Terneuzen

Terneuzen is the home port of the ghost ship every opera house knows. Legend assigns the Flying Dutchman's captain — Van der Decken, who swore to round the Cape though it took eternity, and was taken at his word — to Terneuzen, and the town on the Westerschelde embraces the patronage: the accursed captain's silhouette belongs to the waterfront, where the world's shipping actually does pass in endless procession, for Terneuzen commands the sea lock of the Ghent--Terneuzen canal, gateway for ocean vessels to the Belgian port upstream. The New Lock, among the largest lock chambers on earth, confirmed the vocation: this small Zeeland-Flanders town operates one of Europe's great marine doorways, its economy running on transit, chemistry and the tides.

Zeeuws-Vlaanderen — the Dutch strip south of the Scheldt, reachable from the rest of the country by tunnel — gives Terneuzen its borderland ease: Belgian accents in the cafés, Ghent half an hour away, polders and dikes to the horizon. The stage is documented in the concert record: the Scheldetheater, the town's theatre above the water, where touring opera, concerts and drama serve a region that would otherwise cross a border for them. A phantom captain, a real lock, ships all night: Terneuzen watches the traffic the Dutchman can never join.