on the move

April 2013

Arriving in the Netherlands by train from Belgium on a foggy Wednesday morning. The mist a veil over the flat landscape, covering villages, farms and churches in a whitewash , showing silhouettes rather than colors and details.

At the station of border town Roosendaal, with its big, mostly empty railway emplacements, its desolate old buildings, the dreamlike atmosphere of the journey reaches another level: an old railway building appears to be floating some meters above ground, ready to move. But that is not all. It is moving. The old, cranky building is lifted, to be relocated at a site some 1500 meters further.

On the edge of the country where Magritte painted his surrealistic objects, where Hubert Lampo described the magic of the Belgian landscape, disappearing in fog or in strangeness, surrealism is ever present.

images from nufoto.nl

 

Klaske Havik