What a glorious day, surprisingly hot it was too, and after travelling for far too many hours and kilometres we arrived feeling a bit like Charleroi looks - tired and terribly run down.
This may be a terrible conclusion to draw from a town which we have never visited and have only passed through on three occasions, but the fact that the economy airlines brand its airport “Brussels South” only reinforces that conclusion.
Some say that passing Charleroi by ship is not an attractive proposition, but they would be wrong. Think of it as “Post Apocalyptic Industrial Chic”.
With kilometres of huge piles of recycling waste glinting in the sun or floating in the air as the case may be, and factories that at first glance look abandoned, yet awful shrieks and bangs emanate from within, as once useful objects are shredded for future re-use, or perhaps they really are abandoned and aliens are rebuilding their wrecked ships within - whichever you prefer.
It’s a super positive thing on the one hand, your old car or refrigerator being stripped to its component material, shredded and then shipped to who knows where, and there’s a kind of honesty and confidence about the place. It is what it is.
Compare that to the cosmetic coverings of the nuclear reactor cooling towers we spent a couple of hours with while waiting for a lock. Their glistening while forms and water vapour rising above silhouetted against the blue sky belie all sorts of potential catastrophe lurking within.
At least that pile of cubed cars is unlikely to suffer a meltdown at its core, which is more than we can say for the reactor, or for that matter for us if we’d pushed our day much further.
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