Travelogue #19: Literature as religious experience.

I consider myself incredibly lucky on this trip to have visited two very memorable bookstores: the first being the famous City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, and the second one - lesser known, but in many ways much cooler - Selexyz Dominicanen in Maastricht.

As religion continues to decline in developed Western countries, more and more churches have fallen into disrepair. The Dominican Church in Maastricht, which dates back to the 13th Century, could not escape the same fate. Right up until its most recent incarnation, the old church building had been used by the good folks of Maastricht as a used bike pound (which incidentally strikes me as an oh-so-Dutch thing to do). 

These days, the Dominican Church has found new life … as a bookshop. And not just any bookshop, but a bookshop with its own cafe (situated where the altar used to be) and a giant, three-storey steel bookshelf. 

We visited on a Sunday - typically a day when this entire friggin continent shuts down. To our delight however, the bookstore was open and bustling.

Tourists were wandering around, taking in the novelty of their surroundings; universities students were studying in the horseshoe shaped cafe at the back; a jazz band was playing inside, inspiring rounds of applause from locals sipping their coffee nearby. The atmosphere had the laid-back, yet lively feel of a weekend bric-a-brac market. 

You couldn’t help but marvel at this ingenious use of space - the maximisation of floor space by dividing the height of the church ceiling into 3 internal levels, the curved shape of the chancel, which lends itself so well to the social function of a cafe, the cross-shaped coffee table in the centre, a reference back to the architectural memory of this building being a former church.

There was a strong sense of security and reassurance, which could only be brought about by the thick, stone brick walls of a church building and the smell of unopened books … This was the insertion of new meaning into an abandoned, 800 year old building situated on prime real estate. 

We sat in the cafe for a while, drinking coffee, listening to the jazz band, eating cake, and enjoying a fun afternoon just across the Belgian-Dutch border. 

In a way, the bookstore was typical of the city of Maastricht, where the old seems to coexist well with the new. The city is one of the few in the area that kept the remnants its old city walls and gates, weaving them seamlessly into everyday streetscapes as if they were meant to be there, all along. 

City walls.

Helspoort - one of the old city gates of Maastrict, complete with its original fortifications. 

Old church that looks like a fortress. 

Having been in Leuven for a few weeks by then, it came also as a relief to me to be able to stand on the banks of a river and smell the faint breeze coming off a large body of moving water.

They say first impressions are everything - well … nicely played, Holland.