So I’ve finished the shoot, and I think it’s gone ok. I’ve now been awake something like 36 hours and the pressure is off. I begin to relax and realise three things: I’m cold, I’m very tired, and I should have gone to the loo before I left the building. The chap I was photographing today said I should check out a place up the road that had a café and it seems like a good place to start for all three reasons; plus once I’m ensconced I can figure out what to do now with the 7 hours remaining before my Eurostar back to London. He says it’s quite an important building so I should recognise it when I see it, but will I? Holy crap, surely not this place?!
It’s called Tour et Taxis, so I thought it might be some cutesy folkesy place that used to be a coach and taxi station, but clearly not. Apparently the name comes from one of those ‘sonically bastardised over time’ things and the site was, if I’m not mistaken, the hub of all communication for Europe a few hundred years ago. Cool venue – glad I found this one – now; how do I get in? There’s a tiny subway under the iron railings that border the building all the way along the pavement side of it – it’s easy to miss. I almost wonder if I’ve got it wrong and I’m trespassing. I cross to the building itself and find the way in, and have the same impression again. It opens up into this multi-storey open galleried hall – however long ago this was built it’s impressive. Ah – at last! In almost ironic contrast to this brick grandeur, there’s a portable coffee bar with two beautiful damsels serving coffee in takeaway cardboard cups. Why? Because there’s nowhere to sit. Or is there? could I…? I make a brief exploratory foray into my dusty archives of French and ascertain that I’m actually perfectly free to sit across the hall with my coffee… on the chaise longue in the gallery. Ya kidding, right? This would never happen in jolly old England.
So I have to report, this must be in the top five places for any self-respecting flaneur in Belgium. Sat on a magenta velvet chaise longue, with my cardboard cup of coffee on a glass table upon a suspended glass floor above centuries old stone and brick flooring, surrounded by wooden geodetic sculptures and leather armchairs and the collected history of Belgium. Despite the imposing setting, the whole thing was so laid back, no-one came to hurry me along, or tell me I couldn’t take pictures, or even check if I’d finished my coffee.
Which, by the way, was superb, notwithstanding the cup. I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke indoors, but somehow that would have completed the experience: watching the occasional visitors wandering around exploring their history whilst taking my time over various legal drugs relaxing into indolence at very hub of European communication. I could tell you about the exhibitions, the galleries, the restaurants and opportunities for consumerism, all of which were first rate, but really, just go and get a coffee and sit awhile; if you’re open to appreciation of a moment in time and space there is art enough here in a paper cup to absorb you for a long while.
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