For the past fifteen months I have been travelling in Europe, staying successively in Greece, Bulgaria, Malta, England, Germany, Belgium and Albania. I'm now back in Germany.
I've published occasional pieces on these wanderings but nothing for more than four months now. Here, then, are some recent thoughts and observations on specific places and on Europe in general.
Economic and social problems are everywhere evident, and are getting worse. The cultural decline (or "forgetting") which accompanies these changes — a long, drawn-out process which seems to be gathering pace — has always disturbed me. And, though it would be a mistake to underestimate the depth and resilience of the cultures of Europe and the values which they represent, forces hostile to these values have created in recent years what feels like a dangerous instability.
The natural world is important to me also, both in itself and in terms of how it has influenced and is influenced by regional and national cultures. In places to which I have a connection and/or feel some kind of affinity, I like to be able to identify at least the most common local species (especially birds, animals and trees). I happened to mention this fact to a knowledgeable English friend (the French adjective moqueuse would fit her well) as we walked in the garden of her home in a picturesque part of southern England. Pointing towards a nearby field she said, “Those are black sheep, those are white sheep.”
I spent the first week of September in Dortmund and found it nondescript and a bit unkempt, but my stay was pleasant. There was a park near my hotel to walk and relax in; easy shopping; very friendly and obliging people; a good U-Bahn network linked to a manageable Hauptbahnhof.
From Dortmund I travelled by train (via Cologne, Aachen and Liège) to Namur, the Wallonian capital, and later to Charleroi. National and local elections were held while I was staying in Namur which I did not follow closely but election slogans, graffiti and general conversation reflected social polarization and were very much in line with recent trends across Europe.
Charleroi isn’t a pretty or prosperous city but where I was based (on Place Verte, a pedestrian precinct only a short walk from the main station) there was evidence of new business investment and no obvious signs of social conflict.
In the mid-1930s, an extreme conservative and corporatist political movement and party, the Rexists (after the Latin phrase for Christ the King), was formed in Belgium by Léon Degrelle. It persisted during the German occupation and Degrelle himself fought for the Germans with the Walloon Legion on the Eastern Front. Rexists played prominent roles in government during the occupation and were a target for the local Resistance. Late in the war, there was much civil violence and tit-for-tat killings between these groups. The only memorial I saw which mentioned the Rexists was a plaque on a presbytery wall in central Charleroi honouring a prominent priest, Pierre Harmignies, who was murdered by Rexists in 1944.
Most war memorials in Belgium commemorate soldiers who died during the Great War. There was one, I noticed, in Queen Astrid Park in central Charleroi at which flowers had been laid. A few metres away stands another, more modest, war memorial featuring the representation of a pigeon with wings outstretched atop a pillar with the simple inscription: AU PIGEON SOLDAT.
I mentioned the pigeon memorial to my unsentimental English friend who subsequently made an oblique allusion to it in an email. She won’t mind my quoting her, I’m sure: “Autumn colours seem to be late this year but I am looking out at oak and ash trees that are turning golden brown and already the pigeons and field fares have stripped the berries from the holly (if only some of the former could be sent to The Front!).”
My recent stay in Tirana was more educational than enjoyable. Though the hotel was good, the surrounding area was not, particularly in terms of pedestrian and other local infrastructure. There was nowhere pleasant to walk and no acceptable public transport (other than taxis). As a consequence I breakfasted in the hotel restaurant every day and spent a lot of time in my room. Fortunately the hotel staff (local people) were friendly and easy to talk to and I had positive encounters with a few other Albanian nationals. One was a young man who was on the same flight as me out of Tirana. I noticed that he went out of his way to help a frail woman whom he didn’t know to alight from a tarmac bus and walk to the crowded arrivals hall at Niederrhein Airport where airport staff took over and shepherded her through.
Though most of the people I spoke to in Albania were aware of — and frustrated by — government corruption, I didn’t see much evidence of overt political activism there. Nor did I witness the social and religious frictions which are so evident elsewhere in Europe. No doubt there was a lot going on beneath the surface however — these are just impressions from a three-week visit.
The country’s Ottoman past has left indelible marks on religious and other practices and cultural links with Turkey and the Levant persist. This despite the fact that, for more than four decades following World War 2, Albania was governed by a hardline Stalinist (and increasingly isolationist) regime.
I did manage to develop a daily walk routine centred on the mainly residential area behind the hotel in which the streets and lanes are set out — and not in a planned way — like a complicated maze with many dead ends. The “river” on the map turned out to smell like a sewer and its banks looked like an unofficial rubbish dump (building waste etc.).
Car wash businesses operated in virtually every significant street (a consequence of the combination of poor roads and parking areas and a car-proud population). Lots of good German cars. The city of Tirana has no metro and the country has no rail network. Peak-hour traffic is horrendous.
Along the back streets in which I walked, women and old men pushed wheelbarrows with mysterious cargoes. There were some grand houses, but most were shabby. Albanian flags were displayed in private homes and businesses, hung from balconies etc.. National day celebrations had occurred just after my arrival but many of the flags had not been taken down weeks later.
The national anthem or hymn to the flag is basically a call to fight — and die. Strangely the focus in the song seems to be on dying rather than on winning. A warrior culture, certainly. “... From war abstains only he who a traitor is born...”
The children seemed unusually well-behaved. Given the many Christmas trees and fairy lights in private homes, I assumed the area I was in was predominantly Christian. But there was also a significant Muslim presence. Though most of the women I saw were unveiled, quite a few wore the hijab.
My main Albanian interlocutor at the hotel was a Muslim married to an Orthodox Christian. She only wore a head-covering when going to the mosque or to church, she said. There was a mosque nearby and, depending on the depth of my sleep at the time, I would hear early-morning prayers (around 5 am).
Though I had used up (in Belgium and Germany) 88 of my allotted 90 visa-free days (per 180 days) in the Schengen zone, I decided to fly to Germany and invoke a little-known bilateral visa-exemption agreement dating back to the 1950s which allows Australian citizens 90 days in Germany irrespective of previous Schengen country visits so long as certain conditions are met.
I entered Germany (as mentioned previously) via Niederrhein Airport, a very small and isolated facility close to the Dutch border which has been misleadingly dubbed Düsseldorf Weeze by Ryanair. (It’s nowhere near Düsseldorf.) Not so long ago the airport was an RAF base known as Laarbruch.
The border police I dealt with there were not fluent in English and I don’t speak German. They scanned my passport and the system indicated that I would have to depart Germany within 48 hours. I tried to put my case and showed them on my phone a brief explanation of the longstanding visa-exemption agreement from an official German source, but the text was in English and the officer did not read it. Three of them discussed the matter between themselves, asking me the occasional question. Then suddenly it was all smiles and thumbs up on their part as my passport was finally stamped and handed back to me but I have no way of knowing what caused the change of heart. Given that the arrangement doesn’t involve a visa or written authorization, there could conceivably be trouble on my departure from Germany and the Schengen zone but I don’t expect there will be.
It was very cold and almost dark by the time I boarded a local bus which took me from the airport to a train station in a small town nearby (Weeze). And it was completely dark when the train to Düsseldorf arrived. I enjoyed the warmth of the train for the hour-long journey, secure in the knowledge that my hotel was within easy walking distance of the Hauptbahnhof. No more checkpoints or complicated connections.
Travelling independently and (to a certain extent) off the beaten track does pose challenges but so far they are proving manageable. And on this latest journey it was gratifying to realize that others (including younger people and native German speakers) did not necessarily know what I knew or had figured out. Once or twice I was able to help rather than being the one asking for advice or directions.
Having spent a month in Düsseldorf and having quite enjoyed getting to know the city (or parts thereof), I have now bought a train ticket to Dortmund. (I had been planning to stay longer in Düsseldorf actually, but there is a big trade fair coming up and hotel room rates are rising rapidly.)
Future movements are uncertain but the plan to stay in Germany until the spring still looks attractive.