Dusk at the Old City Gate

Every year on october 3 the city of Leiden celebrates its liberation by flooding in fifteensomething after a long siege by the Spaniards.
From one point of view you could say that after being deprived of all resources for a few months, no meat, no grain, no bread or beer, having to drink the dirty canalwater everybody pissed in, it was no small wonder that since then it became a tradition for citizens of Leiden to give each other beers and piss in the canals together on their annual liberation day.



That's one side of the story. The other is one of a town of traders, scientists, of free thinking and religious tolerance, open to all. The people of Leiden refused to bow to the far away catholic colonial King and his fundamentalists, you could say.



The famous Inquisition, the christian brain police, was in the habit of torturing and burning so called 'heretics' and 'infidels', mainly political opponents and people who didn't agree with the earth being flat like the pope said. The sickest joke were the 'witchtrials', where you were thrown in a canal tied to a heavy weight, and if you didn't sink you were considered airy as in 'witch,' and therefore to be BURNED ALIVE, and if you drowned, you were innocent, but dead, BUT, you gained the right to a decent catholic burial and a ticket to the gates of heaven...
No wonder everybody confessed,
or rebelled, if they stood a chance

Anyway, both views are a bit gross and oversimplified, but they do make SOME sense, I think even our local mediaphilosopher and musician Ad Verbrugge would have to ADmit. On last october 3rd, he and his band DUSK appropiately played under the Western City Gate, to celebrate the fact that everybody here is free to think for themselves and say that the world is ROUND like whoever created it