the belfort scale

Very occasionally, historical buildings will recount some part of the various steps taken towards achieving the building seen today. A couple which come to mind without thinking too hard or accessing the internet (to which I currently (when typing rather than uploading (and though I could check then the idea of pre-typing was to make it simple and quick to post when re-connected)) don't have access as I'm in a launderette on Langestraat and though the wifi from the nearby Bauhaus Hotel/bike rental place/cybercafé is visible and unprotected it's not letting me on) are the Manor House in Alford, recently restored and re-opened with some information concerning the repairs undertaken and the nature and age of the original structure (and the various hazards it had developed by the time it was decided to fix it) and some sort of old residence building thing in York which had been partially restored where required and merely polished where intact. Some buildings have featured floor layouts past and present or architectural representations of various elevations but I can't recall seeing anything as effective as the little touch-screen animated timeline-recounter thingby in the Staadthuis, which shows the position and shape of the various additions and amendments over the years on a little rotating model of the building, rotating it and highlighting bits at each step as required. Whilst it didn't show much of the interior and could only be viewed from the angle it was deemed correct to view that particular timeslice and didn't show any of the surrounding buildings (possibly because they were mutating equally rapidly) it solves the problem of descriptions usually couched in a combination of geographical directional absolutes (which I always try and familiarise myself with but which would be unknown to some) and architectural jargon (which the Manor House in Alford uses to confusing effect. I know the basics like gables and eaves and walls but when the audioguide described various types of floor-component becoming detached from some sort of bit of the wall I was struggling to picture exactly what it meant and wondering why someone would build a building where the floor could so readily detach itself from the wall) and seldom accompanied by much more than a couple of faded idealised façade-plans annotated with illegible italicised scribblings. What was most surprising about the knowledge gained from the screen was that at no point had the building completely burned to the ground or had the shit bombed out of it during a war. Internally it little resembled the original contents but the front face of today's building seems to be mostly what was visible when it was first built, give or take a few towers and statues (replaced after the originals (of local toffs) were removed following the French revolution). The audioguide was unusually useful too, though if you ever visit, bring your own headphones as the audioguides have a socket and the presence of codgertourists repeating everything the guide is saying to them to each other makes the ear into which the audioguide has to be pressed quite firmly quite sore. What can be heard was worth hearing, and unsually for murals and friezes the murals and friezes in the ornate-but-not-too-gilded upper chamber are reasonably interesting to look at and very well-rendered. Unfortunately the audioguide gave up at the final room but I suspect the presence of a Flemish-only component to some of the musea is deliberate in order to encourage locals or natives to visit despite the vast numbers or foreign tourists.

Considerably less informative was the Civil Registry building next door. The museumable bit consists of one chamber, filled with chairs in which people with audioguides will sit which the audioguide explains the paintings, desk, hearth, mantelpiece and the bit between the mantelpiece and the ceiling which might have a proper name somewhere. The main intent seems to be to flood the room with imagery to remind the aldermen within to behave themselves.

Though we still had an afternoon left of museum multi-ticket use we'd been to everything but whilst the oportunity to do so for free was still there I popped up the Belfort again just to see what it was like at a different time of day. It wasn't much busier than the other evening but the politeness of fellow-visitor seemed a little better, with some people actually thanking others for taking measures to ensure that people heading down the stairs had the use of the widest bit of the steps. Although Nicky is perfectly capable of using stairs she was quite nervous on the east towers of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona the first time we went there, getting a bit trembly-legged on the way down so I was sticking nearby (preferably downstep for her safety) rather than steaming up at my own pace on Tuesday and was therefore going more quickly but stopping more for pictures on the ways up and down today.

Another tested-food-place from the recommended list today, this time Het Dagelijk Brood on Philipstockstaat. It appears to work as a take-away too but has plenty of informal tablespace for the eating of nice big bowls of rustic soups accompanied by lots of nice bread, also sold in whole loaves. As an added bonus their coffee was the best I;ve had in town so far and was served in a soup-bowl. The soup was lentil but tasty lentil and the nice long-shared-table setting was pleasant. They did cakeystuffs as well and might get popped back to if I can engineer it.

As seems to be normal in the evenings where we're staying the air was fairly thick with the smell of wood-burning stoves again when we got back. Having done nothing much energetic since Monday evening I went for another run but the combination of cold air and smoke is never particularly nice to breathe in large volumes. Back home there's often a similar situation at the south-east end of the Innocent Railway tunnel in autumn and winter if there's been a recent case of a bit of bush being set on fire, though unless any smoke has drifted into the tunnel the effect isn't very sustained. Here there's a mile-long stretch of river/canal-side path whch seems to have no wind to refresh the air, though the alternative of having to trot along beside a road would probably be worse. There are a few roads in the way but nothing much bothersome until the roundabout outside the station, though and extra couple of crossings gets you onto an extra half-mile section of car-free path of which I'd chanced upon the other end earlier in the day but couldn't find in the dark later on.