Making Peace with Coventry

My hate affair with the West Midlands began one non-assuming day in February of the early Noughties   when my then-boyfriend decided to do a PhD at Warwick University and live in the back end of nowhere. Tile Hill, Coventry to be more precise.

Very few people will go knocking down my door in protest--Coventry is a city bereft of charm.  It's a constant reminder of the 1950s post-war rebuilding project. Concrete block after concrete block surround a roundabout in the flat slab of ruin that remains.  There are shops and everything, don't get me wrong.  But if you could imagine the worst of what American suburbia meets English weather has to offer, you've got Coventry.

It doesn't help that the university lies neatly between the middle of two nowheres, not quite in Coventry and not quite anywhere else. Royal Leamington Spa, a 25-minute fluorescent pink bus ride away, is its closest smug, wannabe-London cousin and happens to be the home of half the university's student population.  With its cute little high street and 'Royal' status because the queen came to visit some time in the mid-1900s, it thinks itself a little higher than it is.  Leamington had a lot of noses in the air in its short little high street.  A lot of students with a lot of money and a lot of pretensions.

So I guess it comes as no surprise that I hated just about every minute of life in that place.  I started my MA at Warwick, which housed the nation's third best English Programme, feeling very much like a minnow caught in an ocean current being dragged to the ends of the earth.  I was depressed, limiting my activities to eating biscuits, watching Cash in the Attic at precisely 12 noon daily and using reference books to read the myriad indecipherable articles, journals and postcolonial novels my professors threw in my direction. I had few friends, my lecturers were aloof and protective of their research and the closest creature comfort of a city was a £45, 1.5 hour journey on the train.

Almost immediately, and unspectacularly, my no-longer-long-distance relationship began to crumble.  Little things really, but we hung on. The fireworks came later, way later. But first I finished my MA and moved to London for a job.  We stayed together fighting the inevitable.  Going back and forth for the 'distance years' was dreadful--trains from London to Leamington on Friday nights and the reverse on Sunday evenings. Trading off London and Leamington weekends, trying to juggle our differing lifestyles.  It continued on and on and on for two years. And then we broke up.

 Clutching at the pieces of myself that remained, I vowed never to go back.

But three years later, Warwick in Africa happened.  Shakily, shakily I braved the elements.  Carrying the demons along, I boarded a train back to Coventry. Back to Warwick University to interview and then take part in a summer teaching programme in Ghana.  To work with a group of master teachers who would deliver Professional Development Sessions across the African continent.  I will admit, the first three train rides, I shook.  Physically, not metaphorically.  To the point that the people around me looked a bit concerned.  They took other seats.

But here I am again sitting on a train--my sixth or seventh journey back.  I've stayed for the weekend at a friend's house in Leamington.  I survived it.  And I know this sounds dramatic and probably a bit over the top, but it's been a hell of a journey.  I will never love, or like, this place and I will never move here.  But I've finally made Warwick University work for me. I've met inspiring educators and peers whom i've had the privilege of learning from.  I have friends who get it.  They get me. They get education. They get ambition.  I'm networking.  I'm remembering why I'm in education--because that easily gets lost in the bureaucracy of the day-to-day.

It's been my biggest, longest, most arduous journey.  Humbly, I'm grateful.

Antwerp

If Belgium were a family, Antwerp would be the punk middle child, the one with the purple mohawk and several piercings through both nostrils. It's a bit grungy, a bit rough around the edges, but that makes you want to hang out with it more. You feel almost cool by association.

As we wound our way up the country the weather turned cold and breezy. Considering its place on the sea and its status as a major shipping port, I guess we should have expected this. Someone the weather made the option of cozying up in pubs and drinking the local tipple all the more inviting.

The rain kept activities to a minimum but we did manage to also find a street full of graffiti artists, a ton of great shopping and relics of old world Europe.

And lots of random sex shops:

 No Belgian city would be complete without its nod to Tin Tin:

 My memories are otherwise too far removed. But Antwerp's got charm in spades. Go. Drink. Graffit.

Bruges

In a sentence: It was beautiful and full of Americans. 

In a few simple sentences: It’s exactly what you expect.  It doesn’t disappoint.  The beer is good, the people are friendly, the prices are expensive. 

The  are delicious (although the Mexican ketchup tastes the same as regular ketchup).

I give you...Bruges!

Gorgeous Ghent

If you find yourself with a spare 24-hours in Belgium and cannot decide what to do, go to Ghent.  Skip Bruges.  Controversial, probably, but this little university city had universal appeal.  We stumbled upon canals, bikes, delightful soup shops and cozy nestled bars with stone fireplaces and lots of live music.

From there, you can take the train to Bruges where you can see what you expect to see, all of which is still beautiful.

But in Ghent you get entire restaurants dedicated to soup. You get cozy palaces of beer all served in the appropriately branded glasses; because to be Belgian is to serve the right beer in the right glass to achieve the right taste.

The tourists, they're there. But not by the hordes. Do yourself a favour: go to Ghent. 

An Homage to Manneken Pis

My love for all things Belgian may have begun when my friend, Judith,  tipped me off to something I needed to see. Something I could not miss.  In fact, something that made tourist Belgium what it was.  I suspected beer, chocolate or beer--in that order.  I was skeptical when she told me that it involved the city's iconic statue, Manneken Pis.  

From head to toe, Manneken Pis is a 61cm (24 inches for you Americans) bronzed, naked, pissing boy guarded behind a very spiky guardrail.  His legend spans 6 centuries and he's been known as savouir, lost boy, war hero and firefighter.  He's become something of a world icon and tourists across the world flock to his statue home almost religiously.  I'm not 100% certain what it says about a city whose famous icon is a tiny, bronzed pissing statue, but I suppose it's not my place to ponder.  

Up close (ish), his height is remarkably underwhelming. And the hordes of tourists don't make a lot of sense. But this is where Judith's tip came in. We bypassed the crowds and headed to the Brussels City Museum in Grand Place.  For 5 Euros each, we caught a glimpse into the history of the city (which was, you know, history-like) and then a more amusing glimpse of the third floor where they stored...all the Manneken's costumes over the years.

Because it turns out it's more than just a little tradition that, over the years, visiting diplomats would come for their EC meetings in Brussels and bring a little pissing outfit as a token of their gratitude.  The statue was then dressed up for various holidays--both national and international.  And in this way, Mr. Pis's wardrobe grew and grew.  It rivals any fashionista in the modern world.

Obviously, a wardrobe this extensive cannot be self-managed. Thus, the Friends of Manneken Pis, a non-profit association, manage his collection of over 800 costumes.  Interestingly, they also review hundreds of designs submitted each year narrowing down the costumes he will wear that year.

And oh the range:

From an African Nation

And one of the Pacific Islands

From the Middle East

And North Africa

Even from Canada, eh! 

From carnivale-era Brazil 

And Blighty!

Other fun facts:  1. Mr. Pis has been stolen, and returned, several times.  2. From time to time, the statue is hooked up to a keg of beer and passersby are given free drinks.  Win.

Rosa and I laughed and laughed.  5 euros well spent!

Belgique, Magnifique!

I don't think anyone told the Belgians, but word on naive street is that it's a poor man's France with better chocolate.  I may have been one of these skeptics--because the major part of my decision making process consisted of the fact that 1. Rosa wanted to go there and 2. I could take Eurostar, thereby avoiding every inconvenience of crap budget air travel.  Plus, I would be whisked city centre to city centre via a bedrock-blasted tube under the Channel Tunnel. Done and done.

To Brussels we went. Well, to Brussels we met and started our journey--Rosa from Riga and me from London.  We stayed in a B&B that purported to have two twin beds.  It turned out to be palatial--the place was bigger than my flat with two double ensuite bedrooms, a kitchen and living room spread across two floors.  Good start.  

And from there, minus one accommodation debacle in Antwerp, it just got better and better.  Great food!  Murals in homage to Tin Tin! A museum floor dedicated to the costumes of a tiny pissing statue in a gothic central square!  And, of course, there was the chocolate, the waffles, the endless beer, the rapid, regular, efficient train travel, the architecture that reconnected me with my Europhilia.
                                         
We zipped around on the train from Brussels to Ghent to Bruges to Antwerp and back.  I think maybe the Belgians keep their little country quiet for good reason--they don't want the tourists.  And I can't say that I really blame them.  Fortunately, we ran into very few--possibly due to the time of year and cold weather.  The only place English became de-rigeur was in Bruges and we spent only a few hours there.

Pictures and more detailed musings are forthcoming.  But overall, after a week of drinking too much beer and ordering mussels in a restaurant for the first time, I would like to put my naive chocolate-swayed prejudices to rest.  Belgium--I salute you!

Americana

I must admit that my sea-to-shining-sea homeland has its charms.  Sometimes you have to look for them and it's always a little easier to see them when you go away and live in a place that's a little bit urban, raucous and fast-paced.

The greater metro-Detroit area isn't many of those adjectives.  But on my last day in Rochester, MI I rediscovered some things to be joyful about. Silly things, really.  Like free popcorn and friendly employees at Home Depot where I went to pick up craft supplies instead of DIY house-fixing goods.  And a 1970s era coffee pot that still works. And flags--absolutely everywhere.

And more of the little things came flooding back.  Like no matter how perfunctory it is, when you walk into a shop, someone will greet you.  And how two stores can be right next to each other but people will still walk to their car, drive it to a parking space next door and walk back the same way they started.  And if you decide to walk, people might stop and ask you if you're okay, if your car's broken and if you need a lift. I know people hate these things about America(ns).  I know I normally would.  But after living in Europe, which is often perfunctorily polite, it's nice to see a little bit of enthusiasm. 

Little things make me smile:  

And maybe not always so little things provoked a nostalgic sense of the america of my youth, a feeling you cannot wholly understand unless you're born and raised in a place.  No disrespect to anywhere else--there are elements of British culture I will never know or understanding, daytime gameshows and revered culture icons of the 80s/early 90s, for example.  And that makes me an outsider to some extent.   

So, if only for a few days, it's been nice to remember and revere my cultural past.  I'll be back to my cynical city-dwelling self soon enough.

America, worth the hype.