Train Ride at Alun-Alun Bandung

The photo: A train ride for children at Alun-Alun Bandung (Bandung City Square).

As I said in some of my previous posts, Alun-Alun Bandung is a crowded and lively place. A lot of activities take place here, this train ride being one of them.

Alun-alun Bandung is a park by designation, but it looks more more like a open air market where vendors offering all sorts of things can be found. Located right at the front yard of Bandung Grand Mosque, it may look and feel like an odd appendix to the mosque, especially to a foreigner. But to those who are familiar with our tradition, this may not be as strange as it looks.

The juxtaposing of the mundane (the market) and the holy (the mosque) in an alun-alun  (city square) is by tradition a symbolic spatial orientation, where the mosque is placed at the western edge of the square and the market at the southern edge. However, the current situation with Alun-Alun Bandung is very different. Instead of being placed a square apart, the market has moved into the square, therefore making it looks like part/an appendix of the mosque. Where the market was - at the southern edge of the square - is now an abandoned and ugly looking building that used to be a department store.

I'm still using my toy camera to take this picture. That's why it looks like the way it is.