like my French language skills, I’m shocked by how little I remember – especially since the absolutely pertinent materials re : cathedrals were all theoretically reinforced as I studied art history in high school and college. Chancels, bays, transepts, choirs and crossings are all still there in my head, but their meanings are all confused, and it’s definitely a situation where the map is NOT the territory. Comprehending how vast these spaces are, how expansive and – indeed – HOLY, isn’t something you were getting from Ms. Austin in an unairconditioned PG County classroom.
And it’s not simply the intensity of the space, the HUGENESS, the light and the shadow and the incomprehensible TIME involved – I’m not simply overwhelmed by the physicality of being here, but the intricacy of construction, the inherent lessons of linear perspective, the hard, Medieval symmetries and precisely executed import – it’s also the very personal context that these are the waters in which my illustration heroes grew up in. Cathedrals and churches and Gothic architecture are what Ian Miller and John Blanche grew up on. Visiting these spaces is where THEY learned to draw. Screw the organics! There’s a reason you got Space Marines before anything else and the Eldar looked like crap when their helmets came off! Being here is the closest I’ll ever be to flying the great Gothic warships of the Adeptus Astartes, gazing out at a massive universe brought into comprehensible scale by the Will of the Imperium of Man.
Or something.
We’ve been through almost a dozen cathedrals during our time in Brussels, and it feels as if we hit them in the right order too, almost invariably each more spectacular than the last. Stepping into these spaces, trying to imagine how they must’ve felt to Believers half a thousand years ago where legitimately the only thing bigger than these cathedrals are mountains. Built for the glory of God or built for the glory of the Church, it almost doesn’t matter. It’s breathtaking to step into these massive structures of stone, literally older than any other manmade structure I’ve ever entered [the caveat here being necessary since I’ve certainly stepped ON or SEEN older structures – I think Puebloan cliff palaces and Navajo structures that we’ve visited are still standing by dint of being abandoned and hidden away, and the Cahokia Mounds were ABANDONED at around the same time these cathedrals were first BUILT, the former hasn’t seen 700 years of hard use and the latter is but a hill at this point] – that’s a stunning thing – to realize that not just these cathedrals, but many of these buildings that are now chocolate shops and souvenir shops and McDonalds, are older than almost any building I’ve ever seen before much less such spring chicken shit as the age of my entire nation.
I’m not good at processing this on the fly, of course. Mostly I’m just standing in the multi-coloured light of stained glass, old stone sweating, thinking “wow” sans much additional observation, but as I work it all through I continue to be more and more amazed by the structures around me. The Place de la Bourse is only around 200 years old, a relatively recent addition, but I’d Love to know more about the McDonalds there in its 150 year old shell. What was it before? Will it be a McDonalds come the next millennium? Barring global catastrophe I imagine the building will still be standing whether or not the current multinational leasee still Lives.
In America, we build houses and discard them. Many are impressed by my own 80 year-old townhouse. I don’t know that I can think of anyone in my friend circle who has an older home. Old town Ellicott City is actually contemporary to much of the Place de la Bourse, but it was an oasis along a railroad, not necessitating the clearing of palaces and buildings.
In Europe we’re more like hermit crabs, transiently owning something ill-fitting that existed long before us, something that will be occupied by many others long after we’re forgotten.
Nothing’s cheap. For better or worse. Nothing feels built cheaply. Bathroom stalls (I know, I know, they made an impression) feel like bomb shelters, not metal-stamped “Hiney Hiders” using less and less metal. Toilets would NEVER be made like this in America. Buttons installed in the walls that must’ve actually taken, at some point, a build-out of the structure of the WC’s wall rather than simply an inserted piece of hardware. Everything is cramped but sturdy.
If you’re lucky, and I have the time… here’s other things I might end up writing about….
Music, lack thereof
No-one likes their jobs
No-one smiles and that’s okay
(thoughts for later)
*When we were exploring the cathedrals, I think George and Del would come back to slave labour and serfdom being used in their construction – but as far as I can tell in my (limited) research, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Most of the construction is highly-skilled labour and not something done by uneducated people. From what I’ve read these were highly-paid artisans. There just isn’t a lot of “yo, pile those stones up on each other, break’s when you BREAK!” in their construction. There was plenty of horror in the Lives of a medieval serf, and plenty of torture and abuse in the name of God, but being forced to build a cathedral apparently wasn’t part of it…
