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One of Meade’s TV programmes, Magnetic North, formed the conceptual backbone of the trip. I wanted to find out where the North ended. I wanted to know the answer to the question, what does it mean to be Northern? This is what Meades claimed: “We deny our Northerness to such an extent that we’re unfamiliar with these countries that share our climate. They might remind us of ourselves, for they too are engaged in a perpetual battle denying their Northerness. To be Northern is to be forever ill at ease with yourself.”
As we got on the Eurostar at the newly opened St Pancras terminal, after rubbing Sir John Betjeman’s big brass belly for good luck, we asked ourselves: Was there a difference in personality that existed between the Europe of wine and olive oil (South) and the Europe of beer and herring (North)? And did the North start where we were headed?
It was Meades’ theory that there was a definable line that divided North and South Europe. This line was the only true European border, marked at the point where soil and climate no longer supported wine-producing grapes. Instead, human ingenuity and desperation had turned to beer and grain-distilled spirits, such as gin. Step across this line and you are out of the human comfort zone. Step across this line and you are in the North.
Leuven, a town that looked like a miniature village expanded to human scale, existed on this line. The art gallery we were visiting represented an imaginary Mason-Dixon Line between the Flemish-speaking Flanders, above, and the French-speaking Wallonia, below. This place merely represented the rift, however, as there was nothing physical to look at – no passport control, no Hadrian’s Wall, no barbed wire fence. The flatter the terrain, the more interesting the substrata.
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