Love Letter to Brugge

 As I do the countless chores preparatory to moving my home from Bruges to Bury St Edmunds, I feel pressured, especially with the myriad tasks essential to keeping Customs happy enough to let me back in, without charging me punitive taxes. I cannot help but remember February 5^th 2015 when I made the reverse trip. I just booked a Removals firm from the next village; dates to suit were arranged; men came and packed then drove off to Bruges on February 4, moving my household possessions in through the

Part of the narrative of ...

windows on the following day. After which, tutto a posto! NOW, post Brexit, there exists much bureaucracy including TORs, to ensure I don’t pay Customs duties on my furniture etc. To obtain a Transfer of Residence Relief URN number I have submitted online, relevant passport page, documents to prove residence here and future residence in Bury plus three pages of A4 detailing every item of furniture etc which I intend to have transported to the U.K. 15 working days after receipt, Govt UK, has just issued my URN, Unique Reference Number, which my Dutch transport firm must have to enable entry into Fort Brexit a short distance away.

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......the Wintergloed, Walk of Light.

In addition there are POAs for both Belgian and British Customs submitted by PDF; lengthy [approaching two months] enquiries and demands to ascertain my real identity and how I managed to obtain the money to buy a small, two bed flat in Bury. The latter would not be necessary were I to rent in Bury but I am buying which complicates matters a lot apparently! [En passant, it seems ageist that a person of 87 is not allowed to raise a small mortgage. Post relocation, I am going to discover who my new-to-me M.P. is and write to complain about this.]

In the meantime I walk, when I have time, along canals, admiring this jewel of a little mediaeval

Not only picturesque canals, but also dramatic skies
to take the eye.

city which has experienced epochal events over the centuries and reading its story through its ancient bricks, its stone bridges, some still with stone ledges to permit mediaeval merchants to display their goods for sale; through its gables, chimneys, steeples, cobbled narrow but tall streets. I love the rhythms of the town echoed in the regular clopping of the horses pulling carriages for sight-seeing and punctuated by the melange of chapel and church bells at different intervals and decibels and the delightful cascade of sound from the carillon. The Belfort, surviving past fire and partial collapse, in the historic Markt which has seen processions, hangings, celebratory crowds, civic murders, civil unrest, markets but which now is just a magnetic arena for the weekly market, crowds of tourists and a continuing cafe culture with its relaxing air and quiet discussion.

The Grote Markt

Brugge’s history is a story of a thousand years of early peasant economy, great lords and powerful families, interminable wars and armed uprisings, occupation by ‘others’ with Bruges freed only by counter occupations. The seventeenth century religious wars led to the partition of the Low Countries and eventually to a nineteenth century of prolonged poverty and stagnation. It was during this period that George Rodenbach’s Bruges La Morte, and his Le Carillonneur were published both to wide acclaim and prompt disparagement! For Bruggelingen Rodenbach’s stories were perhaps too near the truth! But they caught the then contemporary melancholy mood and the grey inertia. But the new port of Zeebrugge [1905-8] brought industrialisation and increasing prosperity and led to the twentieth century and a widening awareness of the exquisite charms of Brugge, an almost perfectly preserved [or renewed] little mediaeval city. Delighted tourists arrived in increasing numbers bringing fame and money which sparked its present affluence, displayed in the numerous golden flourishes on old buildings, the unbelievable cleanliness and tidiness, the variety of rich processions and events, the literary wealth of the Library and Archives and the art treasures in museums. This is truly a place for aesthetes and historians!

\The Belfort, Brugge Markt
Built in 1240; upper  part burned down 1280.
Extensions over the centuries but 1493 a lightning strike
started a blaze and upper Belfort with clocks, burned down.
1741 more fire and fury burned spire and upper section.
1822 spire replaced by neo-Gothic crown seen today.

Golden statues adorn the facade of the 
Basilica of the Holy Blood in the Burg.