A Dutchman's Life

Moved!

2007-06-13T19:41:00.001+02:00

This weblog has relocated to another blogging service. Follow my exciting adventures over at http://korbosch.wordpress.com/

Speaking of which,

2007-06-09T16:43:00.001+02:00

Johann von Heinsberg is cool. Doing further research on him now, and apart from varying genealogical elements (placing his birth between 1360-1384, realistically at about 1370 seeing as he married at about 1390) I came across a site belonging to the archery guild of Heinsberg, who have been in existence for over 600 years. They were founded by no less than good ol' Johann, and are named after saints Gangolfus and John of Nepomuk (the latter obviously picked in honour of the lord of Heinsberg). Readers of this blog will now, no doubt, be surprised as this is the first medieval archery guild I have mentioned thus far not named after either saint Sebastian or saint George! Apparently there were no laws against not naming your archery guild after these two saints after all.

Ironically, five months after the citizens of Heinsberg had been granted their guild, complete with special rewards such as material for making clothes for winter and summer, they were already called upon to serve their lord in battle. They fought, and many died, at the battle of Monschau (1400) against the abbot of Stavelot.

Apart from that, information is varied. For example, Heinsberg is listed as lord of many territories, which, apart from Heinsberg, obviously, include Millen (in Brabant), Loon (part of Liège), Jülich (a separate duchy which he certainly did not control, but had rights to, which the duke of Guelders/Jülich bought off at a date unknown to me) and a host of smaller territories. I don't think any of these lands, apart from Heinsberg, were actually in his possession at any time, and were merely claims, possibly temporary loans or stewardships. In any case, every source confirms that he was poor and had to make a living by making war.
Update: Heinsberg received Millen as hereditary land from the duke of Brabant in 1420.

What can I say, I like the man. He is also the only important historical character in my story who actually has his character rooted in history, rather than just his name.

Also, made me laugh:

The Key To Love für Heinsberg - Dating im Internet - Übersicht ...Die männliche Linie der Herren von Heinsberg starb mit Johann IV. im Jahr 1448 aus.

Apparently an internet dating site has lifted wikipedia information to give its site some more background info - but perhaps a subconscious message is hidden in the knowledge of the Heinsberg family dying out in 1448...

Daffodils are shiny when polished: in search of new titles for blog posts

2007-06-09T15:51:00.000+02:00

The frequent visitor and attentive observor may have noticed the addition of a few links to the my articles section, namely one listing every battle fought in the Low Countries between 1200-1500 I could find information on, and another in-depth article on the battle of Othée, concluding the related article on the siege of Maastricht in 1407-1408.
The first I wrote because I was annoyed no proper compilation of all these combats was available, so I scoured every book I had on the middle ages and the Low Countries, as well as doing some wiki searching. Sadly the Frisian Schieringer-Vetkoper civil war battles appear not to have been the subject of any study yet, and so I can't find anything in-depth on them, which is a shame as the period reveals some great generals, like Focko Ukena, who won three battles (a great achievement for anyone in the middle ages).

The article on Othée (and the one on Maastricht) were written because I'm working on a novel dealing with the siege, and wished to compile some of the information I had gathered. I have a lot more where that came from, but these mostly are rather uninspired genealogical data concerning the major families living in Maastricht at the time, and a few interesting anecdotes.
For example, Rutten Clencke (a peculiar name, even in Dutch) did some damage to the village of Wolder during a raid. This village was occupied by the Liegois, and so it seemed justified, but he also damaged property belonging to the lord of Mérode, who was one of the knightly lords fighting for John of Bavaria against the Liegois. Rutten Clencke was fined for his behaviour.
Obviously this fellow also makes an appearance in my novel, though I'll have to revisit the library to try and find out when he did this and how much he was fined for; I sadly forgot to note this down initially.

Another interesting turn of events was that the Liegois invaded the land of Heinsberg. Heinsberg was the principal mercenary captain in John of Bavaria's service, and the rebels tried to strike at him by laying waste his country, thus forcing him to abandon Maastricht. However, he had apparently expected this, and after doing some pillaging the Liegois were defeated by the militia of Heinsberg and knights left behind by their lord. Interestingly, the psychological effect of this action on the lord of Heinsberg becomes clear afterwards: he struck out very harshly against the rebels, and burned down many villages. Whether this was his strategy all along or partly inspired by a lust for vengeance I don't know - it was a common strategy after all - but I'd like to consider emotion played a part here.

Pictures from Brugge

2007-06-08T12:42:00.000+02:00

I've scanned in some of the pictures taken on my trip to Brugge, which took place ages ago. Enjoy!

Two of the city gates, beautifully constructed.

Two old houses, age unknown. One is clearly in Gothic style but may be newer (the door is clearly non-Gothic, doesn't even have a decorated frame). The other is a marked world heritage monument (the blue/white triangles thingy).

The palace of the lords of Gruuthuse. Neerlandicists theorise that the family emblem of a cannonball (middle Dutch lode) leaving (wijc) the cannon implies the name of the lord who had this palace built: Lodewijc. This would mean that these men could speak Dutch as well as French.

The Our Lady's Church, supposedly the tallest brick-only tower in the world, nay, the universe! Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy are buried inside, and it also houses the coats of arms of the knights of the Golden Fleece in the 1460's.

Dutch exam

2007-06-06T11:00:00.000+02:00

Had my Dutch exam on Monday, which was a breeze. The exam consisted of two parts, reading and writing. For writing we had to write a two page letter to a uni paper concerning Global Warming, making a point. I went all David Attenborough on their arse, disapproving of the current CO2-centred changes being proposed, claiming that for a healthy environment we also require better protection of nature's fragile food chain, including better planning, fishing quotas, labels to prevent illegally caught fishes from appearing in the supermarket, etc. It's good enough, I'm sure, and will make for a more varied point than just "Global Warming takes place do something!" or "Global Warming is crap let's pollute pollute pollute!"
Reading was even easier. We had a massive two hours to condense a four-page article into 150 words. Seeing as the article was on a historical subject (depictions of natives in the publications of travel journals in the 16th century), I had no difficulty understanding the point it tried to make, and sifting out the important and unimportant bits. High marks, I'm sure.

Also, I collected a lot of information and compiled a list of all battles that took place in the Low Countries from 1200-1500. Linked on the right. It's lengthy - there was lots of fighting - but worth my time; I've never actually encountered a similar list before. Not even the "Kalendarium van de Nederlandse Geschiedenis", which attempts to list all major events in the Low Countries, has them all.

Man rides horse

2007-06-03T19:37:00.000+02:00

Being on a camping holiday with friends is an interesting experience in planning. Depending on the taste of your friends and/or known associates, you may be subjected to either fun stuff or never ending hell. Nevetheless, mine have decent taste, and so we ended up riding horseys on Saturday afternoon - the non metal variety. Obviously this had to be passed first by the assembled collective, and as I always was curious what riding a horse is like, I answered the question "but would the blokes not have a problem with it?" with a resounding "nah".
Because I knew that riding horseys is an incredibly manly thing, and has been throughout the centuries, as showcased by the following examples:

Well, apart from the 17th century. Then it was clearly something done by ponces with angels hovering above their heads.

Now, having established that horses are not always pink and fluffy, I can recount a variety of interesting things having to do with them.
The horse I was given was fairly big. In fact, I rode the tallest horse of my group, an impressive black mare who liked eating branches and being at the head of the column, which, I suppose, put me in general command. Huzzah! All the horses were properly trained to find the way back, using the same tracks over and over again, so little steering was involved (apart from steering the horse's head away from the branches, that cheeky devil!), allowing me to survey the area at my leisure.

Which bring me to another massive advantage horses have: they're very tall, and when you're on top of them, you're tall as well. This made it terribly easy for me to spot any animals, and I saw, consequently, two pheasants, a partridge, four squirrels, an army of rabbits, and a castle. Only the castle I'm sure I would've seen otherwise; the simple truth is that being on a horse gives you a great overview of your surroundings, and I found this to be helpful not just in the field but also, surprisingly, in the forest. Very cool.

Now, a little more on riding. Supposedly there's a technique for, you know, bobbing up and down from your saddle while the horse is in a canter or faster. The woman from the stable tried to explain how to do this and seemed dissatisfied with my inelegant custom of bouncing up and down the horse's back like a kangaroo on steroids; nevertheless, I could not find a better way to deal with this. No doubt this takes some time getting used to.

Also, when a horse craps while riding along you really don't notice a thing. Seriously. I heard from people behind me that my horse had left a few "I was here" marks around the place, but I never noticed; and I was reliably informed that another horse had the peculiar habit of farting very very loudly.

Hilarity

2007-05-29T11:18:00.000+02:00

This is why EuroGamer is so bloody good.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B

Also, apparently some Hollywood eejits have bought the rights to The Sims and are turning it into a film. This has to be the most retarded idea ever, as The Sims is basically a game where people can play their lives on their pc, except a little faster and with less chance of being rejected when they try to start up a relationship (that chance must be considerable seeing how they're sad enough to have to resort to a fecking computer game, ffs!) and, of course, the possibility of killing off their character by putting him in the shower and then removing the doors. Apparently the movie is legitimised by nonsensical claptrap:

The Sims has done an interactive version of an old story, which is what it's like to have infinite power and how do you deal with it. Given that that's an old story, you can imagine how easily that would translate to traditional storytelling.

How do you deal with it? Control+alt+del should do the trick. Sadly that won't be possible when watching a film (unless you watch it on your pc, of course).
While the idea is pathetic, the simple idea behind The Sims and Second Life was little better, and those concepts are hardly unsuccessful, so who knows - it might rake in a lot of money. I am, however, sceptical. What made The Sims and Second Life such successes is the simple fact that they're interactive. It may look worse than life, but it appears to the player that the influence is greater; re-decorating doesn't take ages, anyway. A film completely lacks that interaction, and seeing as that would make this either the film of a normal life or the film of the life of some loser who sucks so much that he has to resort to a pc game to have any achievements, sensible people may just stay away and wait for the film of their own life to roll on, a market Hollywood can never reach.

The Day after TOMORROW

2007-05-26T16:44:00.000+02:00

Today, in effect.
Yesterday I had my exam and it went pretty well. I don't know if I made it or not, as it was fairly tough, and I'll have to wait until 16 June before I'll hear whether I passed it or not. I'll have to prepare for a possible resit, in any case.
The exam was in Utrecht and it had been a while since I last went there - visiting the city, I mean, not just passing through - and it was nice. Utrecht is quite a charming city with a lot of everything, and probably the Dutch city most closely resembling Venice. Obviously the first thing to do in a city when you're free to do what you want is visit the local bookstores, which I did. I think I spent at least half an hour rummaging through Broese's excellent collection of medieval history books: they have about ten shelves of medieval and early modern history, four shelves of Dutch medieval and early modern history, and then some extra books on those periods classified under their respective countries. Very nice to see such dedication, though I came away without any purchases, as most of their books were either too expensive, not really my subject, or both. I then went on to visit the wonderful De Slegte bookstore, but as I was just ascending the stairs to the second-hand history books I was shoved out as they were closing. I didn't even get to see their assortment.

Also, on Tuesday I went to The Hague to the presentation of the Gruuthuse manuscript at the Royal Library (link on the right, the manuscript is displayed on the Dutch section of the site). This is a valuable 14th century middle Dutch manuscript which was in private hands until now, and boasts 147 middle-Dutch songs complete with musical notation. The songs are artistic in nature, not popular, and most are delivered only through this manuscript, making it one of the most important middle-Dutch manuscripts around - even in the Middle Ages, the Dutch were not known for composing songs in their own language, so this collection is very rare. It also has international importance, as these are among the very few, if not only medieval poetical texts displaying cyclical patterns: for example, many poems start and end with the same verse, and many poems have every verse end with the same line, creating a primitive refrain of sorts. There's also repetitive use of acrostics - one charming poem (Melancolie dwinct mi de zinne) deals with the love of the poet, every verse hiding an acrostic of the person of his affection: Marie.
It was very cool not just to see the old book (opened on the page with its most famous poem, Egidius waer bestu bleuen), but also to hear the experts - including Frits van Oostrom and Frank Willaert - talk about it, and finally to listen to a small group of musicians perform some of the songs, which can best be described as a combination of gregorian and polyfonic music with almost renaissance texts, dealing with love, money, etc.
At the Royal Library they also host a permanent collection displaying some of the prize-pieces belonging to the Library and the National Archive, including the original constitution, the treaty of Münster (ending the conflict between Spain and the Republic), the death certificates of Anne Frank, illuminated manuscripts, etc. Very nice.

After the presentation I walked through The Hague a bit, which was nice, visiting De Slegte, where I was kicked out because they wanted to close (notice a trend?).

TOMORROW

2007-05-24T09:07:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow I have an economics exam I need to pass to be accepted to study history at Nijmegen uni. So I've been revising a lot, doing practice exams etc. Nevertheless I got into a rather feeble debate about medieval warfare against someone who admitted to not knowing much about it, as well as another one which was about a lot of things pertaining to medieval warfare, none of which were properly understood by my opponent. He was persistent but the only constant in his arguments was not giving up, and so things dragged on. And on. And on and on and on. And then he got banned for trolling.

Update! Update! Update!

2007-05-18T23:23:00.000+02:00

It's been a while, and so I probably should update this. I did just now update the link section, which is now filled with sites hosting dusty manuscripts and their beautiful illuminations. They're really worth a browse - for example, the Heidelberg manuscripts page hosts the famous Codex Manesse. When it comes to the larger collections owned by national library, the Dutch Royal Library has some of the best quality scans, while the French National Library (BNF) has by far the largest collection, and the easiest to search through. Some of their scans are rather small, however, and leave you wanting to zoom in. The British Library also has a lot of stuff online, but last time I checked its search feature was rather lamentable and held all manuscript images into a single database. Bah! The UC (University of California) has a whole host of modern academic studies published online, some limited to students/staff, and others available free of charge to anyone. Very helpful. The Dutch Literary Library has a lot of Dutch language texts online, from the early middle ages to modern times, as well as academic publications on Dutch language and literature. A great collection, though one has to speak Dutch for it to be of any use.

Oh, and the first link, the Siege of Maastricht, is an article I wrote for a gaming site concerned with the historical strategy game Medieval II: Total War. An updated version of the article should be uploaded shortly, and I also hope to get an article done on the Battle of Othée (1408), the exciting conclusion of the conflict between John of Bavaria and his Liégois subjects.

Also, my sister got married! This was of course a joyous occassion, a great party, reception, and dinner, and the ceremony also had an excellent civil servant run it, with a speech actually catered towards the couple, not something I had expected from a civil ceremony. It was also very good to see family again - in the months leading up to my grandmother's death we saw each other only a few times, as she was generally too tired to have any family meetings, and having them without grandmother seemed rather odd.
So I now have a brother-in-law, which seems strange and made me realise I'm now in the marrying generation. Gasp!

Deechdingen int Deester

2007-04-28T20:54:00.000+02:00

The 'Middelnederlandsch Handwoordenboek' has arrived! This is a middle-Dutch dictionary originally published in the 1930's; I have a reprint from 1964. 800 wonderful pages filled with wonderful middle-Dutch words: from Ababijs (defeated, taken aback) to Wuwestert (swallowtail, construction term). A peaceful and friendly time when there was still a special word for herring tax and harem still meant arm. When an overgever was not someone who threw up but in stead transferred property. Wonderful.

This innocent view of the past is vividly brought to life by the illustrations of Isings, a Dutch painter who made paintings which were printed en masse and distributed around Dutch schools. It was practice in the Netherlands to teach using prints (both by him and others) in all sorts of subjects, including history, biology and geography. While they were not used on my generation anymore, I'm sure everyone my age has seen a print or two hanging around in school. A Dutch website has published a great deal of them on the internet, and they can be viewed HERE. Some are beautiful (like this one) and some are, quite frankly, dreadful (euch!).
The ones by Isings in particular display both craftsmanship and a great eye for detail: not only are uniforms, armour, architecture, etc accurately depicted for any time period I could see, they also fit together as a harmonious whole; there's no perspective problems and the buildings look like they have actual substance. Nice stuff to browse through, even when you don't speak Dutch or know any history.

Life is good...

2007-04-27T19:27:00.000+02:00

... When the weather is warm and you've just had a nice cold beer to cool down.

The Ragweek of 2007 is now a thing of the past. I suppose I gave it negligable if non-existant coverage in my exciting and infrequently updated blog (the sudden mood changes of which no doubt make me appear like a manic-depressive on steroids), but I was in charge of the Ragweek organisation committee of Tafelstraat, so I was rather closely involved.
For those unfamiliar with the tradition, the Ragweek is a one-week a year time when students at a university do stuff to raise money for charity (over here it's always one foreign and one local charity). At Tafelstraat we, according to the custom, sell coffee/tea and vlaai (local type of cake/what the Americans call pie). This year we also organised a night about Ghanese culture (one of the charities is a Dutch organisation that has 'adopted' a Ghanese village and aims to improve living standards there, which seems to be going well) where an exchange student who had been to Ghana told about her experiences and used photographs to demonstrate Ghanese culture. Apart from Dutch students, there were also German, Spanish, American and Czech people present, so it was a nicely multi-national mix with which we could discuss differences not just between continents but also between countries.
At the end of the week, we had collected a grand total of €400,-, a nice sum. The total collected was €15.000,-, half of which donated by the university.

On a different subject altogether, there is a webcam located in a Dutch Peregrine falcon's nest (yes we have speedlimit breaking birds in our country, too, even though we don't have an Autobahn). The little falcons left their eggs on 15 April, and all their activities can be followed HERE. However, tragedy struck, and on the 23rd a rival female Peregrine chased the mother out of the nest, and so since then they have not been kept warm. Apparently this isn't a problem, and in fact it makes the whole thing more watchable, because the chicks are actually visible now, rather than being obscured from view by the mother sitting on top of them. The father falcon is still feeding them and so hopes are that they'll make it. It's interesting to watch for a little while, do you need some luck; when I tuned in today the dad just arrived to feed them which was no doubt one of the most exciting events of the day.

Days Like This

2007-04-15T15:28:00.000+02:00

... They could last a bit shorter. The weather is far too warm to do anything distracting, such as cycling; it is still too light to watch a DVD, even with the curtains closed, and I already spent a considerable time on the PC so doing more of that will make me feel guilty. My concentration to either read or write is insufficient. Bah! Wish it were evening.

Pointless news stories

2007-04-13T15:35:00.000+02:00

Sometimes news stories get published that are really just a waste of internet space or ink. For example:
Iraq MPs condemn parliament blast
Well obviously. Parliament gets bombed, do you think parliamentarians are going to applaud that? This ranks right next to the Times' 6 November 1605 article called "Parliamentarians don't think Guy Fawkes is a nice bloke".

Diego Maradona back in hospital
Comparable with "Britney Spears is a loony".

More to follow, either at a later date or after I've had another sandwich.

50 posts!

2007-04-07T15:25:00.000+02:00

This is a special celebratory post to celebrate that this is the 50th post written by myself on this blog. When I started writing I never expected to hold out this long, blah blah blah, and I can also be extra proud because Andrew gave up after two or so months, whereas I'm still going on with writing pieces no one will read.

The books I purchased recently and which I listed in the previous post have been undergoing some reading, apart from the Decameron, which I am saving for later (when I have more time). Both The English Civil War and Deser landen Crijchsvolk are great reads, though Van Nimwegen's position on the military revolution can only be marked as untenable (as pointed out by Erik Swart here in the final conclusion, which is also presented in English). His description of the organisation of the army and the experiences of both soldiers and civilians is far better than that in other works, however, and his descriptions of the campaigns, while lacking in terms of maps, are clear and all-inclusive. He does not limit himself to the famous campaigns and battles.

Apart from that, I fear I have little to say in this post, apart from sharing a cake (possibly stolen from another party) to celebrate and providing you with a truly hilarious news story (well, not really). Let's try another one.

Cut!

2007-03-30T21:55:00.000+02:00

Once again, my hair has been trimmed to a more socially acceptable size. Last time I visited my Belgian hairdresser was last October, and by last Monday my hair was regularly obscuring my vision and was well down to my shoulders. A visit there is always good, and this one was no exception. We talked about Belgian politics, city planning and infrastructure, Brugge, tourists, etc. Luckily there was lots of hair to be cut, so our conversation wasn't cut short prematurely (har har, pun!).

Spring has also arrived, so my shorter hair fits the season. The people of this locality have not realised what Spring is about, though, and despite the warm and sunny days we had early in the week the majority of them still wore their coats with (mostly fake) fur collars. Eejits.

And with Spring the annual festivity that is the Boekenfestijn has also come to the MECC in Maastricht. Basically, it's a massive sale of older or damaged book editions for very fine prices. The assortment this year seemed a little less interesting when it came to history than last year, but the three books I bought ("Deser landen crijchsvolk" by Olaf van Nimwegen, "The English Civil War" by Tristram Hunt, and the Decameron by Boccaccio) are all very good, and particularly the first was a complete and happy surprise; the book sells for 49,95€ in normal bookstores, yet I bought it for 24€.
There were small creases on the bottom of most of the editions, and so they had probably been set aside due to damage, with the top of the book's pages been marked with a black line to indicate that they were not for normal sale. I was more than lucky, however: a critical examination of the pile of books revealed a copy which not only lacked the black line on top, but also showed no significant creases - ie a perfect quality book. Go me!
The book studies the Dutch army between 1588 and 1688 in great detail - the only quality book I know of that attempted this. It's quite unique in that aspect, and I know the writer (he also wrote a book about the Austrian War of Succession): it should be a good read. Van Nimwegen is a bit overkeen on the idea of military revolution, however - a theory I cannot support. But this does not prevent him from delivering excellent and thorough studies.

"The English Civil War" by Tristram Hunt has as sub-title "At first hand", and the book interests me for two reasons: firstly, I haven't read a proper study about the war yet, and could do with a decent introduction; secondly, the book centres on accounts by eyewitnesses. The psychology of the soldier has always been one of my main interests in warfare, and it should prove interesting even if for that reason alone. It seems, though, that Hunt, from the little I read, fits in the tradition of English story-telling historians and delivers not just a good study but also a good book.

As to the Decameron, well, it's a classic, and as I try to be at least a little familiar with the great medieval literature, I couldn't leave it there. I have yet to see how easily I'll get through it, though, but any work of literature that studies actual society rather than ideal society is useful in one way or another.

And again...

2007-03-21T19:31:00.000+01:00

This is the third time in as many posts that I have something to say concerning urban archery guilds in the middle ages. I discovered that the archery guilds in Amsterdam were also called after sint Joris (crossbow) and sint Sebastiaan (normal bow), similar to Maastricht and Brugge. Coincidence? I think not. Apparently sint Joris (George) is patron of all soldiers, and also of farmers and tourists; I think crossbowmen can be added to the list, though they fall under soldiers, anyway. In a moment of great irony, Richard the Lionheart proclaimed him the protector of all crusaders. Saint George, however, did not take this task too seriously - the great crusader Richard died of a crossbow quarrel.
Saint Sebastian is, like his dragon-slaying brother in Christ, counted as a protector of soldiery, and in particular archers. Probably because having been executed by them made him feel all warm and fuzzy towards them. He is also the patron saint of the dying, which seems like a rather pointless and excessively frustrating job.

I have also brought my film roll with photographs from Brugge to be developed. Yes, I still have an old-fashioned, non-digital camera! The photographs should be developed by Friday and are only showing architecture.

Brugge (again)

2007-03-18T13:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I visited Brugge for the second time in... ooh, a month? This was not something I had been looking forward to, as the last time I went there it was with Ulrike and so there were now a lot of memories lurking there, ready to chase me around.
We were with a group of 24 students, and took the train to Liège just after eight in the morning, so we would arrive in Brugge at eleven. I was pretty tired as I had an awful night with perhaps as few as four hours sleep, due to my state of mind and noisy housemates. I wished John of Bavaria were nearby, as I would tell him they were haidroits and he'd deal with them properly, for example by chucking them off a bridge. Anyway, I had brought a thermosflask with tea, which helped me wake up.
The train from Liège to Brugge was crammed, and so I sat on my own and read in Catch-22. This was no problem for me, as I was less keen on talking as I was on making the trip altogether. I sat in a four-seat space with a German-speaking family consisting of a young girl, who was still learning to read, a father who was constantly handing out sweets, and a giggly mother. It was okay. They had a bit of an accent going on and I wondered if they were Belgo-Germans, but probably not, as they talked about Belgium in a distanced way; they did however have above average familiarity with the country, and I think the man had worked in or nearby Bruxelles for a while. They were going to Oostende to take the ferry to Great Britain.

Brugge was... okay. There were a lot of tourists about and still more coaches than cars traversing the city centre. The old buildings were still standing, and the weather was almost as good as a month ago, except far windier. I went out of my way (literally) to see things I hadn't seen before, and this included walking almost the entire perimetre of the wider city centre. I saw all the city gates there, two towers, and some windmills. Strangely enough no walls were left, only the gates.
I also passed by the two archery guilds in the city, that of Sint Joris (George) and Sint Sebastiaan (guess who?); the former was for the practice of the crossbow/arbalest, the latter for the normal bow. Interestingly enough the guilds had the same practice and name in Maastricht. The buildings for the guilds were, however, disappointing. One was a neo-gothic monstrosity and the other a dull English country house imitation. Both had large grounds for practice.

From the other things I visited, the basilica of the holy blood (brought back by a crusading count to Brugge), an age-old and authentic romanesque church inside the gothic town hall, and the church of our lady leap to mind first of all. The latter had a beautiful exposition about Philip the Fair, grandson of Charles the Bold, which included many rare contemporary items, including primitive pianos and drums. Apart from the exposition items there was also a great collection of "standard" pieces, such as 13th and 14th century decorated coffins and the tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary (mother of Philip). And Philip's heart was also there (his body having been taken to Spain, where he was king), encased in a tiny metal case.
The tombs of the once duke and duchess of Burgundy were decorated with the coats of arms of all their territories, and even the county of Zutphen was accounted for, as well as Friesland - which was not technically their possession (apart from the cowardly Dokkumers, who had apparently pledged allegiance to the Burgundians at first instigation). But who wants to be lord of Dokkum?

In any case, Brugge² was better than I expected.

Blast from the past

2007-03-15T11:27:00.000+01:00

After the previous, somewhat cryptic entry (although cryptic only to the poor sods who didn't see Shaun of the Dead, an error they must immediately rectify), I felt it was time to write something here again.

In the past week I spent a lot of time at the municipal library researching the details of the sieges of Maastricht in 1407 and 1408. On Tuesday I borrowed two books there concerning the military history of Liège, which had to be called up from storage. I could only borrow them for three weeks, however (normal borrowing length six weeks) because no doubt they just love gathering dust. The books are both in French and make up lessons three and four of my DIY French course.
Anyway, I gathered a considerable amount of data, and now know that, for example, the citizen-soldiers in the militia (schutterij) of sint Joris in Maastricht had to wear yellow leather trousers (probably hoses), a cloth, long-sleeved shirt, a leather tunic over it (as body armour) and a leather or metal helmet. All in all, that's not terribly good protection and I can only pity these poor men - however, as they had to pay for the equipment themselves it was probably best for their purses that expensive iron armour was lacking.
I also browsed through a list with all the mayors of Maastricht (they used to change annually and there would be two each year, one representing Liège and the other representing Brabant), and apparently one of the mayors was called God. Although perhaps the scribe just shortened his name from Godaard or something. In any case, he must have made some impression. At least with me.
I also discovered that in 1407 the ridge from the castle Lichtenberg to the Maas was not yet steep, which means that there'll be no abseiling done after all. Sorry lads.

Who the hell put this on?

2007-03-04T11:26:00.000+01:00

Oi, look at me.
Can I just say one thing?
I'm not gonna say there's plenty more fish in the sea,
I'm not gonna say if you love her let her go
and I'm not gonna bombard you with clichés
but what I will say is this...

It's not the end of the world.

Brugge!

2007-02-21T20:02:00.000+01:00

On Saturday I went to Brugge with Ulrike, which was great! Brugge is a nice city, if you can look past all the tourists. Lots of old buildings, lots of restaurants and bars, lots of museums and lots of tourist shops where they think wooden shoes, porcelain and windmills are typically Belgian. The city is generally described as looking medieval, but apart from some of the main monuments, like Our Lady's Church, or many of the municipal buildings, the majority have more of a 16th/17th century look to them. Still though, the fact that pretty much the entire centre is centuries old gives it a very unique appearance, enhanced by the limited amount of cars and the large number of horse-driven coaches driving around. It's only the large number of tourists and modern shops that make it impossible for you to think you're in the past - if you want to get that feeling, I suggest visiting the great beguinage in Leuven in stead - no cars there, relatively few tourists and no shops at all.

Another thing Brugge can learn from Leuven is to put up banners. Perhaps they're present during the summer, but there were none when I visited, and I have to say that the first time I visited Leuven and there were medieval-style banners hanging in the streets and decorating houses on the market square, I was seriously impressed. It adds atmosphere on a grand scale, gives you an extra feel for the old days, even if you're unfamiliar with the flags. There were governmental flags now - many flying halfmast to commemorate the death of Albert I in 1934 - but they simply don't match up to real medieval banners (although the colourful Belgian flags get a lot closer than pretty much any other European flag). Still though, Brugge was great.
I would like to write a bit more, and quite possibly I will do so later, but at the moment I have to run. I'm publishing this now, as I have been putting off making a post for three days in a row and I really want to put something up. Sense of achievement, you know.

Snow, Zombies and Tyres

2007-02-11T10:10:00.000+01:00

We had some snow in the past week, coming down faster than it could melt. Sadly however, as soon as it stopped snowing, it did melt, and now there is nothing to remind us of it. It's too warm for Winter.

What else has been up?
Well, recently, when I went with my parents to Schiedam and Delft to meet friends and family, we stopped by a way-restaurant where they peculiarly enough sold the DVD of Shaun of the Dead for only 7,50€, and, as I had been unsuccessfully searching all the stores of Maastricht for it, I could not refuse the bargain. It is a brilliant film, a comedy of the highest calibre; and certainly more of a real film than most other comedies, as it actually has a plot that develops in a semi-realistic way, and a director with more interest in directing than just making sure all the characters appear in the shot.

On Wednesday I had a flat tyre at the most inconvenient of moments: I discovered it after ten, when I was getting hungry and about to buy bread for my breakfast. It being Wednesday, the village’s bakery was closed, and so Maastricht was the only possible place to acquire a healthsome loaf. But as I had a meeting in the early afternoon at Tafelstraat, it was unlikely I’d be able to get back to my room before then, so I decided to shower first, have a placeholder breakfast of nuts and biscuits, and then cycled to town on my flat tyre, which luckily held its end quite competently; I had to pump it up again only once every kilometre.
I then had a quick lunch at Tafelstraat, cycled to the station in one go and dropped off my bike there to have an entirely new tyre set (the old one’s profile had completely wasted away) and walked back to Tafelstraat, stopping by for a quick spell at Ulrike’s, as that was on the way and I saw she was in. I was still back in time at Tafelstraat to have a slightly more extended lunch before the meeting started. How’s that for planning, eh?

Space Love

2007-02-06T13:29:00.000+01:00

Some people really like space; more than a few films have been made about people who saw their childhood dream of going to other parts of the universe fullfilled, possibly with a romance thrown inside. None, however, have been as absurd as this news story: Astronaut in "love kidnap" plot.

A US astronaut has been charged with trying to kidnap a woman she thought was a rival for the affection of a space shuttle pilot.
Navy Capt Lisa Nowak, 43, who flew to the international space station last July, was charged with attempted kidnapping, battery and other crimes.

She drove from Texas to Florida to confront Colleen Shipman, disguised in a wig and trench coat. Police said Capt Nowak, who was denied bail, used pepper spray on Ms Shipman.

The man in the love triangle was said to be Navy Cmdr William Oefelein, who was a pilot on the Discovery's mission to the space station in December.

I don't really know what "battery" means in criminal terms, so if anyone here does, please enlighten me. Mad stuff, anyway.

Also in the news, the formation of a new Dutch government is very close indeed, and looking to be a coalition between the Christian Democrats, Labour, and the Christian Union, in that order. It's looking to be a more conscientious coalition than the previous few, with €800m set aside for the environment. This can only be a good thing, as the former Balkenende governments cared little for that important aspect of our country, and so it's all being going down the drain. We have yet to see what the other parts of the government will be like, but it looks like it'll be generally agreeable, with a more positive attitude to the EU, I hope, and possibly a more critical attitude towards US behaviour - although this will become easier regardless as the US is lightning up.
However, perhaps these are just dreams and we'll have more shit for the next four years.

Welcome back

2007-01-15T15:36:00.000+01:00

My first post of the new year! It took me some time to finally get it published. Initially it started with a short bit about new year's eve, but I figured that's a little late, so we'll leave that for the moment. Perhaps in February.

I spent the holidays getting a job (hopefully), studying the organisation of late medieval Maastricht (as far as possible with the help of but a few, sadly flawed, books), doing some uni work and browsing through the family archive. We still had a lot of late 19th/early 20th century booklets of speeches held by some of the ARP leaders (the Anti Revolutionary Party, strong for the re-reformed faith, churches, the army, and keeping your trousers (or dresses) on at all possible times) on various issues such as why women shouldn't have the right to vote (but should vote anyway, to thwart the evil socialists and liberals) and why putting up a maypole is an important part of their beliefs (although I believe the re-reformed church has dropped this part since the '70s or so).
Somewhat puzzlingly, there was also a socialist leaflet about why women should vote, and an undated ad for the Scheveningen Kurhaus (judging from the swimsuit featured on it it was before the invention of, well, modernity), both of which may have been maliciously put in by communist infiltrators to slander earlier generations of the Bosch family. Sadly for them, this has been for naught, as we don't give a toss.

What else has been up? Well, ten days ago it was exactly 530 years since the death of Charles the Bold and the collapse of the Burgundian state, which I commemorated by telling people who didn't care. Also, I read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and had a lot of fun in the process. It's a brilliant book and I can only encourage other people to read it, which is why I already lent it out to Ulrike. Meanwhile, for my study I've been reading up on society, the (nuclear) family, marriage and sexuality. It's interesting stuff, and it's fascinating how attitudes to these things changed throughout the centuries (though I've only reached the long 16th century, by now).

To leave you something to read, there's this BBC article about a secret proposal for a union between France and the UK in the '50s. Rather surprising, and I don't think either country is disappointed it fell through (I can only take the 35% "Oui" result in the poll with a grain of salt; surely a lot of funny non-Frangleterrians voted).

Need an ambulance?

2006-12-30T17:00:00.000+01:00

Saw an amusing article on the BBC:

Emergency call handlers were left "in disbelief" when a man dialled 999 because he could not find his trousers. The man was one of four people who inappropriately rang for an ambulance in the early hours of Saturday, during a busy night for the emergency service.

Another caller rang from Birmingham's Broad Street to say a 32-year-old "couldn't walk from too much dancing".
West Midlands Ambulance bosses said people should consider whether it was appropriate to call 999.

A third caller, this time from the Low Hill area of Wolverhampton, stated another 32-year-old had a finger injury. The man was "extremely drunk" and it transpired the injury had been sustained two days earlier, said the ambulance service.
And the final call was from an 18-year-old man who had a toothache.

An ambulance service spokesman said: "At one of the busiest times of year it would have been helpful if these people had first thought about whether dialling 999 was appropriate. In the last of these cases medical help was required but not from the ambulance service."

Source

Sorry for the large amount of news posts rather than personal stuff recently, I'll see if I can write something more opinionated soon. For now, I'll just wish everyone who can be bothered reading this a very happy new year!

Virgin births

2006-12-26T16:50:00.000+01:00

Apparently, Komodo dragons, the world's largest lizards, are capable of producing offspring without sexual contact, when no males are nearby. Earlier this year, a "captive-bred female called Sungai, at London Zoo in the UK, produced four offspring earlier this year - more than two years after her last contact with a male." And at the moment, another Komodo dragon has laid eggs in Chester Zoo which are about to hatch: "Flora laid her eggs at the end of May and, given the incubation period of between seven and nine months, it is possible they could hatch around Christmas - which for a 'virgin birth' would finish the story off nicely.
We will be on the look-out for shepherds, wise men and an unusually bright star in the sky over Chester Zoo."

Read the entire article here. And to conclude this short post, I'll add another priceless comment from that article:

"The researchers said that, to ensure genetic diversity of Komodo dragons kept in captivity, zoos should perhaps keep males and females together to avoid asexual reproduction."

Classy.

End of the century

2006-12-23T15:50:00.000+01:00

Yes, I am here to gloat. That ghastly plan, "the Project for the New American Century", is now all but dead.

' "The Project for the New American Century" has been reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website. A single employee has been left to wrap things up. '

See full article here.

*gloats*

Politics etc

2006-12-15T12:51:00.000+01:00

British politics are a bit mad, and last week reached almost Italian standards when Tony Blair was taken for questioning by police over the cash for honours scandal, where rich people who had donated to the Labour party received honours shortly afterwards. I said "almost" Italian, as of course in Italy this could not have happened; there, the PM has judicial invulnerability, and so cannot be prosecuted, which, as it is a possibility in the UK, gives the case a much greater resonance - although it is entirely unlikely he will be charged, as the interview was not under caution.
Another slap in the face to Blair was the publication of a report by Chatham House, concerning Blair's foreign policy, of which it was more than a little critical, describing the Iraq war as a "terrible mistake" and Britain's relation with the US as rather one-sided. The Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, only on the job for a short while now, defended her boss's policy simply by slurring the report: "This paper is threadbare, insubstantial and just plain wrong. Chatham House has established a great reputation over the years, but this paper will do nothing to enhance it."
Another long-lasting British PM was also in the news recently: Margaret Thatcher was "greatly saddened" by general Pinochet's death. As she campaigned on his behalf during his arrest in the UK in 2000 it seems safe to conclude she was sympathetic to him rather than cheerful because she could now dance on his grave. Although Thatcher's image is so frosty this revelation - if indeed it is one - can hardly do her much harm, as she already has all the honours and riches she could wish.

Perhaps I should move to the UK and stand for elections, it seems you can get away with anything even when you're generally loathed.

A review of sorts

2006-12-11T19:10:00.000+01:00

A considerable time ago I bought a biography of Louis XI by Paul Murray Kendall at De Slegte. The back flap describes it as a “lively and scholarly biography”, and I bought it in the knowledge that it might not be great; however, I thought that even a badly written biography could contribute to my knowledge of the principal rival of Charles the Bold. I fear that I might soon be eating those badly chosen words, as a quick read of the prologue and first two chapters reveals, while the book might be lively, scholarly – by our modern standards – it certainly is not.

The sad fact is, that the late Murray Kendall was more a groupie of king Louis than a historian, and the start of the biography is riddled not only with historical errors and gross over-simplifications and generalisations, but also with a rather distressing romantic idealism on the part of the author, who appears to be one of those individuals that consider our present time (or, in his case, the 60’s-70’s) an awful place to live in, and would rather live in the past. I cannot withhold the audience a few quotes that capably illustrate this point:

“[…] Louis was much more accessible than an American president, was seen by a larger proportion of the people than ever today see the chiefs of their states, took a greater interest […] in his individual subjects, and knew by name a higher percentage of them […] than the modern prime minister […] has time or inclination to do.”

Despite this political idealism, he does not mention that was inevitable – as populations have grown, so a single ruler inevitably will know a smaller amount of the people personally than rulers in the Middle Ages. Not because medieval rulers were more concerned about their people, but because there were fewer people to deal with.

“If it was then more painful to be alive, it was less demanding – and richer of reward simply because few rewards were expected.”
An odd, semi-philosophical phrase, which appears to be an attempt to reduce the pain, but in reality is but a hollow sentence. He then goes on to increase the pain and fear of our current generation:

“We who have waged death and destruction far more effectively, horribly, and indiscriminately than any other human generation, who ride in seatbelted fear upon blood-spattered highways, who at night flee from the lurking terrors of our metropolises – we somehow take it for granted, such is the conditioning of “progress” and the comfort of the familiar, that the horrors of another time are worse than ours.”

And is that not actually the case?
All these examples, by the by, were picked from a single page. They reveal a lot about Paul Murray Kendall’s character, things that do not go well with the profession of historian. It is no surprise then, that historical errors or failed attempts at rationalising people’s actions are ever-present and unrelenting. To give but one example, where many more could have been made:

“Thus did a father pointedly snub a son to whom he had previously devoted, as far as the records show, almost no attention at all. Neither normal parental concern nor a king’s duty to cherish the welfare and dignity of his heir had been able to penetrate the passivity of Charles VII. It had been seemingly penetrated by something else, however: by something of an envy of boldness and vigor and assurance that he himself did not possess.”

Surely, if Charles VII spent no time with the dauphin Louis, he could never have noticed Louis’ character traits, and could not have fostered jealousy or envy? It is bold statements such as this that stand out; again, they say more about the author than the persons described – an author who, sadly, can see no more than caricatures for people.

As for historical errors, there are too many to list them in great depth here, even for just the first three chapters, but they include the assassination of John the Fearless (described as a “scuffle”), the Azincourt campaign (according to him, the Burgundians had promised help to the English – nicely ignoring the fact that both John the Fearless and his son Philip intended to join the French force, and that John’s brother and most important ally, Anthony of Brabant, died at Azincourt fighting for the French), the Hundred Years War in general (actually referred to as the “Hundred Years’ War” in the index), the almost verbatim copying of some of Huizinga’s ideas. The book is unscholarly in yet another respect, and that is the total lack of notes or reference (that is, there are notes, but these are merely anecdotes that wouldn’t fit in the narrative; the reader will have to make do with a small bibliography, and must guess what quotation comes from what source).
That he is no historian is further underlined by statements such as one where he mentions the dauphin Louis’ allowance was notable only for its small size, yet the size of the allowance is never mentioned; this would not only have been a simple addition, it would have given the reader the ability to judge the allowance for him or herself, as, after all, the allowances of contemporary heirs are well documented, and could easily be compared. But Murray Kendall prefers to be the judge himself, and provides the reader only with his personal judgement, which is a greater flaw than any.

Currently reading: Karl IV - Ein Kaiser in Europa, by Ferdinand Seibt

Tidings

2006-12-02T21:08:00.000+01:00

More time has passed! A principal event since then has been that the problem which was fixed at the end of the previous post wasn't fixed at all, and has returned to haunt me (and the chap in the room next to me). We have both reminded the landlord a few times and every fix thus far hasn't helped; they'll probably have to break open the wall at one point and replace some of the piping altogether - hopefully they'll start on Monday.
An unfortunate business, but I'd rather have work done and have it fixed than live in this stinking mess for much longer (although luckily it only really stinks when the water is coming up, which happens less frequently now as housemates are learning to wash their dishes downstairs rather than in the washing basins in their own rooms).

Another, more important event that has happened since then, has been meeting Ulrike! We get on really well, so well in fact, that I have now fallen from the noble bachelor ranks (a phrasing from Firefly I am so fond of, I have used it too many times already; I did like the thought of applying it in Dutch, also, but didn't. No one would know that "baatselaar" is middle Dutch for bachelor, and if they did they would probably still not get the meaning). I just want to see her more often now.

REMINDER

Also, this is a reminder to
1. Get a job (holidays are coming, should give nice pay)
2. Write a certain letter to a certain university

Big steps must be taken before the next time I'll write a blog entry, and in any case before this day next week.

REMINDER

Early Morning

2006-11-14T08:13:00.000+01:00

Not having made any new posts in recent times, perhaps I should give some updates.
Most importantly, my grandmother died of cancer on 2 November; the funeral was on Monday 6 November. Although it was of course a sad occasion, it was a good commemoration. It was nice that a lot of people came, to support the family.

Apart from that, not terribly much happened. For the past three days we've seen a lot of rain, after a long build-up of clouds. Typical Dutch November weather, I suppose.
Oh, and, rather annoyingly (understatement), I have drainage pipe problems in my room. It appears that when some people use water (not sure if it counts for all my housemates or just a few) water comes up in my sink, filled with soap, both through the main drain and the reserve one. As far as I know it hasn't flooded over yet, but it's still an incredible pain, particularly as there's regularly smells of Hades coming up, as well. And I can assure you (although probably not much assuring is needed) that sewer smells are AWFUL. Hence, I've stayed at my parents' while I'm trying to sort it out, but I've had difficulties even reaching the landlord. Yesterday his telephone was unreachable, and he hasn't replied to my email (sent on Friday) yet. Perhaps he just makes very long weekends.
I hope to go round there today and ask him about this, if the calling won't work today either, but it may be a little difficult as I have two different meetings filling up the entire afternoon and co-responsibility for dinner after that. Also, constant rain.

Bah!

Edit:
Things are going well. I called and the problem should be fixed; they externally drained the piping system on Friday, and when one of my neighbours still reported problems yesterday they came again this morning to fix it up good. Should all be fine now. Also, no more rain.

Yay!

Medieval Crows

2006-10-26T18:14:00.000+02:00

The crows are out in force again, with walnuts in their beaks. The sun glints off their backs and wings as they flap through the air. They scour the fields and jump the road and break the nuts by throwing them down from great height. Their aptitude at this practice is not always convincing; occasionally one tries to break it by dropping it onto the field itself, something that, even if done from thirty metres high, will yield no results unless a lucky rock gets in the way. But still they try, as they apparently value the nut inside to such a great extent that they rather fail ten times than look for something else to eat.

After a short period of complete and utter silence, I’m here again to reassure everyone that I did survive my twenty-first birthday after all. I threw a birthday party and visited a few more lectures during the national week of history. Interestingly enough, Maastricht won first prize of all 600+ programmes nationwide. It is was well deserved, I think, as they had explored the theme – belief and superstition – in quite some depth, hosting lectures on subjects ranging from Protestantism to Mary devotion and from witchcraft to Saint Lambert (who was bishop of Maastricht). However, I do think that it was a very academic programme, and many of the speakers and subjects wouldn’t really appeal to a larger audience. Now, I’m not exactly sure what the goal of the national week of history is, so this might not be relevant at all, but if it has anything to do with trying to get it under the attention of the masses it might not achieve its goal. The theme for next year will apparently be “living”, which might be a little easier for people to relate to, because of course it is very easy to compare your own situation with that of, say, someone in the middle ages. I like the middle ages a lot, but not when compared to my own situation.

Speaking of the middle ages, I have today completed Warfare in Medieval Brabant, by self-confessed AoK player Sergio Boffa. It is a very good and professional study indeed, and comparable in some way to In the Shadow of Burgundy: Culture at the Court of Guelders. Both examine a subject that has been meticulously researched for the larger players – England, France, Burgundy, Austria – but not at all or not sufficiently for the numerous semi-independent principalities that were all over the place in Western Europe. It is interesting that, much like major league football clubs that just can’t compete, these principalities often had to suffer serious debts in order to keep up the appearance of their court. As to their armies, these would of course be raised only in time of war, and so it would be most effective for a ruler not to get into any conflicts. However, that would again be the opposite of what their position would dictate them to do: a prince was expected to be victorious in war, and whether this would be against pagans in the Baltic, heathens in the Middle East or just neighbours across the river didn’t particularly matter, as long as there were heroics to put on paper (or rather, parchment).

Ah great, now I’ve done it again. Another blog entry turned into a history class. At least my texts suffer from an overdose of knowledge rather than emo-sentiments. A rare thing on the interweb these days.

Historical Day

2006-10-14T19:11:00.000+02:00

Saturday was my birthday and the government decided that there is no better day than 14 October to start the Week of History. This is a national week where lectures and other events are organised on an annual basis to bring historical themes and subjects to the attention of the general public. I attended the opening ceremony and lecture, and had already typed out quite a lengthy description of it but lost it through fault of my own and can now sadly not be bothered to write it all over again. Let's just say that it was very interesting and that my opinion of bishop Wiertz, who held a short introduction before the actual lecture, has not improved.

My birthday was a lot of fun and I got very nice presents, including Warfare in Medieval Brabant and John the Fearless, which I had asked for in a previous post, as well as Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (translated as The Waning of the Middle Ages and The Autumn of the Middle Ages) by Huizinga, one of the most famous and certainly influential Dutch history books, and Rubicon, a book about the fall of the Roman Republic and how it was turned into a dictatorship. This means I'll have plenty to read in the coming period, and as it's all good stuff it was rather hard to choose what to read first. However, I've now started in Warfare in Medieval Brabant, and it is truly excellent.

On friday, the day before my birthday, I was guide in a City Walk I organised for Tafelstraat. There was a good turn out, with some 17 people attending, and as they were all very interested it was a lot of fun. I showed them around the city walls, the Helpoort, the Pater Vink tower, the high bridge, the old streets of Wyck, and then on past the Dinghuis and the Roman baths to the Our Lady's square. Parts of this they already knew, but the history of the city was new to them. They asked a lot of questions, which is always a good sign.
This is enough for now, my creativity is not exactly on a high at the moment.

Köln/Keulen/Colon/Cologne

2006-10-01T16:24:00.000+02:00

On Saturday (yesterday) I went to Cologne on a City Trip organised by Tafelstraat. The preparation had been rather chaotic (understatement) as the date and goal (Cologne) had been set a month ago, but no one had been assigned to organise it. So nothing had really been done until this Thursday, when Germa and I volunteered to do so. Which really isn't enough time.

Nevertheless, with 13 people on the trip (two of which didn't show up) we had a nice group of multi-national people, from the Netherlands (three), Brazil (three), the US (two), Singapore/Malaysia (one), Armenia (one) and Bulgaria (one). Steffen, Linda's boyfriend, also joined us during the day, as he had been visiting a friend in Marburg and he passed through Cologne anyway.

So, my impressions of the city made during this very short visit:

Cologne is big. Very big. With something like 1.1 million inhabitants it is bigger than any city in the Netherlands. Its historical centre is also very large, and I didn't get to see some very touristic and famous parts of the city, like the town hall and some of the market squares. It's just so large and despite using the underground to save time there was too much to see. Still though, I think I went to the right spots; my impression of the touristic centre (the Dom and adjacent areas) is that it is simply overcrowded with camera-wielding tourists. There's also a lot of noise, which makes being there a little tiresome (particularly if you have to keep any eye out on eleven group members who might be trailing behind taking photographs).

Despite its size and tourist overload it was nevertheless charming and quite inviting. The people there were generally friendly, although there were more drunks and homeless people hanging around than there would be over here (partly, I think, because we generally tend to arrest them if they hang around in city centres). There was also quite a bit of trash lying around, moreso than over here; then again, it was comparable to most Belgian, German, French and British cities I've been to. It made me remember something international students once told me: they thought Dutch cities were excessively clean and well-kept, and thought it actually made them look bad.

Also, Cologne has a considerable part left of their medieval city walls; I visited the gatehouse just to the north-west of the St Kunibert Church, with the Kölner Boor on it; also large tracts of the wall in the south part of the city, which had been creatively converted into apartments. It looked really cool, and ensured the structures still had a real use. Very neat idea.
The Dom (Cologne's famous cathedral), on the other hand, was rather overhyped. Its main point of interest seemed to be that it was fecking massive; but architecturally speaking it was just a pretty standard cathedral enlarged ten times. And from the inside it was largely empty, with no interesting effigies to admire; there's many more interesting churches than this one, such as the church of St Georg, which we visited later during the day. It was quite a small but charming Romanesque church with some nice and very old carving work still there. Can't say I liked the triptych much, though; it was either fake-medieval or by a mediocre medieval artist.

That Time of the Year Again

2006-09-22T16:52:00.000+02:00

Autumn is upon us once more, with its falling leaves, heaps of spiders, travelling birds and, last but not least, my birthday! Normally this is not something I get very excited about, but perhaps to my detriment yesterday I took a look at the site of Boydell and Brewer, a British publisher. Their books are just invaluable to anyone interested in Medieval Western European history; I saw too many books I liked and may now be forced to rob a bank to buy them all.
Luckily, as my birthday is nearby (14 October), I'll see if I have enough patience to stay without a criminal record.
This does however mean that the total collection of Boydell and Brewer is unlikely to be in my possession any time soon, and that I have the difficult task ahead of me of deciding what books I'd like best. These are, thus far:

Warfare in Medieval Brabant (1356-1406)
By Sergio Boffa
I like Brabant. I also like Brabant getting beaten by Guelders. This happened a lot during that particular period (Baesweiler, Ravenstein) so it's probably going to be one big smile from start to finish.

Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century
By Kelly deVries (apparently a bloke)
Although this book is out of stock at the moment, it'd certainly be a valuable addition to my collection on medieval warfare; it’s actually the principal book out on medieval infantry. Describes their organisation, tactics, armour, etc from about 1300 to 1350 or so. However, needs to be reprinted at great speed to be in time for B-Day.

John the Fearless
By Richard Vaughan
Part of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy series, this volume describes the life and death of the second duke of Burgundy of the Valois line. Pretty much starting the civil war in France (Armagnacs vs Bourguignons), he made Burgundy an independent state focusing on the Low Countries rather than a backwater French duchy.
Also deals with the siege of Maastricht (1407-1408). Boy we got a lot of press.

Bestiary
By Richard Barber
Actually, Barber didn't write it himself; it's a republication of a thirteenth century bestiary in the Oxford Library collection. Includes full colour prints of all the images, apparently, and a translation of the text. I presume Richard Barber must have written the introduction or translated the stuff. I already have a book by him on the Black Prince, a rather different subject.

These are the principal books from Boydell and Brewer I would like to have; there's loads more interesting ones, for example a biography of Bertrand du Guesclin and a study of the Black Death, but those are ranked a little lower for me.
When I was in Donner (big bookstore in Rotterdam) last week I saw another few good books, so I might as well add them, too:

Broedertwist
By Peter Rietbergen & Tom Verschaffel (editors)
Uitgeverij Waanders
A collection of essays on the Belgian revolt and (cultural) relations between the Netherlands and Belgium. Nicely illustrated and with contributions from good historians. Overall, tempting.

Lodewijk Napoleon
By J. G. Kikkert
Uitgeverij Aspekt
A biography of the first king of the country, brother of Napoleon. Best king we've ever had. Bit worried I might know pretty much everything in it already, at least the political stuff, which is most interesting to me. Also, it appears there's another biography being published soon by the Walburg Pers, which might be of better quality.

Then there was a paperback on the naval history of Great Britain from about 1550 to 1850 or so, and how the navy contributed to the creation of the British Empire. It looked interesting and well researched, but I already have two books on more or less the same subject standing in my bookcase.

When it comes to books I already have, I'm currently reading a few. Principal one of them is The Princely Court, by Malcolm Vale. It describes the way the courts of England, Flanders, Artois and Hainault-Holland functioned and it tries to identify a Western European court culture. It's well written and very interesting, but at times a little dull – the chapter on liveries, for example, while quite interesting could be rather tough going. However I have learned some important things, such as that being a servant in Hainault-Holland yielded one the best liveries, although not terribly optimistic ones (they were all grey; must have been a lot of suicides during Winter).

I'm also reading, on the side, Froissart's Chronicles. This is of course a very very abbreviated translation, dealing primarily with the Hundred Years War, as it is an English publication, but it's good. Froissart's style of writing is really easy to follow and very lively; sadly he is not always reliable (historians still disagree on how much).

The Military Value of the Knight

2006-09-06T21:00:00.000+02:00

I was in an argument the other day over the value of knights in high and late medieval warfare. A not very well thought out post challenged my creativity and I wrote a short essay refuting all points made attacking the knights. I thought some might find this interesting, not just for any military history facts they might learn from it but also from knowing what keeps me busy from time to time.

I omit the opening paragraph, but if you're interested you can read the rest of the debate HERE

Military history is not a study of "What type of soldier is best" or "Who was the greatest general", subjects this forum seems to broach with alarming regularity. We are dealing with humans, and humans are fallible. They can be impetuous, frightened, sleepy, or drunk. They might be hungry, or cold. They are not machines that do the same thing over and over and get the same result every single time.
Nevertheless, it is reasonable to say that some weapons were more successful versus some other weapons. A mass of pikes or goedendags would be effective at keeping enemies at a safe distance - yet if their flank was turned or archers were brought to bear on them, they could falter.
An important aspect of war is psychology, and often the side that first loses its head also loses the struggle.

Looking at the 13th century, it is easy to conclude that knights were the dominant factor on the Western European battlefield. Yet this is somewhat misleading. Throughout France, Phillipe Augustus set up communes to stimulate the quality of his infantry, and by the time of Bouvines he was able to call upon over 7000 urban militia type men. Infantry was not being neglected; it was just inferior in social standing to the knights or even mercenaries and was considered less important - but important enough for Philippe II to invest in it on a massive scale.
The battle of Bouvines, which misplacedgeneral briefly describes as "mainly Knight Vs. Knight" was a struggle where the French infantry gave way under pressure. The urban militia was still young and not experienced enough to withstand assaults not only of Imperial knights, but also of Flemish and Brabançon footsoldiers, at that time perhaps the most experienced in Western Europe, having seen active service as mercenaries for a long time.
Nevertheless, it were the French knights who regained the initiative and won the battle, not due to honourary exploits or valour, but because of their discipline. The Imperials, who had been made to force-march to the battlefield, were tired and strung out, while the French were in close ranks. The better disciplined French therefore broke through the enemy cavalry, and though a Brabançon schiltron formed and protected the fleeing Imperials, they too were run down by the French.
It was therefore a real victory where one side was outclassed by the other, not just a battle of attrition; many more victories such as these can be summed up, such as Muret, Lewes, Evesham, the Marchfeld, Worringen, Baesweiler, Ravenstein, Straelen, Montlhéry, etc etc. In all these knights were the victors thanks to superior discipline and drill.

There are too many battles mentioned to discuss them all, but actually many of misplaced's battles underline the importance of knights. Poitiers, for example is a prime example of knights winning; it wasn't a clear-cut longbow vs mounted knight battle, as people like to see; on the contrary. All but the first wave of the French army fought on foot, and the principal fighting force on the English side were not their longbowmen, but rather their Anglo-Gascon knights and men-at-arms. The single most decisive moment of the battle was actually caused by mounted knights, when the Captal de Buch with a group of mounted men-at-arms flanked the French attacking army and brought them into disarray. After this, the battle became a melee struggle where eventually the French king and his bold son Philippe surrendered - to a knight, Sir Denis de Morbecque.
This battle serves to underline the importance of knights in combat - their very versatility was what made them so valuable. Being able to conduct both mounted and infantry actions, as well as being well-trained in the martial arts, they were the elite of the army.
Another point not touched upon here is that many of the victories mentioned here were reversed. Kortrijk (not Courtrai; the Flemish won, at least show them the honour of using the actual placename rather than the French one) was followed by Mons-en-Pévèle, Kassel and Westrozebeeke; after Bannockburn came Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill. The knights learned how to face these opponents and adjusted their tactics.

The English army during the Hundred Years War is used by the author to underline the point that the knight was fading. But he wasn't; society was changing, and this change was reflected in the composition of the army. The English army was a brutally effective combination of the knightly class with the middle class longbowmen (and billmen, to a lesser extent), and the result of a simultaneous peak of both upper and middle class society. French society peaked earlier, and only the upper class really peaked, making the French armies much more vulnerable; Flemish society had a smaller upper class and there the urban middle class was most successful. The Flemish case makes a good point as to how no single class can be effective on its own: after Kortrijk, their army was defeated by knights at Kassel and Westrozebeeke, suffering massive casualties; the Liège militia suffered the same fate at Othée.

The only point the author makes that stands is that knights alone could not win a battle, but surely this is common sense?

Books More Interesting Than Weather, Report Says

2006-09-01T12:45:00.000+02:00

Apparently we’ve just had the wettest August in recorded weather history, an average of 185mm of rain drowning our lands (to a normal standard of about 60mm in the same month); in some areas, even the 300mm rain mark was passed. It was colder than normal, too, with something like 16 degrees C to 17 C standards. If only El Niño were still around, then we could blame it all on him!

While my agenda has been fairly occupied each day for the past two weeks, there’s really not all that much to tell about it all. I baby-sat three times now, last time being yesterday evening, which made me a little money on the side for very little work. The three children are getting used to me, and I’ve only heard “We want a girl baby-sit!” once, on the first night, when I was having some difficulty getting them to sleep.

Also, I finished Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales a few days ago, which was a good read, for the most part. The tale of saint Cecilia (The Second Nun’s Tale) has to be one of the worst stories I’ve ever read, though, and that in pretty poor rhyme, too. A bad way to conclude any book, but luckily the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale made up for it by giving a very interesting insight into alchemy and conmen. The rest were quite well written, though the stories not always as appealing, and some were a bit tedious. I didn’t mind the Squire’s Tale being cut halfway through, for example.

I’ll be away this weekend, as we’ll be planning the program for Tafelstraat for the coming year. For my own reading, I’ll be bringing “The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe (1270-1380)” by Malcolm Vale. It’s a very good read, and even the financial aspect, which I’m dealing with now, is interesting.
For some lighter entertainment, a very abridged English translation of Froissart’s Chroniques will be coming with me, too. Good ol’ 14th Century.

Now I'm learning about wet.

2006-08-25T15:22:00.000+02:00

For over a week now the clouds have been drifting over the country, making the weather unpredictable and generally wet, so apart from last weekend – more on that later – I have been mostly inside, getting to know my new housemates (all my old ones moved out, is that a hint?) and helping to start up Tafelstraat again now that the holidays are in the past.
As to my new housemates, they’re not a very varied bunch. One of them hasn’t arrived yet, but I already know that he, like the other three, is employed at Chateau Neercanne, the castle next to my house. They’ve all had education and experience of some sort in working at restaurants, and so thus far the conversations have mostly been about that. Which is, to be frank, duller than Braudel’s theory of the Secular Trend of history. One of them also has a tendency of boasting about his 125 DVD collection, which is a bit unimpressive.

As that’s about all there is to tell about them, I’ll return to the topic of the wet weather and recount the family day I had last Saturday in Wassenaar. Wassenaar is a town near The Hague where mostly rich people live, and so does a far-off branch of my family (it was the birthday of the widow of my father’s mother’s brother, if you follow).
My dad and I took the train to The Hague and there met up with my uncle and aunt and then walked over the beach to Wassenaar, a walk of perhaps 5-6 km. It went relatively slowly, because walking through the sand takes ages. The beach is not my favourite place to be, as the sight quickly bores me. There are dunes on one side, endless sea on the other and sand in between. Luckily there were seabirds to distract us, and we particularly saw the Nordic Stern in all its glory.
The family day was from 14:00-17:00, cleverly avoiding both lunch and dinner (there is a reason rich people stay rich) and so, as the weather was fair, we decided to walk back again, this time through the dunes, for some variation. This route, however, was somewhat lengthier.
Two-thirds through, the inevitable happened, and it started raining like mad. I only had a light coat with me – and a hat – and it proved most insufficient. In about fifteen minutes my coat had taken all it could and I got soaked through and through. However, my hat was of better quality than I had expected. My hair stayed dry throughout the ordeal. My right ankle also started hurting more and more and as there is no alternative means of transport in the dunes, the last trek was hell, with an ache at every step and double the weight (thank to all the water in my clothes).
Perhaps the three hours back home in public transport were even worse, as I was soaked to the bone and the trains were freezing. Luckily I had brought a spare vest, which had stayed dry in my bag, and my dad helpfully borrowed me his coat, which had stayed dry.

And yesterday I had to baby-sit four children, perhaps more on that later.

Terror of the Bed Bugs

2006-08-03T19:48:00.000+02:00

Deep down in the mattress of an insignificant bed a great power is amassing its strength...
Counting its days, an invincible army has been nurtured...
Within hours, thousands will have fallen victim to this force, which aims not at installing democracy or deposing dictators, but fights only for complete and utter BED DOMINATION.

And queue another mindless National Geographic documentary about supposedly terrible insects or other animals. Insects are best, though, because they're not terribly feared and they're all around us, so, for all we know, they could be slowly infiltrating our society until the day of doom approaches and they'll turn us all into mindless ant drones after gnawing through the parts of our brain that allow for freedom of thought.

Yes, the past few weeks I have watched too much tv, and the first thing that leapt to mind was, why on earth is NGC considered a science channel? Most of their programs are rubbish, having either to do with long debunked complots ("The Templars knew the TRUTH! This grey haired man can explain why using a piece of paper and a model of the Titanic built with match sticks."), air crashes ("Not scared of travelling yet? Wait for the next installment of 'Crash, Burn, Horrible Death', up next!"), or aggressive animals ("The squirrel looks like a peaceful animal, but secretly he is building up a massive ammunition base of nuts. Will we as a nation finds these WMDs in time, or will armageddon dawn? Let's blame the UN for not taking action sooner.").

BBC 1 and 2 have higher scientific standards, to be honest, which is quite a feat considering most of their airtime is used broadcasting auction shows, cooking programmes, and ballroom dancing. Ah well.

Monarchy: For or Against?

2006-07-31T16:03:00.000+02:00

Last week a Niniane asked me whether I was in favour of the monarchy. Now, when I think of our royal family, the first thing that springs to mind is them wrecking our economy and being mindless autocrats from about 1640-1900, so obviously I answered no. We've had no good male Oranges since Frederik Hendrik (although admittedly Willem III is debatable; but I personally tend to dislike him for undermining the navy and thus the economic motor behind the Republic). It's only been since Wilhelmina that we've had good rulers, but these had relatively little power so I find it hard to judge whether they would not have lapsed into the same errors as their ancestors had they been full-fledged rulers.

It turned out that Niniane is slightly more up-to-date than I am, and thought that the behaviour of kings in the 19th century has little to do with how we should value the monarchical institution today. This made me realise how important history is to my perception of reality. Not to say that I am always thinking of history, or how things would compare, but the historical "inheritance" does concern me.

The monarchy has to principal defensive arguments: firstly, it binds the nation together through a single monarchical figure, and secondly, more formally, the monarch has the right to appoint the person who forms the cabinet. The first part obviously has the most importance, because the second part can more easily be replaced, for example by letting parliament appoint this so-called informateur.
The role of the monarch as figurehead is, however, in my opinion debatable. The monarch is generally far removed from the ordinary citizen, as her accent and expensive hats quickly make clear, and can actually become object of popular scorn, herself, as happened with Elizabeth II after the death of Diana.

I am personally opposed to the idea of a president based on the model of the US. I do not want power struggles between parliament and head of state, with either sides trying to grab as much power as possible and treating politics as a playground.
What I do not oppose, however, is a president such as they have in Germany or France: here, the president, usually a retired politician, is purely head of state, not head of government as well, and has simply a ceremonial function, apart from being a central point for the country in case of emergency. This would save a lot of money annually.

I was going to write a paragraph here about the great historical value of keeping the monarchy, as a counter-argument to the previous sentences, but I discovered I can't do that without causing my brain to implode. After all, the Orange family was never monarchical in origin, nor were they granted this position by the people; they were thrust upon the country by foreign powers during the Congress of Vienna (1815) and not by popular support. To maintain that they should still be Kings and Queens because this was historically the case is therefore a fairly weak reason, and also a bit pointless; when time passes, things change.

Ah, if only Louis the Good was still our king!

The World is Flat

2006-07-23T19:48:00.000+02:00

Finally, after perhaps an entire week filled with a sweltering sun, yesterday we had rain. Although the air is humid now, the temperature is slightly lower, which makes it all a bit more bearable.

Today, while walking the dogs (photo coming soon), I came across a flattened frog on the road. Flat animals gave me massive trauma when I was little, and this poor frog brought them all back up again. The bastard!

When I was a child I was very curious concerning nature, and would often study the ground to see interesting rocks or twigs or animals. Once, I came across what appeared to me to be wood or a similarly hard material. It had a curious shape and I picked it up to show it to my parents, proudly proclaiming that I had found something which looked funnily similar to a frog! Shock, horror, and tears followed soon after when I was explained it was a frog, just... flat.

This story is nothing compared to the time I discovered a very realistic cardboard rat on the street... Suffice it to say I washed my hands at least ten times within an hour after that encounter.

Holidays

2006-07-20T10:21:00.000+02:00

Because my parents are currently on holiday, I am now in possession of a house. Two houses, actually, as friends of us are also away and I'm watching over their house, dog and plants as well. This is fairly uneventful, so I've been spending my time reading, watching TV or films and of course walking dogs. I took a picture of Arwen and Boris (the two dogs I'm looking after at the moment, the first one my own) and will scan and upload it fairly soon. While they're very different dogs, they fit together quite well as they're both black and white.
Thanks to the heat, none of the walks have been very long or memorable, although there's no problem with Boris, who is usually fairly aggressive towards other dogs, because there's simply not that many dogs being walked at any time. People make shorter walks, so the slightly off-beat paths I'm taking are nearly always deserted.

Last Saturday I went to Friesland for a family reunion, which was very good. Friesland is a nice province, sort of like North Holland but with more lakes and ships and a funny language. We went to Sneek/Snits (the city's Frisian name), a very nice place with an old feel to it. Seeing as basically none of us were real Frisians, there was much touristy behaviour, which included acquiring the top two local products, Oranjekoeken and sugarloaves. They tasted excellent, which, together with the company, made up for spending 8 hours of the day in a train.

Message from the Void

2006-07-07T21:13:00.000+02:00

Nothing much has happened at all in the past couple of days; at least, nothing much worth recounting. I did some digging and discovered what species the firefly I recently saw belongs to, namely the “grote glimworm” (the common glow-worm), the single most common firefly in the Netherlands and Belgium (there are two other species of firefly here). You can see a picture HERE. That is exactly what I saw.

I also got a flat tyre in the middle of town on Monday and then walked a few kilometres through the scorching sun to my parents, who have a reserve bike. On the way I dropped my bike off in front of a closed bicycle repair store, where I brought it for repair the following day. I intended to pick it up again on Wednesday but apparently the store is closed Wednesday afternoons, so it wasn't until Thursday that I finally go my bike back.
In retrospect it would have been a much better plan to have walked the bike to the train station’s bicycle repair shop, which is open pretty much all the time, and from there taken the bus to my parents. Not only would it have meant I’d get my bike back much sooner, I also would have saved myself the long walk because I was closer to the station than to my parents when I got a flat tyre (it would have saved me a kilometre). Ah well.

Also, on the BBC they have a wonderful slide show with photos of some rare frogs. Very nice pictures.

Fireflies and Photographs

2006-06-30T12:25:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday night, as I was cycling home to Kanne over the Muizenberg, with a wooded slope downwards on my right hand, a grassy side on my left and the black night sky above me, I suddenly saw a tiny bright clear green light among the grass, the size of a dot, the same colour as many electrical devices use.
At such a peculiarity I stopped and turned around to find it. Rather than discovering a mobile phone or similar, I realised it was actually a strange sort of fly. Disconnecting the rear light of my bicycle, I used it to examine the creature as best as possible under red light. It was about the size of a wasp, with clearly defined scales running over its body, and the last three of these on his tummy side were fluorescent green. It was hard to make out the animal very well under the light, particularly as it was clutching to the grass; it stuck to its station throughout, even when I touched it with my bicycle light. Unable to look at it any better, I continued my journey, but I did notice two further fluorescent green lights among the foliage when I went. I think it may be mating season for this insect, though, and the fluorescent arse serves as a sort of beacon to attract others. Alternatively, this particular insect was just resting and apparently so retarded he did not realise you’re easily noticeable if your arse glows in the dark and you’re in the nip.

On a different note, I’ve managed to acquire some pictures of the Pleinweekend in May, in other words the trip to Drenthe. I’ll include a very few of them here; there’s lots more but I had to make a selection, and I picked those which pictured the mood best as well as featuring myself. My own pictures still haven’t developed; as it’s an old, analogue, camera, I still need to shoot a few more photos to fill up the roll. There are photos of a partridge, though. I know you’re all waiting in anticipation for those.

I'm sure it was that way.

Tea

Touring the canals of Drenthe.

Group photo

Also, the cabinet has fallen! Let’s hope for swift elections so we can put right that bloody mess we’re currently left with. Force the eejits of LPF out, for a start. And get a more socially-minded government.

Ghelrelant

2006-06-23T16:36:00.000+02:00

Last Monday I made a trip north together with my dad to visit my grandfather, who lives in a home for the elderly in Wezep, in the northern tip of the fair province of Guelders. We travelled to Zwolle by train (actually in Overijssel) where we hired bicycles so we could travel the distance to Wezep in a more entertaining way. After crossing the IJssel (at that point the border between Overijssel and Guelders) by ferry, we travelled to Hattem, a cosy old town (perhaps too cosy) that actually is a city, but with its size would only qualify as a village nowadays.
There was a fair bit of its history still present, including the fierce and, err, in this case horny lion of Guelders proudly displayed on many coats-of-arms on various buildings. A city gate survived, but it was in a terrible state, having been renovated in the 19th century by the Cuypers family, whose views on medieval architecture disagreed entirely with those of medieval people. They thought it great to give the gate tall spires that did nothing to boost its defensive strength. Two roads away from there, we stumbled across the remains of the castle of Hattem, founded by Reinald IV and completed somewhere in 1408-9, and destroyed by the French during their 1672 invasion. Paradoxically, the destruction of the place had probably saved it from total annihilation by Cuypers and scions, and the small sally gate and remaining tower were absolutely charming. In fact, in an emotional moment I even hugged the gate when I discovered it was named after general Daendels, who apparently wooed his wife there. Not that anyone still knows who Daendels was. *sigh*

On the way back from Wezep to Zwolle we made a further detour, in stead heading north, cycling through the rich agricultural plain where innumerable small canals make their way to the horizon. Apparently there had been some late cold in this region, as many birds had rather young chicks, which is very late in the season.
I spotted a great crested grebe, who turned out to have about three chicks on her back, as they are known to do. We halted for a bit to observe her, when, all of a sudden, the alarmed grebe dived – with chicks still on her back! A few seconds later, one of the chicks popped up, much like a barrel after a shipwreck, and then another came, twenty cm away from the first. The mother appeared perhaps two metres distant from them, one of the chicks somewhat miraculously still being proudly seated on her back. That was certainly an odd thing to behold.

In Procession

2006-06-21T14:40:00.000+02:00

The exciting adventures that happen in my usually quiet Belgian village have made their way onto this blog a few times already; here’s another possibly interesting event to add to the batch.

On Sunday morning I woke up to the intermittent music of herremeniekes, or, basically, village orchestras, consisting mostly of brass instruments. They were playing some festive tunes of not exactly outstanding quality. I went to the bathroom, then back upstairs I noticed we had received a message, probably on Friday, about there being a harbour festival in the small yaughting harbour of the village, during the entire weekend. Including Zodragekla! Whatever the hell that may be.

Whether this actually had anything to do with the yaughting or not, there was a procession which passed by right in front (or behind, depending how you look at it) our house. I had never seen a procession before so I watched the entire group, but I have to say I wasn’t terribly impressed.
At the head of the procession was a man in every day clothing carrying a tall cross, followed by a man in very different every day clothing – including silly hat – carrying a large flag with some sort of logo and text I could not decipher. Then came a herremenieke, which had never previously attempted to march in step, and therefore failed badly, followed by another flag. This was a good flag, the only one in the entire procession to look respectful, and it was basically a heavily decorated Belgian flag. Then came a group of little children clad in blue dresses, followed by elderly women in white dresses, and then, what everyone had been waiting for, four blokes carrying on their shoulders a sort of roofed platform with a statue of Mary. The statue looked like it had been made out of papier-mâché, and the poles supporting the platform roof looked suspiciously like plastic broomstick handles. I can only congratulate the four men who carried this travesty, because they kept looking serious and important throughout, no small feat with such a platform.
Obviously behind this important statue came the obligatory pious followers, and there were about thirty of them. They looked very pious in between the looking through windows and talking about parked cars.
At a suitable distance followed a priest carrying a monstrance with two elderly altar boys, who were very enthusiastic with waving the incense. Behind them came another priest, under a sort of roof on wheels, carrying what I presumed was probably a relic. There were various altar boys around carrying torches, too.
And that was the end of the procession.

I have a hunch that apart from the procession and the harbour festival, there is also a meeting day for people who own minis. I have seen over a dozen. Ah, Neerkanne. Life never gets dull here.

Why Bicycles are Better than Cars

2006-06-06T18:05:00.000+02:00

On Monday morning I woke up to the noise of a lot of people chattering and moving about outside. I realised I must have overslept, and the fair – basically lots of local people offering their useless stuff for sale – had already started. I groaned and sat up to look at the clock, opposite my bed on a bookshelf. I stared at some amazement at it, then realised it had decided to stop making sense and perhaps applied a twenty hour a day time system, so I turned to the left, to look at my digital CD/radio clock near the window.
Sadly enough, this one displayed the exact same time, and although for a moment I did play with the thought of getting out of bed, starting up my pc and checking what time that would give me, I decided the chances of both my clocks, one digital and the other battery-run, malfunctioning at exactly the same time to exactly the same result, was practically nil. So I turned on to my other side and slept for over an hour before I woke up again at 7:15. The hubbub outside had only increased in volume, yet stubbornly I persisted in my dormant strategy. I got another hour of sleep before deciding I’d had enough and taking a shower.
As the fair was going on right in front of my window, which is on ground level, I decided to keep the curtains half closed so I would have some fragment of privacy left to me. Despite it only being about 8:30 then, there were quite a lot of visitors already. As I would be going on a cycling trip with some of my friends at 14:00, I had breakfast, made some preparations, cleaned up my room and had lunch. I then prepared two further sandwiches (in case I would get hungry on the road), prepared 3 bottles of water totalling 1,5 litres (taking the eventuality into account that other cyclists would have forgotten to bring along their own drink) and left at about 13:30. When I got outside the pandemonium of the situation became clear to me in all its grotesque misery: the vast majority of the eejits attending the fair had thought it necessary to go by car, despite the splendid weather and the fact that there are only about three narrow roads leading into Kanne and as many public parking spaces.
As I cycled to Maastricht, the entire road, from my house to the outskirts of the city, was absolutely crammed with cars in single line, standing motionless, waiting for someone to start moving, the air heavy and unstable from the exhaust fumes.
There were a number of fields, normally used for grazing cattle, now reserved for the iron horse, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough. All along the track, people on foot and on bicycle were trying to get to the small village, yet it was thanks to the lazy bastards in cars that their progress, too, was significantly hampered.
Sadly, the route that we would be cycling that day was also starting us off through Kanne; luckily, due to us deciding to go cross-country over the Sint Pieter, we avoided the vast mass of ignorant car-drivers and unfortunate pedestrians and cyclists. The trip from then on was fun, but tiring, as there were a few significant climbs and a beaming sun. Nevertheless, the weather was as good as we could have wished for, so it was a success in the end.

Time Flies

2006-06-03T20:55:00.000+02:00

Not all that much happened in the past period, apart from study work. I've also been reading "In the Shadow of Burgundy" again, a study on court culture in Guelders from about 1380 to 1500. It is a wonderfully detailed book, divided in three parts. I had finished the first part (on court finances, education, job posts and the day-to-day happenings at court) a few months ago. I picked up the book again early on in the week and yesterday I finished the second part (on the arts: literature and the spoken words, visual and applied arts, etc) and today I started part three (on the way the culture at court benefitted or affected the position of the lands governed by the Dukes of Guelders, and vice versa). It is hugely interesting; I am often surprised by how interesting seemingly dull cultural subjects can be. Two years ago, when in Kleve (a German city and medieval Duchy bordering Guelders), I bought a book on literature at the court of Kleve from 1100-1600, and am using it for comparison. The book is referenced to quite regularly in In the Shadow of Burgundy.

Fun fact: In the 1290's, nearly 30% of the household expenses of the Counts of Flanders was spent on wine. Nearly 1% was spent on waffles (although it's not much, I'm surprised waffles were accounted for seperately; but then again, this is Belgium after all).

Gone Camping

2006-05-24T19:40:00.000+02:00

And back already. The weekend of 13/14 May I went camping with a group from Tafelstraat. It was rather a lot of fun. This was no real out in the wild camping trip, however; there were no grizzly bears lurking in the woods, hungry wolves stalking majestic elks on the plains, imperial eagles (two-headed, presumably?) snatching fish from the wild rivers. This was because we were camping in Elleke’s backyard, and her family has a conservative approach to keeping pets (apparently, one land owner in Scotland wishes to set loose wolves and brown bears in his domains, but he is not being encouraged by the locals).

The weather was rather good, and we were lucky, as there was rain all over the country whereas we only had one shower during the night. We made quite a long walk, just under 20 km, over long and narrow lanes past long and narrow canals lined with trees, which gave it all a certain… predictability. The following day we went canoeing, something I hadn’t done since I was 6. This was not exactly comparable to canoeing in the Ardennes, mastering the wild water flow and going at tremendous speeds down waterfalls; no, as this was Drenthe, there was no wild water unless the wind got particularly fierce, so we canoed down a, err, long and narrow canal. Lined with trees etc.

Despite lacking any real experience with canoes, the canoeing went pretty well. Martijn and Ivan were also in my canoe, with Martijn being the only one with any experience. We started out with myself at the front, Ivan in the centre and Martijn in the back, though halfway through Martijn and Ivan switched around and we seemed to be going faster then. Our canoe was the last out of four to leave the riverside, but we were quickly on our way to get to the front. Curiously enough, the last canoe to leave before us, staffed with only Niniane and Germa, was doing better than any of the others, both of which had three rowers, going first after a bit of a chase with the other two. But we eventually managed to paddle beside them and a tense match followed that would probably make Oxford and Cambridge proud. During the race, Niniane lost her paddle, but I managed to grab it from the water and handed it back to her, ruining both our chances at success as moments later both canoes hit the opposite banks of the river. One of the other two canoes then took over and we could start all over again, though I can reassure the regular readers with the news that in the end our canoe got to the turn-around point first, in fact with enough time for us to orderly turn our canoe around and still wait for two minutes while the others came on.
Oh, and I also saw two grey partridges, a pheasant and a kiekendief. Sadly I am too lazy a person to look up its English name, but I’m fairly sure it was Barry (har har, pun!).

Clash of Cultures?

2006-05-05T15:33:00.000+02:00

I went to the provincial Dodenherdenking on the Koningsplein in Maastricht yesterday, where the victims of war and violence are commemorated.
Was a bit odd; quite a lot of it was below expected quality, imo. The male choir was terrible (apart from singing only songs about Jesus, the choir consisted of long retired blokes who hadn't had proper vocal training in a decade. It was truly atrocious. They even made elementary errors in the anthem!), the opening speech was also bad (the basic "The young people are forgetting the people who died" etc, while a survey had actually revealed yesterday that 89% of Dutch youth knows what 4 May is all about), and rather than having the two minute silence announced with a trumpet playing the Last Post, as at the national commemoration, they just said "Let us now have two minutes silence.", much less impressive. The silence was also not entirely silent as the sound machines were making a constant noise (the rest of the area was as silent as you could expect the busiest car roundabout in the city to be). The main speaker actually broke the silence near the end by thumbing through the pages of his speech.
Next year I'll just watch the national commemoration on tv. At least in Amsterdam they now how to organise events like these.

To get to the title subject: I just want to vent my anger at Limburg-bashers.
The insults Limburg gets are largely unfair, and the result of what I can only describe as "Hollandism", the behaviour of the west-Dutch population of desiring the entire country to be a Holland-clone. It is that part of the country that does not oppose to the Netherlands being called Holland, as they truly do not realise the two are not the same.
The most oft-heard complaints are basically that the majority of Limburgers - or Mestreechters - will never leave their city, can't speak ABN ("generally civilised Dutch") and are rude to students and northerners, branding all Dutch people not from Limburg as "Hollanders". While all these are true, to some extent, it is necessary to put them into their proper perspective. I'll deal with them point by point.

Mestreechters never leave their city
This is certainly true. Most people from Maastricht will not move to another city, let alone province, in their lifetime. But is this truly unique? Is it really any different in Rotterdam or Amsterdam, Middelburg or Utrecht? Are Groningen and Deventer paragons of mobility?
I think not. My experiences in the Randstad and Maastricht have taught me that the mobile social groups in society are the higher-educated people, students, businessmen, teachers, ministers, etc. The average person, however, is unlikely to move often. They live with their parents, move out, then often stay there for the rest of their lives.

They can't speak ABN
True for many. They don't really need it, though, because everyone but students and uni personnel speaks Mestreechts. Still though, most older store employees and waitresses/waiters will need to speak ABN to a certain degree. And they do. Again, I don't think this is different from any other area where a strong cultural identity, reinforced with a unique dialect or even language, are present.

They're rude, and call all northerners Hollander
This is the result of a century and a half of national policy. Firstly, they're not all that rude. I worked in a supermarket for two years and was often approached by people who started speaking Mestreechs to me, which I understand but always answer in Dutch, as I can't speak it without make a fool out of myself. I have never been offended over being unable to speak the language in that period. I know of people who have been - but they are more "Hollander" than I am. I'm not the type to look angrily or raise an eyebrow at Mestreechters for not speaking Dutch, or for making sarcastic comments about Limburgers in their presence. My hard "g" has been all but chiselled away after seven years of living in the south. I think that has a lot to do with it.

However, all these problems are magnified times ten because of the cultural difference. When a person who speaks dialect stays in the same city his entire life-time, it somehow seems more close-minded than a Rotterdammer never leaving his city. The Rotterdammer doesn't speak ABN either - however, his dialect is so much more similar to ABN than is Mestreechs or Limburgs, that it doesn't stand out as much. It seems normal. Yet he is making the same "error" - if staying in one city can be described like that.
Until 1980 or '90 Western European states tried to curb the cultural identities in their countries apart from the one, single, unifying culture. In the Netherlands, the country was based on Holland; in the UK, mostly on England (I heard it was even forbidden to give children names in Scottish Gaelic until the mid-nineties); in Spain, Castile was the ideal, whereas France still has very little recognition - if any - for its cultural minorities, like the Bretons, the Flemish, the Gascons and the people of the Languedoc.
The result of this is that there is quite some dislike of cultural minorities to what used to be the national centre. The irony is that many Limburgers are now applying it backwards - anyone not from Limburg is a Hollander. They themselves have been thus won over that Holland is the identity of the Netherlands, and consider only themselves as different. What they do not realise, which is imo their greatest flaw, is that all provinces have their own identity. Gelderland and Friesland are Hollands as much as Limburg is, or rather isn't.
It is not a sin to accept that countries are not one culture but rather a coincidental combination of many, bound together by borders, a set of laws, and, in most instances, at least some common history. However, the fact that the Middle Ages in the Low Countries were spent with Holland fighting Utrecht, Guelders invading Brabant and Friesland raiding Holland, is largely overlooked. Guelders was once more similar to Kleve (Germany) than to Holland, and Kleve more like Guelders than like Brandenburg.
Regionalism is not a bad thing. Rather, it can re-affirm the complexity of the nation-state and how a wonderful series of events brought it all together. If anything, it should give us more grounds to admire the past and continue to work for a better country. With room for all cultures within.

Busy week

2006-05-02T12:20:00.000+02:00

The past week was very busy, as I already told you a little about in my previous post. The biggest event, however, was on Saturday, when my parents celebrated their silver marriage anniversary. 25 years of marriage is not something to just pass by, with many people apparently trying to marry 25 times in just one year.

We celebrated by inviting lots of people - old friends as well as new. Many came, from all over the country. My parents have moved quite a bit, and so have their friends, so there were people coming from many different provinces. Yes, even from abroad! <-- Actually, that is cheating, as the only people from abroad were my aunt and uncle from Belgium. Ah well.

So, I talked with many people, preferring those from far away and along ago. Lots of things to catch up with. In the background we had a beamer displaying photo's of the 25 years on a screen. It was very nice, and always good to keep conversations going. Plenty of new photographs were made, too, and I might post some of those later on. I still have a batch of November photographs waiting to be scanned in - showing the Kannerforest as well as the Line of Du Moulin, in snow.

Of busy schedules, bonny princes and passing mice

2006-04-28T16:38:00.000+02:00

I intend to keep posting new entries to my blog with some regularity, so I was not entirely happy to have been unable to update it at all since last Saturday. In fact, this is because I have been rather busy. I’ve only been online since then on Monday and Wednesday, and while I had some time on Monday, on Wednesday it was hardly an hour. I was busy enough just checking my email and a variety of websites. My defence done, I’ll tell you a little about the amazing adventures of the past time.
Ironically, I was also unable to post this on my blog the day I wrote it (Thursday). So all references to yesterday refer to the day before yesterday, etc.

Yesterday there was a lecture by the Limburg branch of the Netherlands-England society in Hotel l’Empereur (in the Marie-Louise hall of which they have three – I thought this rather ironic, as if Napoleon had married three of them. Nevertheless, it probably would have been worse if they named the halls after the various mistresses and wives Napoleon had – Marie-Louise would have disliked that even more) The lecture was by British retired historian John Sutton, of Cambridge Uni. His speech was about the private life of Bonny Prince Charlie, particularly the affair he had with his married cousin Marie-Louise de la Tour, and how this affected his life.
The speech was held with great eloquence, and mostly without reference papers, apart from copies of some of the love letters between Charles and Marie-Louise, which John Sutton and his wife read out. There was a lot of humour in the story, as well as tragedy, and it made for a great evening. He began with asking the public what they knew of Charles. Normally I like listening to the strange and incorrect presumptions of other people, but as nobody dared speak I raised my hand and gave a brief run-down of Charles’ two years of fame – invaded Scotland, rallied the Highland clansmen, invaded England, turned around, beaten at Culloden, fled the country. Sutton was quite amazed, as was the audience, as apparently normally even in the UK people don’t know that much about him. Afterwards lots of people asked me whether I read a lot about the Jacobites, but truth be told, I haven’t read a single dedicated book on them. I just happen to remember things rather easily, and as I have read a lot about the Eighteenth Century, I’ve come across references to him regularly enough. If I had read up about the Jacobites, I would’ve known more facts, like that Charles had a younger brother (Henry Benedict) who became a cardinal and was the last Jacobite claimant to die. I suppose general history knowledge is not really widespread in our society, that one can suddenly be viewed as Jacobite expert without real reason.
I learned a great deal of interesting things. The two things that stood out most were Charles’ love letters and his vanity.
While Marie-Louise’s letters were passionate and very pleading, Charles’ went something along the lines of this:
“I have received your letter.
I found it very disagreeable.
I will be at the rendezvous at the agreed time.
Perhaps it will be the last time I’ll bother visiting you.
Adieu.”
It was simply absurd – perhaps one commands soldiers like this, but if he really was in love with her (and all points to this being the case) you would’ve expected some compassion.
As to his vanity, Charles Edward made frequent visits to the Paris opera because, after his return from the UK, he had become something of a celebrity. He was wildly popular, and whenever he was at the opera people would applaud and cheer him. However, in 1748, following the Peace of Aachen, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession, Louis XV was expected to throw out Charles. Charles heard of this and barricaded himself in his house. This would have been fine, if it had not been for his vanity – Charles still went to the Opera, and one night, hardly surprising, five French sergeants waited for him, tied him up with silk rope and carried him off, to deport him. What a beginner’s mistake!
Earlier on, during his passionate affair with Marie-Louise, he had been paying visits to her Paris house in the middle of the night. A mysterious person travelling from the suburbs to the centre of town at about 3:00 in the morning being unusual, the city guards were quickly suspicious. They alarmed the government, who suspected it might be a spy or assassin – out to kill prince Charles! They did the only feasible thing: place guards around his house to protect him.
However, this frustrated his plans to visit Marie-Louise, and he then played a sort of spy-game. Parking his coach at unexpected places, he would take unknown routes, often through houses, to get to it, shaking off the city guards in pursuit. Alternatively, he could’ve just told the French he was the suspected assassin, and he therefore needed no protection. Ah well. Games are games.
I need only end this on the sad note that Charles became a serious drunkard, rather confused in the head, and died a very miserable death in Italy.

Now it’s time for the real story you have all been waiting for. I can already hear the impatient cries: “Kor, Kor! When will we hear about the passing mice?” I now have a confession to make: there actually was only one passing mouse (like there was only one bonny prince). But I shall tell you anyway.
“Hurrah!”
A few weeks ago I was cycling on the Tongerseweg, basically where it crosses the Albertcanal to Vroenhoven. This is a very busy road, with cycling strips and houses on either side. I was cycling north, in the direction of Maastricht, when I noticed a number of grey leaves on the cycling strip. When I looked closely, as I passed them, I noticed that one of them was not a leaf but a tiny tiny field mouse. It hurried along its way, but rather than just walking on all fours, it sort of jumped. Very small leaps, of course, but it looked a bit odd. What was even odder was that it was walking towards the road.
I looked on in horror as the mouse was approaching the lane where two cars were speeding towards it. The mouse stopped in time, and waited until they were past. Then it hopped on to the middle of the road, where it was of course relatively safe. Now two cars were approaching from the other direction, but the mouse saw them coming and stopped. The cars passed mere centimetres from the tiny creature, but to my amazement, it had not been sucked up by the speed of the cars and sucked into their wheels. It still sat there on the asphalt! Now the road was clear again, it quietly hopped over to the other side.
Mice are so clever. They don’t even need traffic lights like us eejit humans.

I have returned

2006-04-22T08:19:00.000+02:00

Now the traditional four and a half months of mourning for Charles have passed, I can once again post on my blog to spread my messages of great wisdom and insight. Today's issue is the top five of how to annoy Europeans.

How to annoy Europeans

5. Pretend you're a suicide bomber on one of our trains
Seriously, we don't like that at all.

4. Watch the Eurovision Song Contest, then try to have a discussion on which song was best
All the songs need to be destroyed (how you destroy a song, however, is beyond me, but surely the smart folks at NASA have thought something up?) and are not worthy of intelligent conversation, except perhaps about which one should be destroyed first. Apparently the show also gets transmitted on other continents. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all non-Europeans for possibly having been a victim of this terrible excuse of a song show. Sorry.

3. Be a suicide bomber on one of our trains
We don't like this at all, either.

2. Tell other people you think the EU is a great institution
For years now, the European Union is a shunned and unpopular institution. People who do like it best remain silent about it in the presence of Europeans - that way it can't get out and sully their reputation. The British are opposed to it because it's run by the French and Germans, the French are opposed to it because it's mostly in English, the Germans dislike it because of the Euro, the Dutch dislike it because they now discovered they really aren't the centre of the EU after all, the eastern Europeans dislike it because they discovered it wasn't as exclusive and fun as they thought (much like a child buying a toy and then finding out it's not all it's hyped up to be). If the EU is discussed, it's wise to join in the "Eurocrats" and "Bloody Euro" subjects. Those always go well on parties.

1. Be from another continent yet claim you have a European nationality
No offense to other continents, but if people are from another continent, they're generally not European. This is particularly present in people from North America - Irish and Scottish being the traditional victims of these people's false nationalistic feelings, though every nation is in some way victimised.
It is quite remarkable to see people abroad think they're Irish just because they donate to the IRA or because their ancestors came from Ireland a century ago - surely, although one's ancestors are Irish, that doesn't mean someone a century later, who's never lived in Ireland for even a year, can claim Irish nationality? One might observe that, if anything, they're American.
The strangest thing about it all is the huge amount of national tradition these groups carry on, which tend to have nothing in common with the actual country they claim they're from. Take for example the Highland Games, which apparently is a feast day in North America - you won't find it in the same shape or form back in Scotland. The Saint Patrick's Day celebrations are also rather different in Ireland, and to claim that Halloween is based on the Irish Samhain is curious - although they happen on the same day, now they have so little in common Halloween might as well descend from the old Italian custom of dressing in a toga at a party. Or, basically, all the time.
Those old Italians certainly liked their togas.

So, if you go to Europe and have a distinct American accent (and please please please, don't try to imitate a Scottish or Irish accent) never ever ever say "Wow, that's cool, I'm Irish/Scottish/German/Dutch/Belgian/European, too! Let's talk about our common ancestry while I try and find the real authentic coat of arms of my undoubtedly noble family!"

In Memoriam

2006-01-05T15:39:00.000+01:00

In Memoriam Carolus Dux Burgundiae
5 January 1477 - 5 January 2006

Happy New Year, now back to the Trenches

2006-01-01T14:44:00.000+01:00

Happy new year, all three and a half readers of this blog! Yesterday I too celebrated the passing of one year and the, er, birth of a new one. May it last longer than its predecessor. I didn't uncork the champagne at home, though, and neither did my parents; and therefore it was only this morning that we discovered there was a sizeable crater in front of their house, and mud splattered on the windows and outer wall. Not just our house, too: there's mud on three or four in our street and most of the pavement was filthy, too.
It turns out a bunch of mad youths were firing off avalanche-rockets, whatever those may be, from half-buried positions in the ground. These apparently have enough strength to blast a crater and spatter blood, gore and mud all over the place. To the left of our house is a parking lot for the locals, and there's some more houses elevated on top of it, with a few concrete flower pots of 1m² to give it all a nice Soviet atmosphere. The young ones apparently thought it would be fun to fire the rocks from there as well, and what remains of one of those is not very pretty, and hardly able to contain flowers.
As is to be expected, it's other people who're doing the cleaning up now.

And not me either, obviously, as I'm writing this blog.

Tower of Babel

2005-12-23T20:36:00.000+01:00

I had a rather strange conversation on msn just now. A fellow with the email address cubrish@hotmail.com suddenly talked to me while I didn't have a clue who he or she was, and to be honest I didn't really understand much of what went on in the convo. The following happened (his incredibly long and unfunny screenname has been edited to be more accurate on his or her persona):

Mad person says:
quien eres?
Kor - Requiem for a pigeon - says:
Non parlo Español.
Mad person says:
*angry smiley*
Mad person says:
ok
Mad person says:
pasiencia
Mad person says:
where are from
Mad person says:
you
Kor - Requiem for a pigeon - says:
Netherlands.
Mad person says:
fuck you
Kor - Requiem for a pigeon - says:
Are all conversations like this where you're from?

This is where he blocked me. I am confused, though I am happy to have dealt ownage even when confusticated.

Requiem for a pigeon

2005-12-17T17:45:00.000+01:00

Today when I came to my parents' house I was told that Lotje, our pigeon was very ill. I took a look and noticed it, too. She was lying on the ground with her wings slightly opened up. She had her eyes closed, but when I came nearer she opened them. She was breathing heavily, her entire body going up and down with each breath. I stroked her, and her tiny head turned towards me. She seemed to enjoy it, and I continued it for a bit.

Two hours later she looked much worse. Her eyes were open, but in an unattentive way; she did not close them at any point. Her head lay in her neck, her beak nearly pointing backwards. Her wings were spread out as if in flight, and her body was upright, in stark contrast to her head. For perhaps an hour or two this continued, with the occassional extra heavy gasping and breathing, but we were convinced that she was nearly dead. She was, after all, 18 or so years old.

Then, when both my parents were otherwise occupied and I kept watch, she suddenly stirred. For a moment she seemed to have recovered and her head went back into normal position. But she was not awake, as her eyes still did not blink. Then, suddenly, she started flapping her wings. She aimed upwards, but had not the power to lift herself up. Still, she kept beating and beating her wings until she had pumped out all the air remaining in her lungs. Her head went backward and forward as it tried to collect more air to continue her flight, but each time she was weaker because of it. She finished her last flight.

And I cried.

An Ode to the President

2005-12-06T15:38:00.000+01:00

Apparently a Pakistani school textbook meant for English class included an ode to President Bush.
As usual clinging on to the latest trend, I have decided to write my own!

An Ode to the President

Should war ever threaten his beautiful land
He will heroically push the button with his hand
If soldiers will falter, his brave nukes will fly
To wreak down havoc on his foes from the sky
End

A Day in the Life of Black Peter

2005-12-06T12:55:00.000+01:00

So, yesterday we had a big Sinterklaas celebration with about twenty students attending. Sinterklaas (Sint Nicholas) is a Bishoply saint who visits the Netherlands each year to bring gifts and sweets to the good children, and bag the naughty children up to take them to Spain, where he spends the rest of the year. He is accompanied by a number of black servants, known as Zwarte Pieten (Black Peters).
On Sunday I was approached about wanting to play a part as one of the two Black Peters of this special occassion, and happily I said yes.
Martijn and Annemarie played the Sint and the other Piet, respectively, and we took about an hour chatting and getting dressed. We then left to go the Tafelstraat, where the celebration was being held, a few blocks away from Martijn's - sorry, the Sint's apartment.

I must admit I hadn't expected the popularity of the feast to be this big, yet I grew up with it and celebrated it as a child each year: wherever we went, dressed up as we were (in professional costumes, we did look the part) people greeted us and got big smiles on their faces. People were waving at us from behind the windows, whether they be windows of houses, restaurants or bars. At some places they broke out in cheerful song. And note, this wasn't just when there were children present. In fact, we didn't see any children at all. Adults seem to enjoy the feast as much as the little ones do, and no one ever broke the pretence.

After a short walk (relatively cold, though we Black Peters had the advantage here over the Sint - you don't want to be a Bishop in winter, Martijn can assure you) we got to the Tafelstraat. I'm not sure whether the people were informed of our coming, apart from the organisers, but the students - particularly the foreign ones - looked absolutely overwhelmed. This may just have been the result of too much warm choco or of them recognising us and thinking we looked mad, but it was great nonetheless.
We then had about 45 minutes of entertaining the crowd (which was very funny but I suppose not very interesting if you don't know the people), before leaving.
Taking a detour, we walked over the Onze Lieve Vrouwe plein, where we bumped into some Spaniards. Now, according to the stories Sinterklaas lives in Madrid, and these obviously were well-informed tourists as they knew it. So the lot of us now feature in a collection of holiday pics made by some Spanish tourists.
Then we passed by a pub, looked inside and... spotted another Black Peter!
This demanded a reprimande, because as Piet you can't just drink in working hours. We went in, had a bit of a chat,
- "Want to share a drink?"
"Unlike you, Piet, we actually feel commitment for our job, and still have half the city to visit tonight" - the people inside all thought it was very funny. And it was.

Then came the cleaning ourselves, which wasn't much fun and took quite a while. This is the part where Sinterklaas has a clear advantage over his servant, as he simply has to change clothes and wash the moustache-glue of his face. Lucky devil.

Quote of the Day:
Me: "Quite funny we should bump into Spaniards like that."
Sinterklaas: "Well, they do say that, when abroad, you always meet people from your own country."

Still the Capital of Europe

2005-11-20T06:40:00.000+01:00

As I promised in my last post, here are some additions to my Bruxelles experiences, plus perhaps a more coherent description of my trip (although I cannot promise I'll deliver).

So, to begin this story, we were with a total of 14 people. Myself, of course, the only one of us more or less used to Belgian culture; then, the Dutch part of our group, consisted of Elleke, Renske, Ivan, Martijn and Linda; the Germans were Steffen (Linda's boyfriend), Lukas and Catharina (the last two also a couple); there was a Canadian girl, Andrea; three Russians were there also, Valeria and two others - a couple - whose names I don't remember, but who were actually married; and on saturday Esther was there, but she left on the evening, at which time my dad came, as the trip was organised by the Maastricht Student Chaplaincy, where my father works.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by Mieke, the enthusiastic chaplain of the Flemish universities of Bruxelles. We were brought to the chaplaincy at the Beguinage, dropped our bags and then each went our own way. I had brought a Trotter Guide to Belgium, which proved most handy as it had a complete street plan of the city, listed all the museums with reviews, even, and fitted neatly into my coat pocket. I used this time to explore the east part of the city: the city park and the Jubelpark. The first I wanted to see because, in 1830, all the important fighting took place there, as the Dutch troops dug in in the park and Belgian revolutionaries fired at them from the tall buildings. There was nothing to remember that by, but it was clear that the park was a good place to camp troops.
However, new invaders had arrived since the Dutch forces left in a hurry: Bruxelles now boasts a population of 5 000 Ring-necked Parakeets, mostly spread out in the two parks I visited. They were a true plague and their shrieks were audible everywhere. Operating in groups, they were hard to miss.

Surrounding the park lay some of the busiest streets in town: the Belgian Parliament as well as the American Embassy - the latter defended with concrete blocks, bullet-proof police guard houses and policecars blocking the entrance - were situated there, among others. But I hurriedly followed the road further east, to the Jubelpark, as I'm certain the security guard at the embassy would seize me if I halted for too long. On I my way I passed by the European Commission and probably a variety of other EU buildings too, including a EU bookstore, which was closed. Must be an after-effect of the Dutch No!

After about 45 minutes walk from the centre of the city, I finally reached the Jubelpark, where the Army Museum is housed. I already talked about my visit there in the last post, so I'll only add that they had so many Napoleonic portraits, that they covered the walls up to the roof. The hall being tall, this made it impossible to distinguish the upper portraits. I was pleased to see that there were plenty of paintings, uniforms and other objects to remind of the Dutch period, including paintings of General Chassé and the Princes of Orange.

We had arranged to reunite at the station at 19:15, by which time my dad would arrive, after which we would go out to dinner. 19:15 is too late a dinner time for us western Europeans, so by the time I got to the station I was starving, and so were the others. We went to a fine restaurant where they served excellent pies, and I picked the Lorrainer quiche. Strangely enough it was classed under Vegetable Quiches, yet we all know that Lorrainer quiches have meat - and this one was not lacking in that respect!
I ended up in the German corner of our group, and had a rather interesting discussion about German literature. To my astonishment, not a single one of the Germans surrounding me had read Im Westen nichts neues! However, for compensation, they had all watched the film with their class at one point or another. Still, what barbarism!

That evening Mieke took us on a nightly tour of the city, visiting a pub with an excellent home-brewn beer, Gueuze bière, as well as to an expensive hotel in the lobby of which was preserved part of the city wall. As we then entered its garage where she showed the rest of it, we were kindly shooed out by the butler, or whatever fancy title the man may have had.
After that we made our way up a tall parking lot, from which we could survey the city beautifully, the Cathedral seeming slimmer than it did from up close, and Mieke told us about how people used to jump off of it to kill themselves, so the authorities had had to put up three different means of preventing them - a fence, spikes on top of it and electric wire above that.

We slept in one of the many rooms of the Student Chaplaincy, and I abandoned my sleeping bag at about 8:30, when I had had enough sleep. I brought along the Mabinogion, which I had taken because it was not only light but also highly entertaining. I then read for over half an hour, until Elleke and Mieke had bought some bread.

We then attended Catholic mass - not a traditional mass, as the Priest didn't seem to follow the standard conventions at all, which made it most amusing. He even said "Goddamnit!" twice. Someone actually had to tell me of this peculiarity, as I hadn't noticed it myself.

After that, we made another city walk, had pancakes in a local restaurant, and returned home.
Conclusion: Bruxelles is great.

Quote of the Day:

A haggard man entered the room, with twinkling lights in his eyes.
"My dear Compans, do you not recognise me?"
"No; who are you?"
"I am the rear guard of the Grande Armée. I am Marshal Ney!"

The Capital of Europe

2005-11-15T05:53:00.000+01:00

As previously announced, the past weekend was spent in the capital of Europe, known as Bruxelles or Brussel or by some languages, incapable of properly writing location names, as Brussels, which is neither here nor there.

With a group of about 15 students we set out from the stately station of Maastricht and boarded the train to Liège, which doesn't have a stately station but has one that is a complete mess - but it is currently being renovated (and has been for the past few years) so it is even more confusing than it would be in normal situations (and it seems like it won't be worth it, as the station will mix a 1920's building with modern architecture, creating some sort of ugly monster).
The train then passed through the familiar city of Leuven, making clear once again the difference in wealth between Flanders (Leuven) and Wallonia (Liège); the locomotive continuing its voyage, we entered the mixture of Flemish-Wallonian culture that is the district of Bruxelles, the only place where one can find people who consider themselves Belgians (except if the Royal Family are abroad or in one of their countryside palaces, of course) and a strange combination of different cultures - a very charming brew, many must agree.

Bruxelles is a huge city, of which I only saw a fractions, primarily the city centre and the European part, including the building(s) housing the European Commission. It is funny to see the differences in the city - from the grand medieval Great Market to the Art Nouveaux buildings of Victoire Horta to the modern EU and NATO buildings, there's something in every style and many of them are truly impressive, like the Brandenburger Tor-like building in the Jubelpark housing the Royal Army and Military Museum, the Museum of the History of Art and "Auto-world", a museum that probably has a lot of enthusiastic fans around the world, among which I cannot count myself.

The only museum I visited during the weekend was, unsurprisingly, the Army and Military Museum. Its collection can only be described as impressive, showcasing a huge collection of portraits, armour, uniforms, contemporary drawings and paintings, weapons, planes, tanks, musical instruments, etc. Sadly I only got about half an hour to view it as the place closed at the surprisingly early time of 16:30, giving a subtle hint five minutes in advance, when they turned off all the lights. Even though my visit was short, it was enough to make me appreciate the vastness (and value) of this Belgian collection of war-related objects. Their sets of full plate armour on display - of the highest quality - must number over three dozen, and they have virtually every imaginable type of armour (yes, even equestrian armour) produced between 1300 and 1600, including a rather rare surcoat with tiny metal plates still attached to the inside. The fabric of this armour doesn't usually stand the test of time, so to see one complete and showcased in a museum both surprised and pleased me. It was indeed excellently done, and it was also the finest collection of armour I have ever seen.

Mieke, our guide, also took us around the city on saturday evening (visiting pubs, tasting some local beers, including the rather delicious Gueuze Bière) and showed us some of the places you will never see when you go on your own, including Bruxelles from the top of a huge parking building and through the tiny streets within houses.
Surely there is more to write about this wonderful visit on this page later on, but I do not have the time now. I realise I have hardly spent a word describing my companions on this trip, and I shall do so later on, as well as give some account of the mass we visited, the peculiar pancake restaurant, the most expensive hotel and its butler, and the American embassy. But don't worry, I won't waste any words on that travesty, Manneken Pis.

Quote of the Day:

"No, applejuice is finished, is finished!" - our French waiter

For feck's sake...

2005-11-12T01:28:00.000+01:00

Just watched the final episode of Spooks series 4, and my reaction is sort of difficult to describe. Surely those devoted followers of the series remember the suspenseful endings of Series 1 and Series 2, which had the viewer crying out NOOOOO!!!! as the episodes ended in ways that put even the summer cliffhangers of soap series to shame. Series 3 had a relatively normal season ending, which I was quite happy with, but now the makers have gone back to their roots and here we are, suspense and tension as we wait for another year before we'll see who survives and who dies.
Luckily, Spooks puts not only the cliffhangers, but also the acting, scripts, locations and overall quality of soap series to shame, and it'll be well worth the wait, I'm sure.
But who will survive?!

Also, just a thing I forgot in my previous post:

Quote of the Day:

"Grenadiers and Chasseurs, I say to you again: if you do not stay with me you are f----d. And anyway, I don't care a f--k. You can all go and f--k yourselves." - Marshal Lefèbvre

Now, lords, for Belgium!

2005-11-11T23:38:00.000+01:00

With winter fast approaching, showing its arrival with teasingly warm days of sometimes twenty degrees in the sun, it is pivotal that we move now to Bruxelles, if indeed we do want to visit the city before the cold season arrives; waiting a month longer could mean that the fair city be surrounded by snow, trains grinding to a halt as avalanches bury the railway tracks from the human eye, birds will freeze in mid-air, their playful music exiting their throats for the last time, and cars will implode from the cold. These things have happened before, and have been well-documented by astronomers. If not this weekend, the snow will arrive soon after. There is in fact every possibility we will all be trapped in the city and die from starvation, as there are not enough birds there to feed the inhabitants for an entire winter.

In other words, I'm going to Bruxelles this weekend.

Who'd have thought it?

2005-10-31T02:09:00.000+01:00

So, here it is, my first blog installment. I am not sure if my life in interesting enough to deserve its own blog, but this is not the time to judge; that'll be much later, when I'll try and sell it to a publisher.

To start this off with an exciting episode from my life, I'll recount yesterday's visit to a Slavic Orthodox service. The Slavic Orthodox church is basically the same as the Russian Orthodox one, only it's officially part of the Roman Catholic church. Still, they do everything the same.

As the Slavic Orthodox church has been in Maastricht for forty years, they had a special celebratory service yesterday, and I attended. We were actually going to attend with a lot of people from Tafelstraat, but I presume most of them overslept or couldn't be bothered in the end, as only myself, Noémi and her sister, who came over from Groningen for the weekend, were there.

There were a lot more people than I had expected - I had envisaged it in advance as ten elderly people in the church, and there actually being more clergymen than visitors, with us clearly the youngest and then subjected to lots of questions as to why we were there. We were still some of the youngest, and we were asked some questions, but my thoughts on the clergyman/visitor ratio as well as the attendance numbers were off in the extreme - the church was so crowded we had to sit in a chapel on the side, from which we couldn't see much of what was going on (only the occasional incense-waving and bible-lifting, really).

The service altogether was an entirely new phenomenon to me: to me, going to a church service is basically sitting in the church benches for about an hour, listening to the pastor, singing a psalm or protestant song - usually at a very slow pace, the way we Dutch like it (even our anthem's tune was taken from a French battle-song, but we toned down the speed so much you'd expect the music to have come from a funeral march instead!). Then, after the singing and listening, you have a cup of tea or coffee and go home.

FORGET ALL THAT

That is nothing like a Slavic Orthodox service at all.

Firstly, imagine a service where everything, yes, EVERYTHING, is sung. And not simply sung, no. IT IS SUNG IN RUSSIAN. That may seem a little odd. Then remember (or hear for the first time, whichever applies), that Orthodox services think long = good. So, basically, we sat in church for two hours, by which time the service had progressed to the communion part (after three quarters of an hour of foreplay). However, Orthodox communions are different - you have to tell the priest your Christian name, put your head back and then the priest will stuff the communion down your throat (the Protestant communion is to be preferred, as someone will hand you the bread and the wineglass and you can take as much as you like). As this was a longer procedure, and apparently many people were interested in getting the communion (not including us), and we weren't all too keen on sitting for another two hours, we decided to call it a service and leave. Apparently, it is not uncommon in the Orthodox church to leave in the middle of a service. Now you know why.

Then we went to a terrace on the Slevrouwe-plein, where we had a drink and some vlaai.

Quote of the Day:

"English villages aren't run. They just happen."