Stalingradlaan

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 19:45

Hey Zinneke,

I wonder if they will ever finish that town (Brussel/Bruxelle/Bruxel)... I still have such strong memories of arriving there for the first time from Paris, getting off the train at the old Zuid Station on a misty Sunday morning. Walking through the green and yellow lighting of the station, pasty faced morning travellers steeped in the urine of generations, finding myself in the Sunday market with all the fruit and vegetables and fabric in the fog swirled up by the hundreds of people, the Rai music competing with the Gypsy kings. Lost in the crowd and just wandering around until i found myself on Stalingradlaan, a huge empty monumental avenue with trees growing crazy and big beautiful blue stone pavers slanting at angles like the bottom of a river, no cars on it, just rusty weedy tram-tracks and a catamaran. Trying to find my way to the center of Bru-town, and the center always seeming to move further away. Finding myself on the empty ruined jungle of the Martyr-plein while looking for de Grote Eiland. I was so happy to have a bad sense of direction, so happy to be lost in the ruins of that strange capital; a very small, very old woman passed by and i asked the way to the Grote Markt/Grand Place and she took my hand and walked me all the way there, telling me all about her grandkids - this was quite a shock coming from Paris! I have had the great pleasure of knowing Bruxel and Lisboa back when, and before, of having connected with people who all drifted to these places to make something where there was nothing but the past stories crumbling down around an older misunderstood foundation. And I do cherish those memories as the happiest times in my life. From here in Colorado, USA the sun shines in through the windows, mid 70's (F) to mid 30's(C)... and i think often of the Indian summers of Bruxel, and that northern light you spoke of...

Remembering Belgium from an email from my former neighbor and Comrade/Ex-Pat now sadly repatriated, otherwise known as Ronirokit.