We fought the revolution.
It was hard work: much blood and sweat and tears.
But we laughed and were joyous: we were fighting the good fight and looked forward to the future.
Now that we won
we are less happy
and not so giddy.
We sigh and groan at day’s break
to labour another day
in liberties won.
The official name of today’s public holiday is not “National Braai Day”.
Today1 was the third day of continuous sunshine in a cold, protracted winter. Today was the first day it was actually relatively warm, but more cold fronts are on the way. The capetonians are thoroughly tired of the cold, wet weather. Friday was the first day in the current spell of sunny weather, but the winds carried a freezing breeze from the snow-capped mountain peaks. Yet still some people ventured outside in shorts and skirts, as if protesting nature, demanding their right to a descent spring and, eventually, summer. At present, however, summer seems like a mythical promise: a utopia or Atlantis. It is no secret that I prefer warmer weather. While I do find many little joys in the periodic raging of winter, I believe everyone now agrees that its time for the seasonal pendulum to swing the other way.
I had better not hear a single person complain about the heat this summer! There is just no pleasing some people.
A change of political climate is occurring in South Africa. The ruling party has asked the president to resign, which he did. President Thabo Mbeki has received much flak during his time in office, but I fear the ANC’s intentions are less than noble in asking him to resign. Popular support is trying to usher Jacob Zuma in as the new president as soon as possible. This is not something I, nor many other people in the country are particularly keen about. I could elaborate on Zuma’s sordid past, but I’m sure there are ample sources on the web, which would make my efforts redundant. What I do want to say about this whole debacle is that I am not as anti-Mbeki as most of the people I see and hear around me. He faced criticism primarily for (1) his ignorance about the AIDS epidemic in the country, (2) the vast amounts of time he spent abroad and (3) not dealing with crime. One can’t expect any president, however, to just wave a magic wand and make all the problems go away. Yes, his ignorance about AIDS was something which was his fault. Yes, I would have liked less crime in the country. But the time he spent abroad he was building international ties, workings towards his success in building the economy.
I am not politically savvy; in fact, I am vigorously apathetic towards the subject. But while I agree that Mbeki’s presidency left a lot to be desired, we should not only focus on his misdoings. In the nearly 10 years while he was in office, the country did not regress, but progress. He played the political game, but respected the constitution and our institutions. In the end was outmaneuvered by someone who simply was more popular.
As for Zuma… well, we are going to have to see, won’t we?
[↩]This guy has an occupation I wouldn’t mind having! 
To see photos of the trip, go to:
These are four photo albums (arranged chronologically) hosted on Facebook which is accessible to everyone, even if you don’t have a Facebook account. If these links stop working, please contact me and I’ll see what I can do.
Although the wheelchair was responsible for a fair amount of problems, at many times it was a very useful asset to have. When we first travelled to London to meet up with the UK tour group, we bought train tickets at Cambridge station, but being ignorant of first-world public transport systems, was not immediately sure where exactly we would use it. No matter: we had a wheelchair! So a friendly attendant at the train station came and opened up the gate for us without us having had to use our tickets. The same was true for coming back: although we were wise to the system by know, as we (read: the wheelchair) approached the gate, it open magically. This meant that we had completed a round-trip from Cambridge to London and back without having used our train tickets. And the tickets were valid for a month. The implication? A saving of £35.50 (≈ R600) when I returned to London! I was on my own now, so naturally I had to give up the “to” portion of my return ticket.
I had been in London three times before: when we landed, when we left on the UK tour and when we returned from the UK tour. On non of these occasions were there any real time for sight seeing. With our holiday nearing an end, it was time to change this. I left my parents behind to go and explore London on my own a bit while they recuperated from the continental tour.
I arrived early and procured an underground travel pass. Unfortunately, for some reason, I chose the “off-peak” option, which was cheaper, yes, but limited my travel times. Still, I hung around a bit at King’s Cross station, having tea and breakfast until peak time passed. I then bordered the underground to my first destination for the day. Although I would have liked to have visited Warwick Castle and Bletchley Park, both of these are well outside of London and there wouldn’t have been time to do them and London. Being a two-week veteran of international touring, I figured that I should not aim too high there either. I planned to only go to three places: the Imperial War Museum (IWM), the Cabinet War Rooms and the Tower of London. I arrived in London early in the morning, so this was doable, right? Unfortunately, as is so often the case with me, I did not get to all of them. In fact, I entered the IWM, forewent lunch, and emerged in the late afternoon when everything was closing. But, what a place! The foyer is filled with machines of war: tanks, Jeeps, howitzers, rockets, submarines and aeroplanes. When I eventually got passed this, I discovered a plethora of information in the exhibitions. I first went into the D-Day exhibition and when I was done with that, I had already been in the museum for more than two hours. Knowing that time is pressing, I simply couldn’t bring myself to miss out on the World War 1, World War 2, Holocaust and Espionage exhibitions1. So, I consider the day well spent, because it is such a terrific place I could just get lost in (although I would need someone there with me to remind me to eat).
At the IMW, I came face-to-face with my nemeses again: school groups. It seemed like half of the primary schools in London has converged on the IWM; and then there was the regular patrons as well. But, I am thankful for them for this: helping me see how young people take in history. Of course I was in primary school myself some years back and know what fun excursions can be. They are not learning experiences, but mandatory time to muck about with your schoolmates outside of the class environment. And the generation I saw that day did justice to this paradigm. Even the “well-behaved” ones: do they realise exactly what they are seeing when the gather around their teacher to draw a picture of a German V2 rocket? How far from these children’s minds are the atrocities of war? Specifically a war that has ravaged their city 65 years ago? That is not a long time ago: most of their grandparents lived through it. And that is the other face I saw that day: the one of elderly people being accompanied by their teenage descendants. I would try to get close to these rare couplings and try and eavesdrop, yearning for the stories they are sharing with their grandchildren. There was an old man and his grandson whom I saw at the end of the Holocaust exhibition. There was also a Jewish man with two adolescent boys in the World War 2 exhibition, but I could not understand them, as they were speaking Hebrew. But these weren’t cases of children being dragged to the museum against their will or even being punished to have to listen to grandpa’s stories: they wanted to be there, they wanted to learn and they wanted to hear. This was something very touching for me. War is only waged by a few people: everyone else is simply caught up in the middle of it. I still find it hard to believe that WW2 was raging a mere 65 years ago. It is something we can still touch, because we still have people amongst us who can tell us about that time. While visiting my history teacher from school after I returned, she told me about something she had seen in the IMW: three men together in the foyer looking at the Sherman tank. It was clearly a grandfather-father-son group. The boy was excited about seeing a real-life tank and was running around, presumably making fighting noises. The father was amazed at seeing this object which played a significant part in his father’s life. As for the grandfather—tears started rolling down his cheeks as he said “It looks just like the one we had!”. History we can touch—I don’t mean old buildings or pots presented to us by archaeologists or WW2 tanks, but rather we can touch the flesh of the people who lived through it and listen to their voices—is a powerful thing… it is almost sacred. We must learn from it. But being the younger generations it seems inevitable that we shall push forward with our ignorance and stubbornness to learn from our elders and repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
I learned a valuable lesson that day: if you don’t want to just tour the “face” of a city like London (see the Tower of London, move on, see Westminster Abbey, move on, see Buckingham Palace, move on…), you are going to need two or three weeks per city to get everything done. We proved that you could tour through western Europe in a week, but every place has a story to tell and you could spend several years learning everything. It was late afternoon now and although rainy weather had persisted throughout the day, a special kind of rain fell: that which accompanies you home from work and makes you extra glad to be home when you get there. But I had no home in London, so I did the second best thing late afternoon rain is best for: I met up with a friend. She and her boyfriend had travelled to London together in search of experience and adventure. I knew they had been through some good time and some rough times, but it was good to see that she hadn’t really changed. We chatted for a while, mostly about her experiences in the UK and my adventures on the holiday. Afterwards, we departed together to the underground. She pointed out some sights; we passed right by St Pauls Catherdral (another must I missed out on) and she accompanied me for my very first stroll over the Millennium Bridge. All in all, it was great to see her again. But I still got a feeling that something was wrong… which was confirmed a couple of weeks later when she broke up with her boyfriend. They had been dating a while before they decided to go overseas together, but this again proved that such a step drastically test a relationship. As far as I am concerned, going to live overseas with someone is a decision which is either going to make or break a relationship in the long run.
I may not have had a home in London, but I did have lodgings in the form of an old school friend: the infamous Djiaak. After school his family moved to Johannesburg and he went to the university there, so I only saw him a handful of times since then. We had kept more-or-less in touch and I thought it would be nice if someone “from the old country” visited him. We went to a pub before going to his flat, but couldn’t stay out too late, as he had work in the morning and I had to get ready for day two in London. After two-and-a-half weeks of being away from my friends, it was nice to meet up with some friends again whom I had seen even longer last.
For day two in London, I had to return to King’s Cross station, as my parents would be joining me for the day. The reason for their coming to London was twofold: they wanted to see London, of course, but R&J also treated us to tickets to go see Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theater in London. We again decided to go on a guided bus tour of the city. There are only two cities in the UK which has a population of over 1 million people, and one of them, London, is also the largest city in Europe. My first impressions, however, was that this wasn’t the case: Paris had felt bigger. I think the difference is that the main tourist attractions in Paris is much more spread out than in London: the bus tours completed their routes relatively quickly. Our first stop was the London Eye, which my parents decided to go on. Before we left South Africa, I was advised that this is largely a waste of time (although my parents did enjoy it), so I set off across Westminster Bridge to have a gander at the Houses of Parliament. I then realised that Westminster Abbey is right behind the House of Parliament, so I went in there, although I couldn’t take my time in there, as I didn’t want to keep my parents waiting. Although I did tell my parents to give me a call when they were done, you don’t really want your cellphone to go off in what effectively is a very elaborate crypt. I was surreal to walk past (and on top of) the final resting places of so many English noblemen and noblewomen. Kings, queens, princes, dukes… their earthly remains separated from me by but a slab of marble. It is a fantastic place, but the question of desecration did arise within me: people are buried underneath the floor and thousands of people mill through there every day. I wish I could have taken in more, but I had to leave and meet up with my parents again. After lunch we rode around on the bus again a bit, over Tower Bridge and getting off at London Tower. The ideal would have been to go in, but from my experiences the previous day, the fact that it was getting late, and the amount of people queuing to get it, we decided it was not going to happen for us today. We then just walked around and took in the sights.
Being concerned that we would be late for the show, we then left for Her Majesty’s Theater. It show was simply amazing… I now fully understand its success and longevity. The acting, the music, the effects, everything was just spectacular! I was concerned that I only had a t-shirt and jeans with me to wear, but that didn’t prove to be a problem. Still, it was a very stately affair and I appreciate the opportunity to have seen such a fantastic show? Afterwards we still had to return to Cambridge by train. And guess what? The gates were opened for us and we did not have to use our tickets. My parents also didn’t have to use their tickets that morning, so after two trips to London, we could present R&J with two-and-a-half return tickets to London which only expired in two weeks’ time.
There is something about London which I wish to comment on. London prides itself as a cosmopolitan city, but Paris felt much, much more cosmopolitan. Everywhere I went in London, I heard foreigners: Americans, South Africans, but hardly any British accents. Tourism alone doesn’t make for a cosmopolitan city. In Paris, sure, you can find tourists if you go to the tourist attractions, but when you see people who came from another country, they likely live there and are not tourists. People go to London to make quick money and then want to return home. In fact, there are so many foreigners in London, that if they were to leave all at once, the entire economy could collapse. But I believe many people who go to London for work eventually want to return home. In Paris, people are often unable to return home due to the circumstances under which they came to Paris, so they are eventually absorbed into Paris. This makes Paris, for me at least, feel much more like a melting pot of cultures.
The following day was our last full day before we were due to return to South Africa. We spent it by shopping, resting and packing. That evening we went to see another show with R&J: a local production of Oliver.
And so the day came we had to leave. Its been fun. So long, and thanks for the fish. We finished packing and had breakfast with R&J before they took us to the bus stop. They have a policy: no goodbyes at the airport. This is something I can understand: hellos are happy things… goodbyes, not. So we said goodbye, swallowed our lumps and turned our attention to the excitement of getting home. Touring is fun and exciting, but there comes a time for everyone, I think, when they have had enough and really just want to go home. Maybe they want to return to their old routine, maybe they want to share their experiences, or put what they have learned into practise, or they want a chance to rest and save up for the next trip, or just want to see their family and friends again. Whatever the reason, you want to go home. Admittedly by this time I was tired of lugging all the luggage around… no doubt it did much to refine my Herculean physique, but enough is enough. So, it was with great anticipation we hauled in the bags to the check-in area… only to be told our flight has been delayed… for 12 hours. Not too worry, they would put us up in a hotel—a nice one! But it was still another day of dragging bags around, packing and unpacking… needless to say, we weren’t thrilled by the news. No-one was. Our flight was due to land on Sunday and now would only land on Monday. This was a problem, as people had to return to work and school on Monday. Yes, some of our fellow passengers got very verbal and very distraught. I had no concrete commitments which could be affected, my father is retired and my mother soon got over worrying about work. So we set off for our hotel, which turned out to be a very, very posh one. It was the first hotel where I had a room of my own and may very well have been the most comfortable one we had been in. But I did pity the poor staff. You see, our flight was a direct flight to Johannesburg, which means it would have been full of South Africans. Of these South Africans, a healthy amount of them were Afrikaners. Even for a hotel in London (a city which is saturated with South Africans), the concentration of South Africans must have been overwhelming. Everything was arranged on short notice, of course, so the hotel people were caught on the back foot. That night, we dined like kings, along with the honoured guest. But by the following morning, the hotel staff had composed themselves and we were ushered into a our own dining room for, frankly, a very plain breakfast. I’m sure they were glad to see us go. The advantage our original flight would have had the advantage of being a night flight, so we would be able to land refreshed from some sleep. Now we were flying through the entire day, so now at least I can say I’ve stayed awake through a transcontinental flight. This meant that when we landed in Johannesburg, it was night and there were no more flights going out to Cape Town, so we had to spend another night away from home—this time in a small B&B. But we got up early and a few short hours later, we were home.
And so my story ends. What is left to say? Is there some insightful conclusion I can reach? Some profound piece of wisdom I can share? No, there is nothing earth-shattering I can say. This summary of the trip, as far as I am concerned, is a rather dismal attempt at conveying what I experienced. Words are meant to convey information, not experiences. Therefore, all I can say is this: go. Go there for yourself; see, smell, touch, taste and feel. Laugh, cry, be excited, be energised, be exhausted, be humbled and be amazed. Go and experience.
We interrupt our series on “June/July 2008″ to bring you the following breaking news. Google has unveiled its latest product: Google Chrome. Google Chrome is Google’s browser, and it has hit the world like a storm.
Chrome is the latest in a torrent of products Google has unleashed (or at least revealed), which includes, amongst others, Google Gears and Android. These products have made Google a serious threat to its competitors; most notably Microsoft. Google has long been ill-content with only offering web services (Google Search, Orkut, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, the list just goes on…) and is moving unto people’s Desktops and hard drives. This is freaking many people out, who are seeing Google as the next Microsoft in disguise: a corporation which will eventually swallow up anything and everything until it can rule with an iron first. If haven’t paid much heed to these conspiracy theories, but the launch of Chrome is the first thing than unsettles me a bit. See, I love my Firefox and it will be hard for me to give it up. That said, I am terribly excited about trying out Chrome, due mostly to its intriguing design process.
The other thing is that Google is wielding a very powerful weapon extremely skilfully: open source software. Chrome has been made open source. Google knows how much to take and how much to give back. Of course, when you are already rolling in the money, it is easy to open up your ideas and code. But Google has been doing this from day one and in doing so has won the loyalty of many developers. It is even predicted that Google’s OpenSocial will be a serious threat Facebook (although I doubt this myself, as apps would have to become the dominant factor in social network websites, which I don’t think it will).
But back to web browsers. I am anxious to see what is going to happen in the “Browser Balance of Power”. The browser market has always been a two-horse town: first it was Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator1, and now it is Internet Explorer and Firefox. According to the latest statistics, Firefox has just under 50% of the market share, while a variety of versions of IE make up slightly more than 50%. The third and fourth most popular browsers (Opera and Safari), together make up 4.7% of the market share. At the beginning of the decade Microsoft dominated as Netscape was decaying, but more than 10 years ago Netscape dominated IE. Since the early 90s (when the browser wars started), the forces at war have not varied much. Now, Chrome is on the scene. It is made by Google, and if anyone knows the web, its Google. The design of Chrome, unlike with Firefox or modern version of IE, started with a clean slate: no legacy to cling on to (which would inevitably get in the way, according to the makers of Chrome). I believe Mozilla will manage to hold on to a fair share of the market2. And as long as Windows is the dominant operating system, there will always be IE users, no matter how universally appalling it is. So, will the tug-of-war be three-way? Or will Chrome deal a swift and decisive blow to its competitors? I think we’ll find out before long.
We shall now shortly return to the conclusion of our “June/July 2008″ series.
After several days of living amongst the French, I was excited about the prospect of Switzerland, partly because I actually knew a little bit of German. I had actually had it as a subject at school and even though that was a long time ago, I was eager to see if I could hold my own between the German conversations and signs. Granted, I knew that Swiss German is very, very different from the Hochdeutsch you learn in a German course, but I was still confident I would cope. The thing is, our initial experience of Switzerland was mostly in French. People tend to think of Europe as a continent of blocs: the French bloc, the German bloc, the Spanish bloc, the British bloc, the Italian bloc… Certainly all these cultures are distinctive, but they are not necessarily confined to political borders. As is quite natural, the borders of European countries are not black-and-white, but rather flows from one culture into another; like an interpolation from one high-density “traditional-view” cultural centre to another. These patterns are natural results of human migration, both ancient and modern. But I consider countries like Switzerland and Belgium to be “border” countries: where they meet the lines are blurred the most, thus creating the much starker contrast between, say, France and Germany. Switzerland is predominantly German, but it was interesting to see the strong French influence there was as well.
To be quite honest, I am still not sure whether the Rheinfall is on the German or the Swiss side of the border. It is probably right on the border, but I’m not sure from which side we approached1. Anyway, the Rheinfall was our first stop for the day and is a huge waterfall on the Rhein river. This was my first experience of such a large waterfall and it was breathtaking to stand there underneath and be dwarfed by the thundering rapids.
We then entered the Schwarzwald: the Black Forest in Germany. I had imagined the Black Forest to be even more sparsely populated than it in fact is, but the forest is still impressive. Curiously it is very green and not black. The “black”, of course, refers to the darkness inside the forest due to the dense canopy. Of course we only stuck to the road so could only glimpse into the Black Forest from the side. Our journey took us up roughly along the western German border and we passed through the cities of Freudenstadt, Baden-Baden, Mainz and Köln. Our stint in Germany was mainly a driving one and we never really stopped to explore cities, with the exception of Rüdesheim. We stopped at a magnificent shop which specialises in cuckoo-clocks and I nearly brought one home with me. We also stopped by the Loreley statue and took some pictures, although we did not go up close due mainly to time and the wheelchair issues. We then continued up along the Rhein and were treated to spectacular castles all along the hills. Well, I don’t think they are technically castles, as castles are, by definition, defensive structures. These medieval marvels were ill placed to survive a determined assault, so I suppose they are more akin to the French Château than a castle in that they were stately homes of the landlords. Either way, the were beautiful and something worth reverence and respect.
Our journey through Germany took us nearly two full days of hard driving. By the end of the second day we stumbled into the Netherlands. We were all tired at this point, but R&J decided that they wanted to show us a town called Deventer, from where our ancestor originated before moving to Germany and finally ending up in the Cape of Good Hope. Afrikaners are descendants from many European cultures such as the French and Germans, but we are mainly of Dutch heritage. The Netherlands is therefore typically considered some sort of “fatherland”. As a history aficionado, I was infatuated by the Netherlands for a long time, but outgrew this fascination over time. Still, deep down, I think the Netherlands was a sort of highlight for us, because despite their wayward modern attitudes, from them our culture came to be.
Recounting my first impressions of the Netherlands is in order. I found the country to be dirtier than the previous European countries we had been in. Literally and figuratively. On the outside, I immediately noticed the garbage laying along the road and in the streets of the towns. This sort of reminded us of home, but was not what we had come to see. By the time we arrived in Deventer, it was late and the sun was very low down in the sky. We drove around a bit until we saw an intriguing church tower in the distance. We decided to go and take a look before leaving for our hotel, which was on the other side of Amsterdam. Not having a map of the town, we stumped along through the streets in the car into what seemed to be more or less the correct direction. As we neared the centre of town, the traffic had built up and we noticed all the cars were turning left. For some reason we thought the might be going in the direction of the church or following some main artery which would lead us to the church, so we turned left; into the red-light district of tiny Deventer. Please picture it: my brother, his wife, my parents and I, in a car, face-to-face with window displays of what is on offer for tonight’s entertainment. Gears were changed and we were out of there faster than most of the eager shoppers were to get there. The shock did provide for some comic relief later on, however, as we continued in the dark to our hotel “just outside of Amsterdam”, which turned out to be a half-hour’s drive from the capital through flat countryside populated by geese, sheep and cows. Our fears of ending up in Belgium were dispelled soon, however, as we reached our hotel and collapsed exhausted into our beds. After two days of hard driving, we would spend the next day only in Amsterdam, so it was a bit of a breather.
We arrived Sunday morning at Amsterdam to explore the (in)famous city. It struck me how quiet the city was when we arrived, but the hustle and bustle picked up a little later on. We first boarded a boat tour which took us through the city’s famous canals. It was incredible to see the 17th century homes built along the canals: clearly, trade was very lucrative and many Dutchmen did extremely well for themselves (dare I say, even compared to today’s standards?). Afterwards we split up and I walked around the city a bit. I started feeling peckish and stumbled upon a square surrounded by pubs and restaurants. I found myself a pancake shop which was nestled in a sports bar and settled in for a huge savoury (spicy chicken) pancake. The people from the sports bar were handing out little booklets which, in addition to being advertising for the bar, was also a little “welcome to our city” book. The Dutch have a very strange mindset: it seems like nothing is taboo. It is no secret that they are a very liberal nation, but the contrast of advertising the Anne Frank house on one page and the red-light district on the next did not go unnoticed for me. I was hoping to meet up with someone whom I had met at the previous GeekDinner, but she was in Untrecht and the opportunity didn’t present itself for us to meet up. Still, it would have been interesting to discuss what I had seen and experienced. For instance: the sex industry is obviously heavily geared towards men, so what is it like for a girl to grow up in a society which (seemingly) objectifies women so much more than nearly anywhere else? Where sex tourism and sex trade have become pillars of the society? Do the Dutch notice this, or do they simply not care? The real value of the booklet, however, was the back page, which contained (as I would later realise, crude) map of Amsterdam with places of interests for tourists highlighted. After discovering an amazing Australian ice cream shop, I set off for the Anne Frank house. I thought it would be very cool to rent a bicycle for the trip, as the bicycle (after weed2, boobs and water) is the quintessential symbol of Amsterdam. There were bicycles everywhere: the infrastructure was specifically adapted to separately cater for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. The bicycles were so numerous that they could have been used as a biblical metaphor for infinity. But the bicycles weren’t flashy: the were modest and oldish. Most of them looked the same. This is the key: in a city were there are more bicycles than people and everything looks the same, why would anyone bother to steal a bicycle? Unfortunately the shop I went to only rented out bikes for a whole day and I didn’t fancy paying the full price for the two hours I would use it. So I set off to the Anne Frank house. I had not planned this and neither had I read her diary, but I was still excited by the prospect of seeing this piece of history. The house is next to a church and outside the church there is a small statue of her. It was also there that I noticed how beautifully crafted the lamp posts are. In fact, like the rest of Amsterdam where I had been, it was beautiful outside the Anne Frank house. It struck me that most of the building around me had lived through the war and I found myself wondering if it was as beautiful back then. Could the people of Amsterdam have appreciated the beautify of their own city while it was in the hands of the oppressors? Probably—Anne Frank, at least, realised this, and her heart broke for not being able to go out and experience her city. Even peeking out of a window was a game of Russian roulette. Apart from it being mildly crowded, the trip to the museum was a good experience. I had previously been in the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, so I knew reasonably well what to expect, but my heart always breaks anew when I hear the stories. After that I met up with my family and we headed back to the hotel. The next day we would continue on to Belgium after stopping at Delft.
Delft is a city in the Netherlands which is world-renowned for the prowess of its inhabitants to package hand-painted porcelain for international travel. Oh, and its hand-painted porcelain. It was now Monday and we arrived early in Delft. I had thought that things would pick up quicker than it had on the Sunday morning, but I was wrong. It seems as if every area has one day where it takes things a little slower than on other days. Delft did so on Mondays, as close examination of business hours posted outside coffee houses revealed. Most shops would only open close to lunch time, while on other days of the week they would have been open by that time we were there. We found one quaint little coffee shop near the town square and were pleasantly surprised to find a familiar face on each table: a bottle of wine from the Western Provence! We drank our beverages and I conquered an uitsmyter (terwyl die res uitgesmyt is) and then moved on to the town square. We allocated an hour for ourselves to walk around, admiring the beautiful church and snooping around for bargains. Although Delft is actually world famous for their porcelain, it struck me that their tourist shops had a very low self-esteem, as even they sold a lot of Amsterdam paraphernalia3. Back on the topic of Amsterdam: really, it was sad that 90% of their tourism focuses on drugs and sex. Amsterdam is actually a very beautiful city. I was shocked when I returned home and found people—not my guy friends—expressing disappointment that I had not travelled to the red-light district to have a look around. Anyway, it was fun bargain-hunting in Delft, which was just as beautiful (had I not known we were in Delft, I would have guessed we had returned to Amsterdam). Afterwards we went to Kinderdijk4, here all (well, many) of the windmills are.
We then pressed on to Belgium, which was another country we were very much looking forward to seeing. Everyone I had spoken to before the trip who had been there had praised the beauty of Brugge, so I was very keen to see it. I don’t know whether I was getting tired at this point or whether it was the miserable weather (it was fine in Britain, but now it was just a nuisance), but I did not quite get the quick I had hoped I would from Brugge. Don’t get me wrong, it is a beautiful city: I simply didn’t make an emotional connection with it as I did with Edinburgh. I actually hoped I would. Perhaps the anticipation also spoiled it for me a bit. And I shall hold out for the day the blinders are lifted from my eyes and I peer into the distinctive soul of Brugge I know is there. But I fully concede that Brugge has marvellous buildings; had we not been pressed for time, I could easily have wandered around for hours looking at all the buildings, statues and churches. Another regret of mine is that I missed the opportunity to try genuine Belgium beer, but—but—we did stop at a speciality chocolate shop. Oh, had I known what lay before me. Yes, they looked beautiful, layout in a clinical environment and treated by the chocolatiers with care a neurosurgeon can only dream of. Yes, all looked and smelled brilliantly. Yes, Belgium is famous for its chocolate, so one would expect it to taste rather nice, wouldn’t you? The thing is, when you bring a piece of that chocolate to your mouth and you proceed to desecrate it with our teeth and tongue, time stands still, your heart skips a beat and, somewhere, a cherubim reaches climax. Yes, it is that good. My quest for the best chocolate in the world has come to an end and I may now continue with other pursuits, knowing that there will always be a tiny country in western Europe to which I can return to find chocolatey perfection.
We spent the night in Brussels. I don’t really know anything about Brussels, except that it is the capital of the EU. We only stayed there and did not explore it at all. It was only after we had returned from our holiday that my history teacher shared a narrative with me by a travel writer who described Brussels as a city which is without the love of its people. New York, Paris, Cape Town… all across the world, you’ll find cities who are populated by zealots, who wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. For its inhabitants, Brussels is functional. It is not your dream car, nor your first car, nor even the rental which takes you through Western Europe for the first time. It is that car you get for a day or two while your real car is in for a service. This was a haunting thought for me. There are strange attitudes in Belgium. I had know there were two camps in Belgium (the French and the Flemish) and that they want to partition the country, but I did not realise how strongly they felt about it until I was there. Flemish is closer to Afrikaans than Dutch is, so I confidently communicated in my mother tongue. But if you were in the French part of the country and you addressed someone in “Flemish”, you got a very cold stare which only a Frenchman can muster. You would be better off standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe asking a local whether this was the Brandenburg Gate in a heavy American accent.
The next day was our last in continental Europe and we effectively sprinted towards Paris. The reason was simple: we would only reach Paris by the afternoon. The later we arrived in the afternoon, the worse the traffic would be. I knew traffic in Paris could be bad, but until you’ve been stuck in a Parisian traffic jam, you won’t quite be able to comprehend what it is about. Intersections are as thoroughly packed as their parking spaces, except that everything is happening in two directions now and people actually want to move, not remain stationary. Unless you drive with the right amount of gusto (which is a lot), you are not going anywhere. This is doubly bad for you, because not only is your dinner going to get cold, but the people in front and behind you, to your left and right and diagonally across from you are going to be furious with you for effectively become a road obstacle. As passengers, my parents and I actually quite enjoyed watching the chaos, but for the driver and navigator it was no laughing matter and we did well to muffle our ignorant glee. The good news is that we reached Gare du Nord in good time and, with a little help from the wheelchair, booked in several hours prior to our train’s departure, giving us time to relax, wind down and reflect on the adventures of the past few days. Late that evening we were back in Cambridge and the prospect of sleeping until late in our familiar beds was definitely something to look forward to. And we deserved it: we had, after all, effectively covered over 3000 km in one week… not too shabby, wouldn’t you say. For me, however, this was not meant to be. You see, early the next morning, I was going to London.
PS I forgot to mention this earlier, but what amazed me was how many pharmacies there are in Europe. At first I thought this phenomenon was local to Paris, in which case you would be able to explain it away on STDs. But in all the major European cities, you find a bright green cross staring down at you at every second corner! I kid you not, its incredible! Why?