I had to go to Heerlen for a lecture about ‘the reportage’. I had looked forward to this day. How had this crept through? In the Intercity I felt like Neil Armstrong, only I wasn’t on my way to the moon, but to Heerlen.
What did I know about Heerlen?
An old roommate came from there, I vaguely remembered stories about her father who had been a miner. I had traveled to the town in the wake of Pim Fortuyn, who, in a room there, urged the local elite that he did not feel like complaining that evening. And as a starting reporter writer I was once sent there for a top 10 of terrible places. Heerlen was second due to a plague of junkies, we had decided in a canal house. Nothing was left of flourishing Heerlen, which had become rich through mining. I walked a few times through the infamous junk tunnel under the station, drank a cup of coffee and fled.
How different was the arrival now, no cleaner station than that of Heerlen. A three-man delegation from the library was waiting for me, they were the only people. What stood out during the short walk was the many new buildings.
“Has it been bombed here?” I asked.
“No,” replied one of the librarians, “we demolished our own history.”
What remained: the Schunck glass palace – an ode to architecture by the Heerlen architect Frits Peutz. Formerly a department store where the whole of Limburg came to shop, now a museum, library, restaurant and also something with song and dance. I ate a mini hamburger with the interviewer on duty. The people in the room did not speak Limburgish to me. Three of them told me that this was because the management of the mining industry used to consist mainly of Dutch people and that their parents therefore thought it would be better for their career if they spoke generally civilized Dutch.
Anyway, the mines closed, the city impoverished and then recovered. I ended up with the organization and a string of interested people in Pelt, a café of the kind I only knew from memory. I was not the first, traditionally most writers went down there with librarians and all. The local specialty that I was always pressed into my hands was the ‘flame’. A dot triple beer deglazed with regular beer. Long story short: I woke up in Stadshotel Heerlen, where I was the only guest due to a renovation. I picked myself up and crawled back to that immaculate station. I didn’t know exactly what I had experienced. It hadn’t been unpleasant, but it had been enough.
Marcel van Roosmalen writes an exchange column with Ellen Deckwitz here.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 3, 2023