Historical Day

Saturday was my birthday and the government decided that there is no better day than 14 October to start the Week of History. This is a national week where lectures and other events are organised on an annual basis to bring historical themes and subjects to the attention of the general public. I attended the opening ceremony and lecture, and had already typed out quite a lengthy description of it but lost it through fault of my own and can now sadly not be bothered to write it all over again. Let's just say that it was very interesting and that my opinion of bishop Wiertz, who held a short introduction before the actual lecture, has not improved.

My birthday was a lot of fun and I got very nice presents, including Warfare in Medieval Brabant and John the Fearless, which I had asked for in a previous post, as well as Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (translated as The Waning of the Middle Ages and The Autumn of the Middle Ages) by Huizinga, one of the most famous and certainly influential Dutch history books, and Rubicon, a book about the fall of the Roman Republic and how it was turned into a dictatorship. This means I'll have plenty to read in the coming period, and as it's all good stuff it was rather hard to choose what to read first. However, I've now started in Warfare in Medieval Brabant, and it is truly excellent.

On friday, the day before my birthday, I was guide in a City Walk I organised for Tafelstraat. There was a good turn out, with some 17 people attending, and as they were all very interested it was a lot of fun. I showed them around the city walls, the Helpoort, the Pater Vink tower, the high bridge, the old streets of Wyck, and then on past the Dinghuis and the Roman baths to the Our Lady's square. Parts of this they already knew, but the history of the city was new to them. They asked a lot of questions, which is always a good sign.
This is enough for now, my creativity is not exactly on a high at the moment.