18-MAY-2006
Just arrived in Paris
I’m sitting at a real side walk café, with a fake in front of me, as a deceiving image of reality, reflected in a magical urban mirror.
Sergey didn’t arrive yet, he might be now somewhere between Moscow and Paris.
It’s sultry, it will rain, probably, I’m drinking a beer.
Someone told me once that it’s the best refreshing drink for a sticky day like this one.
I have just my small compact camera, with me, the other one is still with my unpacked baggage in the hotel room.
Just round the corner, in rue de Picardie.
I take quickly this picture, to spend some time, to steal and keep with me the image of this café, where nobody will ever get inside.
Rue de Breatgne in the blessed district of le Marais, Paris France.
18-MAY-2006
La République and the red balloon
The first time Sergey visited Paris, he stayed at a small hotel by Place de la République. Since then, even though he has already come back to Paris several times, he has always chosen a hotel in the same place.
Sergey is the most fanciful creature of habits I have ever met, he has in his temper many apparent paradoxes of this kind.
So I think he has arrived by now and I’m going to look for him.
The sky is getting stormy, it’s menacing and sultry. But I love dark skies over Paris.
La République looks at her kingdom (a paradox, which Sergey would like) from the top of her pedestal, with her perfectly immutable neoclassic tunic.
But she has a strange red hat; at least it looks so at the first sight.
Maybe a tribute to the red Phrygian beret of Marianne…
Then, paying more attention, I notice the rope and I understand it’s just a naughty burst red balloon, which ended its short flight trapped to the statue.
The balloon dreamed of high skies and remained ironically to veil the imperturbable face of the symbol of French republic.
18-MAY-2006
Posh travellers are solitary
Sometimes solitary travellers cross each other like trains in the night.
There are silently and mysterious presences who appear and disappear, giving us just the time to wonder if things are really the way they look like or if it’s just another joke of imagination.
“To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing.
To be on the alert is to live; to be lulled into security is to die”.
Someone who likes Oscar Wilde very much suggested me this quote.
One moment before he was there, then I didn’t see him anymore….
18-MAY-2006
Paris wears a blue night gown
Probably it was a dream, a vision, now only the roof tops of Paris are there to keep me company.
An early night is waiting for me. Sergey was deadly tired after his very long and uncomfortable trip from Siberia.
Tomorrow morning we’ll go to take a train to Bruxelles.
A blazing sunset light decorates the blue night gown of Paris.
19-MAY-2006
La Gare du Nord
I’m fascinated by railway stations, maybe it’s the always renewed emotion of leaving and coming back.
Railways stations are universes apart, with their own inhabitants, always different and always similar, with their noises, their colours, their sounds, their banality, which can be also intriguing.
La Gare du Nord, The North Station, in Paris is also the door which leads to England, beside Belgium and Holland.
Maybe railways stations absorb a little of the spirit of the countries which are connected with them, even though they remain always elsewhere.
We take a special high speed train here, called Thalys. Bruxelles is only a little more than one hour away.
Just the time for a last cappuccino, lulled by the choral sound of the station, like the waves of a petrified ocean.
19-MAY-2006
t' Kelderke
« Your rooms will be ready only at 2 pm »
Damn, it’s raining (we’ll get used to that). The first approaches to Bruxelles by taking shelter into an ancient basement.
Probably the only tavern not too banally only suitable for group tourists all around the famous “Grande Place”.
A Flemish would be able to explain me what “t’ Kelderke” means. An amusing little restaurant, an inn…
The first Waterzoiï (a kind of fish soup, but it can be also chicken) and the first gueuze (a special beer) for Sergey.
“It’s really beautiful this square – he said- but it’s not that big at all, why did they call it “grande”?
All is relative; Sergey has the Siberian parameters as point of references and the immense soviet architecture.
“ I really love this small “Grande Place”, let’s have another beer”
19-MAY-2006
Is it raining?
Three little figurines in a row.
They look up at the menacing sky in a doubtful way, the first one reach out to check if it’s really raining.
They have the usual gestures of daily simple habit.
I do the same; I don’t trust this Belgian capricious weather.
I reach out…”Gosh it’s raining again…”
The three little figurines on the top of the fountain will keep on with their eternal gesture, always the same, with all possible kinds of weather.
Time has many dimensions.
19-MAY-2006
The man who wanted to be Vincent
Street artists, who can stay hours without moving, dressed up in fancy costumes have become a constant presence in urban environment.
Some of them are still amazing, challenging each other to renew a tired creativity.
Others are just the pale copy of a fading dream, being the first ones to have lost motivation.
They have all in common the logical habit to perform in crowded central street and to appear during pick hours and disappear when passers by are more rare.
This guy is different, maybe he belongs to a visionary world of his own, maybe he’s really what he pretends to be.
He played a rather distressing statue of Vincent van Gogh, with a kind of dandy attitude, since he didn’t do absolutely anything to attract attention, he simply stayed sitting against the wall a little far from the street.
And he was always there.
At every hours, with all possible kinds of weather, imperturbable, against his door. Still.
Sergey and I took the habit to walk there on purpose ,several times a day, Vincent’s statue was close to our street, and he was always there, always apparently indifferent to the world around him.
Faithful to his mysterious task.
I tried to speak to him, when nobody was around, he didn’t answer, he seemed to not hear any voice, any noise, either. His mask, rather troubling, with empty eyes didn’t allow guessing his look either.
I had started thinking he was really a statue maybe, a borderline between daily reality and fantasy, then, one evening, when I walked by him and I waved he suddenly made a little gesture with his hand, as to show me that he had noticed me too and all was fine.
The following day he had disappeared.
19-MAY-2006
The earring
Thoughts follow strange mechanisms.
We strolled at random over the centre of Bruxelles, in an out of tune symphony of rain, wind and sparkles of sunshine.
My interest, as always was directed to people, I like common people I cross, I like imagining for a second their stories, their destinations, their thoughts.
Then some details speak directly to me and I can simply listen to them.
I read some years ago a novel set in Holland, called “The Girls with the Pearl Earring” , I’m not sure if this is the exact title, I’m quoting by heart, out from the confuse fog of my memory.
It was a fiction based on the Dutch painter Vermeer’s biography. An evocative and fanciful idea to imagine the possible story behind one of his most famous paintings.
My thought found a connection with the girl, whom I was crossing, her pensive look and her earring, which dominated the scene and she reminded me, in a totally irrational way of that novel.
19-MAY-2006
Someone likes it hot
The town will play and sing for three days during the Jazz Marathon.
We have just discovered this other face of Bruxelles. Braving the caprice of whimsical Gods of rain so many people gather around the stages, which are set a little everywhere in the centre.
The main square is really the pulsating heart of European towns. I wonder if buildings can have memories, if they can ideally stock impressions of what they have been silent witnesses of, during the centuries.
Do the buildings of la Grande Place like jazz?
As for me I like this heavy and loud sky, so dark blue and so changing.
19-MAY-2006
Because the night...
There is a special atmosphere in that privileged zone between the end of the day and the beginning of the night, light is over, but not completely, shadows are darker and softer as the curtain of a theatre when the show starts.
Dusk is the stage where night rehearses, before playing its magic until the following morning all over the streets.
We walk at random, there is not any need to choose a direction, the centre of Bruxelles is small and the streets are like a ball of threads which lead always to the same point, sooner or later.
19-MAY-2006
And the Russians came out dancing...
Rue des Bouchers ( Butchers’ street) in Bruxelles is a place where I like taking a walk, but where I would never stop at a restaurant.
There is nothing wrong with that, it’s a narrow street where little restaurants are one after the other like false pearls on a string.
The service is friendly and quick and the cooking totally banal.
But it has its own charm at night, I think that at least 50% of all the tourists of the town are concentrated there in the evening.
We were slaloming among the waiters, who tried to invite us to enter into their restaurant in all possible languages, when a kind of loudly singing human little train invaded the street ,getting out from a restaurant door and getting inside from another one and again and again.
Sergey started smiling then he was openly amused, I recognized vaguely the song they were singing, something Spanish or Mexican, but something didn’t match with the words, a strange combination…
They are Russians – Sergey told me- they are singing a Spanish song in Russian.
Oh… we were unable to say anything adequate, the scene had its surrealistic appeal, sweet innocent kitsch.
We moved away, the little train, even though composed of merry people, swung dangerously.
We were a little worried to be absorbed against our real will and to find ourselves trapped in the little human train.
Let’s walk ahead…
