And words like "north, south, east, west" have a great deal of meaning there. Especially since 'south' also means 'down', as the whole city slants in one direction, towards the lake.
Brussels, conversely, is an organic city that looks like this.
Compass points mean nothing here, it's a magnetic jungle. To add insult to confusion, the south is hillier than the north, but meaninglessly. It makes Toronto's gentle grids look like a Tic-Tac-Toe game, and Florence, which at least had the decency to be built by Romans who understood straight lines, look like an SOS game.
And Paris, which was complicated enough for me to be lost for a month or two there, looks like a simple, pretty snailshell in comparison. Paris was all chopped down, you see, I think in the 19th century, and then rebuilt in a sort of enduring spiral motif that had townhouses for the rich, disease-breeding suburbs for the poor, and punctuations of long, wide avenues that would accommodate cannon shot being fired at rioting plebs:
As you see, it also has a river, as Toronto has the lake, that helps one orient oneself.
Brussels has a river too, but it's buried underground as that's where the townspeople continue to dump all their untreated sewage. In many ways this continues to be a medieval kind of place, you see; certainly it is in how the streets just sort of are there, natural growth sort of things from many, many different small villages which sort of grew into each other.
So it has been a long process but I am getting the gist of Brussels now, and almost never get lost anymore. It's a question of understanding how all the organic different small villages link up and the distinguishing features of each of them. The distinguishing feature of mine, Saint Gilles, is bourgeois Art Nouveau houses, lots of Portuguese people, the Parvis, and a ridiculously ostentatious city hall, considering that despite Art Nouveau efforts to the contrary this is a working class neighborhood:
Every Monday it has a market, at which some farmers show up - they don't have farmer's markets here per se. I get goat milk there, or failing that raw cow's milk, and then I feel sorry for the sterility of Canada - its straight lines and pasteurized everything - even if people there know better than to throw their shit straight into a river.
9 commenti:
I've never thought about those 3 different cities in comparison to each other. Canada seems like a fairly planned country all around, doesn't it? Sterile, like you say..
I take it that it's not illegal to sell unpasteurized milk there? Imagine! I still don't agree that it's illegal here but whatever. That's a whole other subject!
Old Japanese cities (ones that weren't fire bombed or atomic bombed) are built to confuse. The streets have a lot of circular patterns so that invading enemies get disoriented and lost while trying to invade. I found my way usually by looking up. There was usually a tower and a few tall landmarks that are visible and would help me orient myself. I did get lost all the time but if I kept going on the same street I would usually eventually come across something familiar. It helps to be on a bike so that you can go far without getting too exhausted.
And you always know that in the worst case scenario you can always get in a cab and give them your address. I never got that lost but it was nice to know it was a possible solution. As far as I'm concerned, round is always more interesting than a straight line.
Those three cities are my internal point of reference . . . we'll see when that changes but those are the ones I dream about. Never Ottawa, for some reason . . .
It's a big, nasty issue, and the further away I am from not having raw milk the angrier it makes me. It's farmers and milk drinkers being screwed over the sake of distributors.
Sounds medieval and awesome, Sugar.
Hmmm... interesting. Kobe is quite straight forward. It's long and narrow, and it has see on one side and mountain on the other. If you are going up hill, you are going towards the mountain, if you are going downhill you are going towards the sea. Kind of like Toronto, but squeezed to be much narrower.
I was in Brussels a few years back. Loved. It. And spkng of illicit foodstuffs, Have you tried the horse yet? It's really good. mmmmm. horse...
One big hill really helps. Here there tonnes of small ones and then a sort of southern plateau, or northern drop, that doesn't translate into actually hilliness.
I had horse in Switzerland, Baywatch, and thought it was like tough flank steak - tasty but not spectacular. Maybe the wrong person was cooking it for me. Brussels is pretty special. It's darling, in fact. If the weather wasn't shit I'd love it more than anywhere.
horse shmorse. if you've got some black bread, some radishes, and some soft farmer's cheese, and maybe a glass of Westvleteren or Westmalle tripel, you're probably doing just fine.
I've a terrible sense of direction and can get lost in Toronto or New York where they use numbers for imbeciles like me. But twisty turny Rome? It was like I'd lived there all my life after about 4 minutes. My brain is not on a grid apparently.
I brush my teeth with beer here. It works badly, obviously, but I enjoy it.
Organic cities are better in lots of ways - I can say that now that I get lost less.
But Rome actually is on a planned grid pattern, SORTA - just one that was designed for people, and not cars (hence the miserable traffic) and is a bit offset from place to place.
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