(no subject)
This weekend we traveled. We went to France on friday afternoon. The heat was oppresive and when we found a hotel in the city of Amiens around 2100 we were tired, sweaty and warm. The hotel 'Grand Universe' was a late 19th, early 20th century building and we had a room in the back. The room had a window looking into a small courtyard with roofs and more buildings. High above us the sky turned from bright blue, to red, to dark grey. Rain started falling in big drops and while I sat in the windowsill, reading a book, a huge thunderstorm passed over head. There was lightning and a spider crawling up the wall. Lots of dead cigarettes and a filth covered roof next to me. Somewhere I heard voices of people closing windows, lights were switched on and off while I just sat there dreaming, reading and being as aimless as the spider who was looking for protection from the rain. I was completely relaxed and very happy, I was in love with the rain, the thunder, the book and the woman sleeping on the bed. Then and now I wished that fridaynight would never pass.
It did pass and the next morning was as hot as the last day. We rose early and went exploring Amiens, which proved to be a city filled up with early 20th century buildings and the most beautifull cathedral I have ever set my eyes upon. There were no tourists and it was just Marisa, me and the hundreds of gargoyles looking down upon us. They held their peace, and looked at us with stony eyes like they had done for over 800 years. They kept watch over Christ sitting in judgement, below him the righteous were led by angels into paradise while the damned were swallowed up by the gates of Hell. Around the Son, the heavenly Saints stood solemnly, looking at those who passed through the gates and into the cathedral. Walking up to the facade and through the doorway is a very humbling experience. Upon entering you are blinded by light falling at you from everywhere. There is a multitude of colours and you can do nothing else but look up at the mighty roof. Your gaze is drawn up by the briliant windows and for a brief moment you know that Heaven exists and that God is alive in this light. Amiens Cathedral without a doubt is the most splendid example of medieval architecture and the greatest of all gothic Cathedrals. Visiting it was worth the entire trip and I would have traveled from the other side of the world for just one moment experiencing the divine.
The remaining days were but a shadow of that morning. We left Amiens because nothing could compare to the Cathedral. The city had been bombed and shot to pieces during two world wars. It is the embodiment of lost grandeure. Saddest of all was that the buildings that were restored belonged to the time of emperor Napoleon III. He himself was proof of lost grandeure, lost empire and a lost France. Watching a city trying to be something while it does not realise that what it tries to be is lost, is incredibly sad. Next to the Imperial Library were the needles in the streets, the beggars in the alleyways and the drunk tripping in front of your car. Cheap flashing hotels with canal+ signs on the walls trying to draw you with lust, sensation and dirty beds. We left this city of contrasts and drove to the battlefield of Crecy.
Crecy is not worth mentioning except for the forest which it borders. Marisa and me spend some time below the trees and talked about what we actually want and expect from trips like these. And why we never seem to find it. I realize this is weird especially when I read back upon what we had so far. Still neither of us was satisfied, we expect very different things: Marisa just wants to relax, find a bed, read and most important have the feeling she does not need to be doing anything. It is something I just cannot do. I feel utterly worthless and am bored to death by having no goal and not seeing what is on the other side of the curvy road. The battlefield of Crecy is something like that. I wanted to see where the Black Prince defeated the french in the late fourteenth century. It was just a farmer's field, with a watchtower that served as meetingpoint for the local youth. There were scorch marks, graffiti and lots of emptied bottles of beer. It is not worth visiting, you are way better of reading about it in a book... but I was there, I found it and I walked from the left flank commanded the Earl of Northumberland to the right flank commanded by the Black Prince. I stood on the same elevation the King stood on and I saw the field in front of me. I am an incredibly difficult person to travel or spend a holiday with and I really felt bad for Marisa. Because we had no bed, no place to relax and she got stuck with someone who just wanted to drive to the next thing and watch what was there. I stopped at ruins of ancient abbeys and took pictures, even tried to climb walls just to see what was on the other side...
We found a place to sleep at the Coeur de Lion, a hotel in the middle of the town of Rue. We had dinner, and both of us got bored by all the villages around the Somme. They all look the same because they were all but annihilated during the Battle for the Somme in World War I. The towns were rebuild in the early twenties and have all the same architecture. There is very little direct evidence of the war. There are of course the dozens of memorials and burial sites of the british commonwealth but these are usually concealed by gardens and trees. Still, simply by looking at the villages you feel that something is wrong in this region. That something terrible happened that involved the senseless killing of millions of people. The way the towns look adds into this. As if they all try desperately to put your attention on something else, the lost 19th century for example, while everybody knows that it is impossible not to be confronted by the disaster of 14-18.
When we woke up this morning we left Picardy. The region that had always been France, that had belonged to the French throne and which had supplied the riches needed to form the structured nation it is today. But every trace that should have been there was destroyed and instead there are these villages which all look alike. The Somme itself is no longer a river: it is canalized and not even ten meters wide. It is really not worth seeing, nor fighting let alone dying for.
We drove up the coast to a cliff just south of Calais and spent sunday afternoon doing what Marisa likes doing best; instead of a bed we lay in the car and both of us were simply reading and doing nothing. I could not help but look around and notice the dozens of bunkers, traces of Hitler's Atlantikwall. She sighed and spoke the prophetic words: "Everytime we go traveling we end up at the wrong side of the Channel". These words made me very happy because they mean that she would like to spend another trip with me. She knows me better than I sometimes wish and I am very much in love with her. And just knowing that a couple of kilometers away from Calais, there is an island nation that was not torn by two world wars, has an incredible amount of history left and (very important) is a place where we can understand what people say makes me all bouncy and willing to leave again. I feel sorry for France, but next time, really, we will go to England.
It did pass and the next morning was as hot as the last day. We rose early and went exploring Amiens, which proved to be a city filled up with early 20th century buildings and the most beautifull cathedral I have ever set my eyes upon. There were no tourists and it was just Marisa, me and the hundreds of gargoyles looking down upon us. They held their peace, and looked at us with stony eyes like they had done for over 800 years. They kept watch over Christ sitting in judgement, below him the righteous were led by angels into paradise while the damned were swallowed up by the gates of Hell. Around the Son, the heavenly Saints stood solemnly, looking at those who passed through the gates and into the cathedral. Walking up to the facade and through the doorway is a very humbling experience. Upon entering you are blinded by light falling at you from everywhere. There is a multitude of colours and you can do nothing else but look up at the mighty roof. Your gaze is drawn up by the briliant windows and for a brief moment you know that Heaven exists and that God is alive in this light. Amiens Cathedral without a doubt is the most splendid example of medieval architecture and the greatest of all gothic Cathedrals. Visiting it was worth the entire trip and I would have traveled from the other side of the world for just one moment experiencing the divine.
The remaining days were but a shadow of that morning. We left Amiens because nothing could compare to the Cathedral. The city had been bombed and shot to pieces during two world wars. It is the embodiment of lost grandeure. Saddest of all was that the buildings that were restored belonged to the time of emperor Napoleon III. He himself was proof of lost grandeure, lost empire and a lost France. Watching a city trying to be something while it does not realise that what it tries to be is lost, is incredibly sad. Next to the Imperial Library were the needles in the streets, the beggars in the alleyways and the drunk tripping in front of your car. Cheap flashing hotels with canal+ signs on the walls trying to draw you with lust, sensation and dirty beds. We left this city of contrasts and drove to the battlefield of Crecy.
Crecy is not worth mentioning except for the forest which it borders. Marisa and me spend some time below the trees and talked about what we actually want and expect from trips like these. And why we never seem to find it. I realize this is weird especially when I read back upon what we had so far. Still neither of us was satisfied, we expect very different things: Marisa just wants to relax, find a bed, read and most important have the feeling she does not need to be doing anything. It is something I just cannot do. I feel utterly worthless and am bored to death by having no goal and not seeing what is on the other side of the curvy road. The battlefield of Crecy is something like that. I wanted to see where the Black Prince defeated the french in the late fourteenth century. It was just a farmer's field, with a watchtower that served as meetingpoint for the local youth. There were scorch marks, graffiti and lots of emptied bottles of beer. It is not worth visiting, you are way better of reading about it in a book... but I was there, I found it and I walked from the left flank commanded the Earl of Northumberland to the right flank commanded by the Black Prince. I stood on the same elevation the King stood on and I saw the field in front of me. I am an incredibly difficult person to travel or spend a holiday with and I really felt bad for Marisa. Because we had no bed, no place to relax and she got stuck with someone who just wanted to drive to the next thing and watch what was there. I stopped at ruins of ancient abbeys and took pictures, even tried to climb walls just to see what was on the other side...
We found a place to sleep at the Coeur de Lion, a hotel in the middle of the town of Rue. We had dinner, and both of us got bored by all the villages around the Somme. They all look the same because they were all but annihilated during the Battle for the Somme in World War I. The towns were rebuild in the early twenties and have all the same architecture. There is very little direct evidence of the war. There are of course the dozens of memorials and burial sites of the british commonwealth but these are usually concealed by gardens and trees. Still, simply by looking at the villages you feel that something is wrong in this region. That something terrible happened that involved the senseless killing of millions of people. The way the towns look adds into this. As if they all try desperately to put your attention on something else, the lost 19th century for example, while everybody knows that it is impossible not to be confronted by the disaster of 14-18.
When we woke up this morning we left Picardy. The region that had always been France, that had belonged to the French throne and which had supplied the riches needed to form the structured nation it is today. But every trace that should have been there was destroyed and instead there are these villages which all look alike. The Somme itself is no longer a river: it is canalized and not even ten meters wide. It is really not worth seeing, nor fighting let alone dying for.
We drove up the coast to a cliff just south of Calais and spent sunday afternoon doing what Marisa likes doing best; instead of a bed we lay in the car and both of us were simply reading and doing nothing. I could not help but look around and notice the dozens of bunkers, traces of Hitler's Atlantikwall. She sighed and spoke the prophetic words: "Everytime we go traveling we end up at the wrong side of the Channel". These words made me very happy because they mean that she would like to spend another trip with me. She knows me better than I sometimes wish and I am very much in love with her. And just knowing that a couple of kilometers away from Calais, there is an island nation that was not torn by two world wars, has an incredible amount of history left and (very important) is a place where we can understand what people say makes me all bouncy and willing to leave again. I feel sorry for France, but next time, really, we will go to England.