Lond-on-Line Diary08.02.1996 A puff of snow sugars the streets in the morning, later the sun breaks through, no hint of London fog, time to explore the surroundings. East End dockworkers lived here, craftsmen and immigrants. Wandering through the quiet streets, through new housing developments, council housing, brown bricks, partially unformed and partially again degenerated, I wonder about the few people that I meet in this city. By night it is even more silent than in my mountain village, every now and then a siren sounds in the distance. It seems that here everyone has retreated to his own four walls, walls surrounding the settlement, fences and railings. All languages, religions, races and civilisations of the world live here, wall to wall. Women shrouded in black, their eyes only to be seen through narrow slits. Men with every sort of headdress, turbans, or hats of the orthodox Jews. Some colour and movement is only to be seen at the market next to the underground station, crockery, clothing and toilet paper can be found there. Together the multicultural community flocks to the local supermarket Sainsburys, where there is everything, as all over the world, processed, packed and weighed. Perhaps, in my opinion, we people one day will all be the same, wear the same, eat the same and communicate via Internet. Until then quite a while will elapse, you and I will no longer live to experience this. Below, at the Thames, occasional remainders of the old docks, draw bridges, cranes, sluices, the Pool of London now serves partially as a motorboat harbour, around which the new trendy housing developments have been built, a kind of brickwork Venice in between, amid building sites and property gone to seed, a playground with prefabricated toys, abandoned. Here also is the transformation from the industrial and commercial society into the residential, service rendering and leisure society up and running. Upstream towards the Tower it becomes more touristic, old three masters lie at anchor, hotels have been hoisted, in between a renovated pub, the Dickens Inn, in the background the glass facade of the World Trade Centre reflects. Tower Bridge, an impressive large sized toy, just became one hundred years old, also the document of a mechanical civilisation which was then on its decline. With my children I once visited this museum today I can save the entrance fee. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing cold. |
Translated by Pat Gerber |