They're alive!

Our first night in Bruges, we called WS (Wonderful Son) to see if they were still in town and wanted a beer. The reply was yes on both accounts.


Obviously all are doing well.

The guys picked a café/bar they had been to the night before, with cheap beer with the Euro-cup game on the big screen TV. We drank and listened to their stories of Amsterdam and Bruges, everything from flat tires on rental bikes to loving the VanGogh Museum. They already adopted other football (soccer) clubs because “Well, the US teams just sucks.” WS was sporting the colors of one of the local Bruges club, and his friend had on Holland. (This will be an important point later in the story.)

After the beer, I personally was starving and the guys said they were hungry too. So we went to look for a place that was still open. (Restaurants close early in Bruges. We barely got a table at 9pm.) As we sat down, the owner looked a little grumpy, I thought due to a large party of five late in the evening. We ordered, and tried to be as polite as possible. While serving the table next to us, the owner said something in English and the other table laughed. DH nudged me, “They’re talking about us.”

“Huh, why do you say that?”

“Trust me; I know they were talking about us.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. The guys weren’t being that loud; I was speaking French, so we weren’t being rude Americans demanding he speak English – what was ticking this man off?

It finally came clear when the owner came to remove our plates. He stared at WS’s football scarf, “You two are rooting for the wrong team.” The owner was a fan of the OTHER team in Bruges – the ones that have a horrible record, and the fans cheer louder the worse they do.

That’s why he was being cranky! The other tabled laughed, and the guys quickly took off their scarves. Nice to know Americans aren’t the only ones who go crazy over their teams.

Bruges

There is so much to love about Bruges. The town is like a three-D postcard that is so stinkin’ beautiful, it’ll take you twice as long to get from point A to point B that it would anywhere else, since you‘ll be stopping and taking pictures of another ridiculously beautiful house, or church or canal every five steps.

My camera was full of these shots. What’s even worse? This is our second time here, so I have even more photos on my computer back home.

We stayed at our favorite B&B in Bruges. The room is beautiful and breakfast is wonderful. (There’s a little chocolate by your coffee cup in the morning. Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone had a little piece of chocolate with their coffee in the morning. I should look into this.)

The weather was (still) beautiful, so we decided to go to the northeast edge of town where the windmills are.

There were four total, but only one was working. You could go in and see it action.

After we laid on the grass for awhile and admire them some more against the blue sky, we walked along the canal and found a barge from Holland going through the locks. This was a huge barge, with a spacious owner’s cabin, complete with car and dog. I guess the equivalent in the States would be a truck driver with a decked out cab.
We saw the whole process, raising the bridge, getting the barge into to lock, closing the lock, lowering the water level, and then out the other lock.

Back to the center of Bruges, we went to a church (I already forgot which one) and saw the one Michelangelo sculpture that left Italy in his lifetime:

Happily, Bruges has tourist who will take a photo of you if you return the favor.

Here’s one by the windmills, taken by a Englishman from Essex.

Here’s some nice shots by a girl from Singapore. (I have to give her and her friend credit, it was a 24 hour flight from them to get there, and they only had a week in Europe. That’s dedication.)

Since this was our last night in Belgium, we need to top it off with some Trappist beer. Very tasty stuff.

Now, I’m ready for some wine in Italy.

Ghent

We stopped on the way to Bruges, to visit Ghent. Literally, two hours off and then back on the train. The main reason to even stop here was to visit St. Bravo Church, home of Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece. This is not just any old altarpiece (as if there is such a thing). The altarpiece is an iconic oil painting; measuring 11’ high and 15’ across when opened. When closed, the doors of the altarpiece illustrate the Annunciation, images of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist (patron saints of the town and the cloth guild) and an image of the donors. When opened, the top section illustrates, the Virgin Mary, the Dessis (God the Father and Christ in one image), St. John the Baptist, surrounded by a choir of angels, with Adam and Eve on the side wings; below is the Sacrificial Lamb in heaven, surrounded by cardinals, martyrs, saints, etc. (Geeze, I’m on vacation and this sounds like I’m giving a lecture. Do I ever stop working?)

When I lecture on some artworks, I hit the points on why this piece is important enough to be included in the textbook. It may illustrate some technique, or composition that was typical, or radical, for that culture. Some artworks are tipping points for new styles to follow. And then there are some artworks that I feel are so amazing, that I’ll talk about them regardless. This altarpiece isn’t always in the survey text, but I always manage to show it.

Van Eyck (and his brother plus a whole workshop of painters who also worked on the piece) captured the smallest details and textures. There have been some x-rays and ultra-violet work done which showed that Van Eyck used up to 100 thin layers of paint (typically known as glazing.)

DH is patient with me and this (somewhat) bizarre side trip. We drop off our bags in the train station locker, and catch a tram into the city. After deducing which church was St. Bravo (“Look, it’s gotta be that one with a huge tour group leaving.”), we get there an hour before it closes. The church itself is free, but you have to pay to see the altarpiece (of course).

I would love to show you the pictures I took, but photography wasn’t allowed. Even if it was permitted, my photos would be horrible with the light reflecting off the smudged glass. (It’s starting to get tedious hauling this tripod, lens, etc around and not being able to use them.)

Yes, it is indeed huge; it fills its own small, temperature-controlled room of glass and medal. But all that detail is lost by its sheer size. When a work is 12 feet up in the air, seeing all that detail is next to impossible.