Diane Mackey's blog

Tales of a Kiwi Guide in Antwerp

Posted Mon, 2006-04-24 12:11 by Diane Mackey
The Canadian's were in town today ... Alison's parents are over from Canada and she wondered if I might like to play tour guide in my Belgian city. I loved the idea. We met on De Keyserlei at Exki, more for a mutually known location and coffee than for decor; breakfast too. We took a slow stroll along the Meir; the long car less shopping street that is said to create the backbone of the city. I was aiming for Groenplaats, home to The Hilton hotel and a large statue of the city's most famous son - Rubens, the famous 17th century painter.

Dunedin, New Zealand

Posted Wed, 2006-04-19 11:43 by Diane Mackey
Dunedin ... it's home for me and when I get homesick, I travel its roads and revisit the places of memory. My favourite place in the city was Otago Peninsula, I would drive out on the low road, alongside the harbour and come back over the high road, past the stone walls built by Scottish settlers in the late 19th century ... the approach to the city is stunning from up there. The peninsula road, otherwise known as Portobello Road, winds its way around the edge of Dunedin's Otago harbour. You pass through picturesque little villages like MacAndrew Bay, Broad Bay and Portobello, driving on until you reach Taiaroa Head ... with cliffs that plunge straight down and into the Pacific Ocean.

Tuf Tuf Bookshop, Antwerpen

Posted Tue, 2006-04-18 10:23 by Diane Mackey
Tuf Tuf ... a secondhand bookshop on Geuzenstraat in Antwerpen. What stunned me about this store was its stacks of books ... aisles are created by piles of books. In New Zealand this arrangement would be a massive earthquake risk. And as if that wasn't stunning enough ... being greeted by Vargas and Liliane was something else again ... Aslan and Shakra, the Cocker Spaniel crowd, also hang out behind the counter.

Southern Hemisphere Confusions Up North

Posted Sat, 2006-04-15 00:44 by Diane Mackey
Easter ... and already my mind has leapt ahead to ANZAC Day with the Kiwis and Australians in Ieper and Messine ... and on again, to May harassing Diede and Francien in the Netherlands, and on into July when we meet friends in Scotland. Coming from the Southern Hemisphere, living in the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps Easter is the only holiday where the weather is similar ... where it seems possible that it is actually Easter, rather than some Northern Hemisphere confusion. Christmas in winter is bizarre beyond words ... cherries and strawberries herald a Kiwi Christmas, blue skies and sunshine, long summer holidays and days at the beach or the river, time at the crib (South Island), bach (North Island), summer house (rest of the world).

Rome

Posted Wed, 2006-04-12 00:40 by Diane Mackey
The wandering turk is travelling again. He wrote, San Francisco is quickly climbing up the charts to become my favorite city in the US. I love the fact that one can walk pretty much anywhere. I love the fact that public transportation actually gets you to where you need to go. I love all the different cultures, harmoniously intermingling. I love the food... His post made me think about cities I've fallen in love with ... It's clear I get homesick for Istanbul but I fell madly and passionately in love with Rome. I wandered there expecting to be disappointed by a myth fallen on hard times and found something else ... a city that was more than I imagined a city could be ... a mix of ancient and beautiful, sophistication and real people who wanted to chat ... (or show me the kitchen down in the ancient restaurant basement, as was the case with dear Enzo. I declined, not sure about visiting ancient kitchens with waiters who kissed hands).

Things Left Behind

Posted Mon, 2006-04-10 11:01 by Diane Mackey
Thing: an object that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to. (things) personal belongings or clothing. 2. an inanimate material object, especially as distinct from a living sentient being. This morning it occured to me that my life has been so much about leaving things behind ... And it should go without saying, I miss people more but today I was thinking of things missed.

Kiwi Speak

Posted Sun, 2006-04-09 01:10 by Diane Mackey
I tested Gert on some of these ... much laughter ensued as he failed to guess the meaning of a large majority of these special 'made in New Zealand' words and phrases. You can find out more than you possibly want to know here. A sample ...? Sure. bloke: usually a man, and often used when referring to a stranger as in, "That bloke, Joe Blow, is a really nice guy once you get to know him".

Home: Part II

Posted Fri, 2006-04-07 03:48 by Diane Mackey
Nostalgia ... according to the dictionary, is "a bittersweet longing for things, people, or situations of the past. The condition of being homesick." Isabel Allende, My Invented Country. It's a quote that intrigued me because it implies that home can be a person, a time or a thing, as I'd suspected when I had defined the journey as home . Mourid Barghouti wrote, Ein al-Deir is not a place, it is a time.

The Journey As Home

Posted Wed, 2006-04-05 21:26 by Diane Mackey
When I woke on Istanbul mornings in spring and summer ... there was already a breathless quality to the air. You knew you were in a city, inside a dome of pollution with its gradually darkening layers that reached their most discoloured at the point where they appeared to touch land. But there was a smell that went with it ... so unlike my New Zealand scentscape that instead of rejecting it, I loved it as 'city', perhaps in the same way that I love different perfumes for memory, mood and ocassion. Pollution is my city perfume, first smelt in Los Angelos and forever associated with that city of sunshine.

Drinking Etiquette in Antwerpenese

Posted Tue, 2006-04-04 08:59 by Diane Mackey
'Da we ze nog laank meuge meuge' is Antwerpen for Cheers, kind of... It's head-spinning stuff. It translates roughly as 'That we may like them [the drinks] for a long time to come'. My Antwerpen laughed at my look of stunned amazement and continued with, 'Oep de gezondhe't van Meneer Gevers!' 'To the health of Mr Gevers!' Gevers is Dutch for giver but pronounced with that slightly throaty 'hee' sound (according to Di) ... the one who gives something ... Meneer is Mr...the person buying the drink.
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