The clinic garden
door Nico Vermeer
Breathtaking silence
Curiosity drove me to the center this Friday evening. This is a place I usually avoid, the eternal stream of tourists and day trippers claim every square millimeter of the city at every conceivable hour. Suddenly a silence has fallen in our city that is unparalleled. I cycled lonely over the Damrak during the sunset, which cast a mysterious glow over the city. I noticed that I heard church bells that I would otherwise never have noticed. Conversations hundreds of meters away easily carried me across the empty plains, towards my ear. The cacophony that normally reigned here suddenly seemed far away.
Meanwhile I tried to interpret this silence. Peaceful, lonely, unreal, ominous, idyllic… Man’s voice is loud, but not invincible. Nature, with the smallest creature, has forced the biggest cities to silence.
by Ruben Hanssen
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