It's strange sometimes to realise just how subtle things about the environment around you are important.
One of the things about Belgium which is noticeable if you come from the UK is a certain lack of commercialism here. Whereas in Britain streets and public spaces are just bristling with brightly coloured opportunities to buy - a boutique here, a Boots there, an Our Price record store next to the Natwest bank with its abundance of cash machines, in Belgium it's all a bit thinner on the ground. I'm not saying it's like East Germany or anything, but there's a marked difference from the country's neighbours.
Don't get me wrong, there are high-streets with chain stores, but if you move away from them and onto less concentrated areas the shops seem to be rather quaint and sleepy, with old-fashioned window displays and a home-spun air.
Depending on what your view is it can be charming or depressing. Take the Gare du Nord, for example. One of the three main rail stations in the country's capital city, and what marks it out is the extraordinary lack of commerce and very dated facilities. On a Sunday you can't even buy a paper! If it was in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden or the UK you'd be flooded with opportunities to consume on all sides.
Instead in the Gare du Nord there are bars filled with smoke and here or there a customer or two, of the type whose names are tattooed on their fingers, and a hamburger stand which you might find after midnight in Trafalgar Square.
It shouldn't really matter to me - after all, it's surely just vacuous consumerism, isn't it? But the thing is, consumerism tends to make for friendly, unthreatening environments which get renovated regularly. It generally makes for public spaces where people want to be. Things which are quite important in a big railway station.
So today it was off for a brief escape to Breda, a charming little town in the southern part of the Netherlands. There I was able to bask in brightly lit, modern railway station facilities, inviting counters selling fresh food and - gasp - shops open on Sunday!
Posted by Eurodan at December 5, 2004 8:34 PMYour comment about window displays reminds me of the little sweet shop we saw in Spain which had a small window display consisting of several shelves, each one holding a single Lion bar, tube of Smarties, Mars bar or whatever - laid out like precious jewels.
There surely is a happy medium somewhere; friendly welcoming spaces which aren't so overwhelmingly commercial.
I find airports particularly bizarre. More consumer oriented places would be difficult to imagine. So why does nearly everything close at 9 or 10pm in the majority of the terminals I pass through, despite the horde of captive, bored consumers stuck in air-side no-man's-land until they are allowed to escape in an aluminium tube sometime in the early hours?
Posted by: Shyboy at December 5, 2004 9:22 PM