The Motherlands

“You’ll have to go to Maastricht for some French onion soup,” my mother had insisted upon hearing my plans to return to the Dutch-German border where we’d lived from 1998 until 2002. I must admit, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind when I was putting together my itinerary, but then I was more concerned with reliving my own memories than those of my parents.

Back then, my brother and I would’ve rather used weekends to visit Dreiländereck maze in Aachen, Royal Burgers' zoo in Arnhem or Bobbejaanland theme park in Lichtaart—Germany, Holland and Belgium all within an hour’s drive. Instead, my parents insisted on taking us to Intratuin garden centre, Handelshof cash & carry or IKEA. However, in the event there weren’t any errands to run, their preferred pick was Maastricht.

I fancied that the memories shared with family were the most likely to have survived intact, having since become anecdotes and been fairly well rehearsed in the intervening years. By contrast, those shared with estranged childhood friends or, on the few occasions I branched off alone, known only to myself were the ones I was keenest to rekindle on this trip into the past, having long fallen out of everyday use.

It wasn’t part of the plan, then, when I found myself booking a return ticket to Maastricht Centraal on my second afternoon in Aachen. I’d spent the morning photographing interiors at the Dom and Rathaus, but keen to take my camera outside I decided to search the surrounding area for a more promising forecast. Maastricht, it transpired, posted the only sunny result for miles around. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a blue sky.

Even though there’s no obvious border to cross or special announcement to be made, it’s immediately apparent when you’ve crossed into the Netherlands—in this instance just minutes after leaving the city limits. Not because there’s suddenly a windmill standing on every street corner, though there are still a striking number, but because it’s like you’ve entered a tabletop world of scale models and static scenery; if it weren’t for the cyclists crisscrossing the landscape, I might’ve been travelling on a miniature railway.

The Netherlands is a cute and characterful country of handsome houses and tidy lawns. The ubiquitous red and white brickwork extends even to the churches, lending them a diminutive air in keeping with the flattened landscape and keeping communities unified if not strictly uniform. Like Germany, the state was clearly struggling to keep up appearances—through dirty windows, I watched flooded fields and overgrown parklands whizz by—but individuals clearly did what they could and it made all the difference. The Netherlands still looked like a charming place to live.

As I approached Maastricht Centraal, an astonishing array of tracks began to converge and combine. If memory served, Maastricht was a modest market town, quaint and compact, and yet all evidence appeared to the contrary. The departure board showed services to Aachen, Liege and Venlo. Even more surprising was how familiar it felt, the glossy red and green tiling striking a chord. I’d never travelled from the station before, but had perhaps greeted a visiting relative at some point in time. Unless, of course, I was mistaking its red brickwork and Arcadian arches for somewhere else—maybe for a miniature Hackescher Markt?

This sense of familiarity evaporated on exit. As I walked down Stationsstraat, in the general direction of the river, I didn’t recognise my surroundings at all. Instead of the sleepy stream I was expecting to find outside the old walls, I emerged onto the bank of a busy shipping channel bisecting the city—the mighty Meuse no less. I thought everything was supposed to look smaller in adulthood? Crossing the river and encountering one market square after another, I gave up all hope of finding the restaurant favoured by my parents decades before.

I could picture it in my mind, but the rest of the scene failed to take shape. I certainly didn’t remember the city’s Stadhuis standing in the middle of it, or recall for that matter sitting in the shadow of Saint Servatius Basilica. In fact, beyond the medieval defences I couldn’t recall Maastricht having any notable landmarks at all. Some features were undoubtedly new to me, such as shopping centres Mosae Forum and Entre Deux, but others clearly dated from long before the 1990s. The city seemed too historic, too interesting to have made such little impression.

Thankfully, I had an entire afternoon to rediscover its forgotten treasures. I started on Vrijthof, a square strongly associated with Carnival and which hosts a cluster of five colourful installations inspired by the festival, eccentric in design and anthropomorphic in shape. Inside the basilica, the man on the ticket desk proudly proclaimed Maastricht to be the most beautiful city in all of the Netherlands and, no longer certain I could rely on my piecemeal memories of Amsterdam and Utrecht to adjudicate, I took his word for it, paying the entrance fee. If nothing else, I found it hard to imagine either having as fine a building as this.

Next, incurring roaming charges to consult a map, I tried to locate the watercourse I’d had in mind. Leaving the city centre, I found what I was looking for—Jekerkwartier—outside of the southeastern gate, Helpoort, just as I’d predicted. Walking upstream, back along the wall, I was stopped in my tracks by a woman mourning a dead giraffe. It took longer than it should have to realise I was looking at a life-sized replica, a macabre memorial to the bear pit that had once occupied the space. Other animals were immortalised, too—though curiously the bear, Jo, sat outside the metal bars, a short distance away on a park bench. Reparations, I presumed; though somewhat undermined by the petting zoo and aviary still in operation elsewhere on the Jeker.

After exploring the old fortifications, visiting the university and admiring the statue of d'Artagnan, the Musketeer who met his end in Maastricht, I decided to take a chance on another church—not because it was especially impressive to look at but because it seemed so inexplicably busy. Many churches in the area, either side of the border, only opened to the public after a period of dedicated morning prayer, so it seemed curious that this one should draw such a crowd in late afternoon. However, upon entering I realised the congregation were in fact customers, the church having been deconsecrated decades before and rechristened as a bookstore in 2006: the much vaunted (and indeed vaulted) Boekhandel Dominicanen.

In no hurry to return to my hotel and conscious I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, my thoughts turned to dinner while my mum’s words echoed in my ear. I found a restaurant with outside seating and requested an English menu, relieved to see that French onion soup was still as popular as ever with the Dutch. I asked for a bowl and some beer, then watched as children played amongst the Carnival quintet on the far side of the square, finding it suddenly easy to imagine my brother and I in their place. I sat for some time after I’d finished, enjoying the atmosphere. I had to admit, Mum and Dad might have been onto something.