Can't I miss the car then either?

Photo: autumn leaves, Central Park, B1000 Brussels, BELGIUM

To avoid the lecture of subjective inaccurate information in half-hearted English click here.

Years ago I stopped driving a car. That happened as follows. On a certain day about in the middle of the eighties I got a convocation from the police. The subject was a car, well described, with a strange but still Belgian numberplate. I went to the police office and explained them my stuff. I did have a car indeed, but that was another brand, it had another color and another numberplate. The needed research was done and after a while one police man came back and said: "Are you as an unemployed still able to sustain a car?" The truth was that I could always make ends meet, but after my car got his next defect it wasn't worth pain for being repaired, either didn't I buy immediately a new one. Nevertheless in the years that followed that idea regularly came back into my mind but each time I saw the next successfull video about the local green project, I waved it away.

During many years green people complained about the trees of Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos having tree cancer. Horrible that I don't know very well what tree cancer is. But let's say it is a tree illness where the infested tree first gets yellow leaves after which it becomes bare, even in the middle of the summer or who knows in spring. Last summer I didn't know they were yet that far, I was witness of a giant protest action in and around the pentagon of Brussels. I came from North station where in the bookstore of the big hall (not the earlier former ticket hall, but the room that contains among others the escalators to and from the premetro) I caught a glimpse of Maggie Deblock's recently released biography. At the exit I heared a noise as coming form a steam boat. The guy on one of the North Station terrasses, a kind of a clochard, couldn't inform me about the origin of the noise but he had heared it also. I took a street towards the Boulevard Roi Albert II/Koning Albert II laan with the Electrabel building at my right while always the steam boat noise in my ears. In the Albert II avenue, with the beginning of the true extent of the phenomenon in mind, I asked one of the people in the entrance door of one of the modern (???) building for the time. It was around eleven, with a deviation of forty minutes. It was thus not necessary because the truck drivers got hungry and were honking all in choir for the queue be dissolved.

Walking from outside the pentagon (Brussels BE) I reached Kruidtuinlaan/avenue Botanique, crossed it and continued my way via Boulevard Emile Jacqmain. The situation must have been about status quo although I don't remember clearly. I walked through Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan and Boulevard Maurice Lemonnier/Maurice Lemonnierlaan and reached the pentagon at the South Western side. As the existence of traffice jam of trucks was affirmated overthere I asked someone if he knew what was going on. He didn't know exactly but assured me that it was something special.

Back home I searched it on internet. I didn't find anything specific of the action described above, only a note that they wanted to ban the car in Brussels. Not so much later, I mean always during the same summer (last summer), when I was in town sitting on a chair on the terrasse of Quick GB snack in Anspachlaan, I noticed that there were no cars in the street and that several groups had gathered, among others one from which the members were playing petanque in a big temporary sandpit. Days later when the sandpit was broken off, I saw that trunks laying down at both sides of the streets served as seats. Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan resembled a scout camp. Now I wonder of course if the campers of former years will come back during wintertime to transform our city in a more impossible and unappetizing pedestrian zone. Hopefully this great honor will fall entirely on the side of the residents of Berlin. I should have followed the invasions overthere more carefully in the media, but maybe the trouble only appeared for the first time in the news when it was a fait accompli.

However, more than once I caught myself on avoiding the Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan. The Irish pub diagonally opposite the stock exchange building I didn't visit anymore since the traffic free situation unfolded. Teased by the whole image in my head at home, I do my best to wave it away and put my thoughts on times and places where the car still exist(s)(ed).

Let's say the traffic free zone in Brussels BE is only increased by Boulevard Anspach/Anspachlaan, perpendicular streets and streets perpendicular on these. Rue Neuve/Nieuwstraat was one of the first if not the first, then also Grand Place and more recently Marchée aux Poulets, ... [Click here for the full documentation]