Venice of the North

February 16 - Bruges: This time, the trip was sponsored by the international student group, so there were probably 50 or so of us who went to visit Bruges. We got on the train in the morning, not knowing exactly what to expect. It was a little cold when we got off, but the city was still beautiful. We started the day by finding our hostels. We didn't all fit in one, but that meant that the one I was staying in was completely filled with my friends, making it quite a lot of fun. We had a quick lunch and met up for a walking tour of the city. It was great, except for the fact that our tour guide spit alot if you got too close to her!





We were in Belgium, so naturally, the first thing we saw was the city center or the Burg. The city hall in Bruges is actually comparatively new - only about 100 years old. After that, our guide had good intentions of bringing us to all of the historical sites, but it was Carnaval season, meaning there are festivals all over the country for about a month in the winter. We were interrupted by an amazing parade, and got stuck on the wrong side of the road, so we stopped to watch it for a bit. We all enjoyed it, but the guide got a little frustrated and hurried us off to the next site as soon as she could.


It's really like a step back in time since there are almost no modern buildings in the city. You're walking through little cobblestone paths along the canals/rivers, and crossing little footbridges to get to the next place. Anyway, the next thing we came across was the Church of our Lady from around the 13th century. A couple cool factoids: It has a 122.3 meter spire, making it the second tallest brick structure in the world. Also, it has a sculpture by Michelangelo from around 1500 of Madonna and Child. We saw quite a few more things, including a Beguinage. That's basically a convent with the exception that the women were able to work to make a little bit of money.


We also checked out a Godshuis - the picture that looks like a little row of white houses. Essentially it's a retirement home, but the people are given more freedoms and a nicer atmosphere. At the Godshuis, I found the perfect example of the trees here. Somehow, they all manage to be covered in a perfectly dry green moss or something. I don't know how or why, but it looks pretty cool. Our last site of the tour was the Lake of Love, which you can se a small old medieval church across.


After the tour, we started the "festivities" of the night. Then, we went to dinner, but I was just a bit tipsy and kept speaking French to the Flemish waiter. They don't like that too much, but oh well. After dinner, the fun continued for a while, before we went to a club at about 11 or midnight. Without too many details, I figured out that it's kind of difficult to find your way home in a foreign country at 4 in the morning under the circumstances.



February 17 - Ghent: Well, the next day, it was a little too bright out, so we moved a little bit slower. BUT, we did go to Ghent, which is also a city along the river. It also has a big part in Europe's history. From the 11th-13th centuries, it was the second biggest city in Europe - bigger than London, Moscow, etc. First thing there was a boat tour along the river. It was a little nerve-wracking since with all of us on the boat, we were only about 2 inches out of the water. It was fun though, and we saw things like the oldest and smallest houses, museums, churches, cafes, everything along the river. It's crazy to think that you would just hop in a boat to go to your neighbor's house here.




After grabbing lunch at none other than Pizza Hut, we decided to check out the Gravensteen castle. It was built in the 1100s, and used for things like a courthouse, prison, and factory before being renovated and turned into a museum in the late 1800s. It's cool because it's one of few castles that I've seen in Europe that still has a moat and draw-bridge. We took the tour of the whole place, including a walk through of the torture museum. It showed everything from boxing thumbs, to stretching people, to forcing tar into their stomachs. It was pretty gruesome, but cool all the same to see the extremes people went to in those times. Finally, the tour of the castle finished with a trip to the top where we had a great view of the city. However, after going up all the stairs to the top, we had to go down them, which meant I got very, very dizzy.


After that, we hopped on the next train to head back to Louvain-la-Neuve to get ready for the next week of classes. (sortof! ;) )

Diamonds... Girl's Best Friend?

February 9: So this weekend, I visited Antwerp, nicknamed the diamond capital of the world. The first thing we noticed when we got there was the beautiful train station. It reminded me alot of what I imagine the Musee D'Orsay in Paris would have looked like when it was still operating as a train station.

It was pretty easy to see why Antwerp was is called the diamond capital. As soon as you leave the station, there are many shops for selling, maintaining, and scamming diamonds. We decided to visit the diamond museum to learn about them instead. Unfortunately, we weren't able to take pictures, but I did see and learn alot. They had a huge variety of diamonds to look at, including the Hope diamond and others. Also, they had some of the original diamond processing tools and workshop amenities so I could see how it was actually done when it was done by hand. I thought it was interesting also that at one point, while 80% of diamonds passed through the port in Antwerp, if it has an Antwerp certification, it is guaranteed not to have any connection to African paramilitary groups. That means that no diamond certified in Antwerp is a "blood diamond".

Next, we went to go visit the Cathedral of Our Lady. It housed some artwork of Peter Paul Rubens, who was from Antwerp. It was started in 1351, but was never finished. If you look at the picture above, you can see that the second spire is not complete. As a guide for size, the one that is finished is 123 meters tall, or about 400 feet. Besides the detailed gothic exterior, I thought the complex buttresses inside were really interesting also.

After taking a little tour of the church, we walked along the river for a while. (Antwerp is connected to the North Sea by the Sheldt) It was one of the first really sunny days we had, and it was about 65 degrees out, so we spent probably an hour and a half just walking the boardwalk and enjoying the sun. After walking for quite a while, we took a break at the oldest building in Antwerp - the Steen. It's a medieval castle from around 1200 that was used to fortify the city. From around 1300-1800, it was also used as a prison for the city. I loved this castle, as it looked so much like a fairytale castle with perfect towers, a sort of draw-bridge, etc.

Finally, we went to check out the Plantin-Moretus museum. It's a print museum. I thought it would be kind of lame, but it was actually kind of interesting. They had a lot of things there, from the 2 oldest printing presses, libraries of the first printed books, a 36-line Gutenberg Bible, etc. It's actually the house of Plantin and his son Moretus, who started a print company in the 16th century, so you get to walk through the courtyards outside and take a break from stuffy museum air. They sold it to the city of Antwerp in the 1800s and they turned it into a museum.

After leaving the museum, we went off in search of a waffle for a snack, since you know it's not a day in Belgium without a waffle. Anyway, along the way, we came across the statue of a hand, which is supposedly the symbol of the city of Antwerp. according to wikipedia... there is a myth about a giant who collected a toll from everyone on the river. If they didn't pay, he cut off one of their hands and threw it into the river. The word "werpen" supposedly means something like throw, and "ant" sounds similar to hand, thus the symbol. Also, the fountain that I'm looking at below includes the giants hand. (It's also legend that the giant was killed by having his hand cut off and thrown into the river)

Finally, for those of you interested in something a little more risque, that last sculpture of the man has a strange story. Apparently, he's supposed to be a god of fertility or something. He used to be rather well endowed, (hence the awed little guys at the bottom) but too many infertile women from around Europe were coming to pay homage and hope for the best. The government decided it was too indecent and removed the phallus to discourage idle worshipping. Poor guy.

Anyway, we finally left and headed for home after a long, beautiful day of sightseeing!

Leuven the Old

February 3: My next trip was off to the city of Leuven, which is the namesake of the city I'm staying in. The school, Catholic University of Leuven, was founded in the 1425 in the Flemish (dutch) part of Belgium. However, there has been a conflict for hundreds of years between Flanders (Flemish) and Wallonia (French). Finally in 1968, after 133 years of French teaching in the Flemish part of the country, the school split into a dutch school in Leuven, and a French school. The city Louvain-la-Neuve (The New Leuven) was built just to house this school.

So for my trip, we went on a Saturday, and most things in European cities are not open on Saturdays. However, we did manage to get into the church and national treasury. The top picture is of St. Peter's Church built from 1425-1500. It is one of the most prominent buildings in town, and had many paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries among it's 12 chapels. The chapels are part of what is known as the treasury. It's a seperate sort of museum behind the alter in the church, and it contains elaborate relics from Catholic culture. Also, we were able to visit the crypt of the church, which was surprisingly not the resting place of anything. It had been fully cleared out, but back upstairs was the tomb of Duke Henry 1 of Brabant.

Next, as we were walking through town, we came across that next picture, which is the oldest early gothic style church in Leuven. Then, we made it back to Grande Place (if you haven't noticed yet, the main square of every city in Belgium seems to be called Grande Place). In the picture on the left, you can see the traditional row houses again.

On the right, is the town hall. Leuven was built from the profits of the fabric industry, and named after the type of fabric(Lewyn) that was made there. It's pretty much impossible to see, but the town hall depicts all the different stages of fabric making in an attempt to honor the guild that supported the city.

Finally, we went to the Botanical Gardens, or "Jardins Botaniques". There weren't many flowering plants at this time of the year, but there was still a Japanese style garden with a koi pond, as well as some interesting sculptures... so it was a nice break from looking at all of the architecture.

Brussels Again!

February 2: So I made it back to Brussels to check out a little bit more of the culture. The first place I visited was the St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral. It actually reminded me a lot of Notre Dame in Paris, except that the towers on this one were symmetrical.

A little history. It was founded by Lambert II, Count of Leuven in 1047, but was named Gudula after the relics of Saint Gudula (no idea who that is) which were brought here shortly after the church was built. It wasn't originally in the gothic style, but was renovated beginning in the 13th century, and was finished in the middle of the 15th century.

Then we went to visit the musical instruments museum. The contents didn't have much to do with Belgium, but it's one of the largest collections in the world. Johannes, the guy playing the piano in the picture kept asking me how to say them in English, but there were so many things that I had never even seen before. Then it was back out to the Grande Place of Brussels again where we spent some time checking out the guild buildings. Each type of tradesman had their own building where they lived and worked, and each trade was sculpted on the facade and then the buildings zere edged in gold.

Last, but not least, I tried my first bite of a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. I know you're probably thinking, "How can their waffles be any better than ours?" To be honest, I don't know, but with how hard they are to resist after that first one, i think they might be laced with something. Sidenote - there's two very different kinds of Belgian waffles: Brussels and Liege. Liege are good, Brussels are not. The things you learn...

Fete des Lumieres

January 30: As we were walking through the Grande Place (in the center of town), we came across a little festival. It was called the Fete des Lumieres or the festival of lights. It's a common celebration before Ash Wednesday to celebrate the bringing of light into the world by Jesus before the season of Lent.

However, in an all college town, the festival is a little less religious, and a little more relaxed. There were a lot of candles decorating the plaza, as well as free lighters so we could each "have the light". There were also free crepes and hot wine (traditional foods of the festival) as well as a street dance. Because the school has exchange students from all over the world, we learned dances to songs from all over the world - including Cotton-Eyed Joe as "American" music.

Afterwards, we decided to visit one of the bars (Brasse Temps) to try some homemade Belgian beer. I think you might call it a micro-brewery? Either way, we tried L'Ambrasse Temps, which they call a dark amber beer. The most common way of drinking at this bar is from a "giraffe", which is basically a 3-liter cylinder with a tap. No worries though - I shared that with a few people.