For my first Saturday in Belgium, I went to Bruges with my coworker Dan and his parents, who had flown to Europe for a bit of a family vacation with Dan.
Belgium is divided into two halves, the Dutch speaking northern half, and the French speaking southern one. Interestingly, the Dutch speakers are required to learn French in school, but the French speakers are NOT required to learn Dutch. Make of that what you will.
Our installation was in the Wallonia (the southern region), so our field trip was to Flanders in the north. Our destination for the day, Bruges, is a beautifully preserved medieval city with stepped roofs, canals, a bell tower, and all that stuff.
It was also the setting for an extremely violent comedy starring Colin Firth. We did not encounter any gunfire, fortunately.
What we did encounter was tourists – lots and lots of tourists. To be fair, WE were tourists, so it’s not as though we weren’t part of the problem. But it’s frustrating, because Leigh has been encouraging me to go to Bruges for as long as we’ve been married – she has very fond memories of trips there in the ‘90s.
And I can see why; the city IS beautiful. But it also has a lot of McDonalds and Starbucks and Instagrammers, just like everywhere else in the world at this point. Too many people wanting to see not enough stuff, I guess.
But with that discussion out of the way, let’s find out about the stuff I personally got to see. To start with, the architecture really is just impossibly picturesque. The city was in a bit of an industrial depression during the World Wars, so it wasn’t worth anyone’s time to bomb it. As such, a lot more of it has survived more intact than in many comparably aged cities in this part of Europe.
We wandered around a bit just gawping at stuff, and then bought a ticket to climb up the bell tower. The entire time we were up there, a carillon recital was underway. This was good and bad.
Good, because I am actually a former carillonneur – I learned to play at Yale and continued to actively perform in Cleveland until I moved to Michigan. Bad, because those suckers are LOUD – the best place to hear a carillon concert is emphatically NOT six feet from the bells. Still, the performer was excellent, and he played a range of pieces, from traditional Dutch carillon preludes all the way up to “Ring of Fire.”
The view was pretty nice too.
On returning to ground level, we found a nice little café a bit away from the tourist center to have lunch, and then headed back into the madding throng to do the other traditional activity in Bruges, a tour of the canals.
Bruges has many canals earning it the (possibly self-issued) nickname “The Venice of Belgium.” But while the canal boat tour COULD have been a total tourist gimmick, it really wasn’t.
For starters, Bruges is just as pretty from the water as from land, if not more so.
Secondly, our tour guide’s ability to code switch was worth the price of admission all by itself – he gave detailed, high speed information in German, Dutch, English, and French, and it sure seemed to this monolingual tourist that all four languages were just as fluent and ready to hand as his English.
After a waffle break (this IS Belgium, after all), we headed back to the car to start the trip back to Nivelles. But we had another stop on the way: Ghent!
Ghent is another city with an interesting medieval center, although it seems a bit more integrated into the modern city around it.
We were there late enough that it wasn’t really worth paying for admission to the castle, but we had a nice walk around looking at it and some other medieval structures.
We also saw the graffiti street, which is a LOT more fun than the gum wall in Seattle.
Finally we made our way to the 10th century cathedral of Saint Bavo, which was architecturally amazing, and had a choral concert underway to boot.
After that long day we headed back to Nivelles, where I got a nice simple dinner from the grocery store across the street and crashed.