i've been in the lab for a while and am antsy to get out of here, so this won't be too long.
bruges last week was really beautiful. the books were right - it's pretty much frozen in the middle ages and renaissance, which was really impressive. there are all kinsd of canals, old buildings, little winding cobblestone roads, etc. the one thing that got to me, though, was that they re-made or renovated a lot of buildings in the 18th and 19th centuries. so you'd be looking at something that looked like it was from the middle ages and then find out that someone just built it to look that way. so i felt cheated every now and then... i wanted to see the authentic stuff.
anyway, we visitied a beguinage, and then st. jan's hospital, which was a museum that had a lot of hans memling's work and also other things from the old hospital.
from there we went to the onze lieve vrouw church and saw a sculpture by michelangelo of the madonna and child. it really stood out for its size (only about 2.5 feet tall).
the picture of the belfry that i posted was taken from the main square, which was lined with old-style flemish buildings and the town hall. there was a huge line for horse carriage rides. no one seemed to mind that there was horse poop everyhwere, or that the horses would just stand there and pee in the middle of the square.
you can climb the belfry, but the line was too long so i didn't go. we walked around to other historic sites, like one of the last remaining hanseatic league houses and things like that.
we came to another square and went inside the bruges vrij, which had this incredible oak mantelpiece from 1528. then to the city hall, which was one of the re-done places.
we went to two chapels. the first was st. basil, a small romanesque chapel with a sculpture from the 1100s, and then the holy blood chapel, which is supposed to have a relic of jesus' blood on a piece of cloth. it was brought back from the crusades in the 1300s. i don't know about that.
we walked around more nice scenery, etc. and then went to the groeninge museum and saw more works by van eyck, memling, and other people.
that was about it. the past week has been pretty slow. i've just been doing work to get ahead of things before we go to antwerp and amsterdam (26-29). classes are going fine. some of these vesalius kids are pretty ridiculous. i don't think i could handle this school for more than a semester.
hmmm, what else.. i got a really cheap guitar on wednesday to kill some time and stay in practice. i'm going to try to sell it back before i come home.
on thursday night i went to see this abstract jazz group at the kultuurkaffe at VUB. i really enjoyed it. they did the soundtrack for this movie called Sansa. i'm wondering if the soundtrack is the same as what they do live.
as you can see, i didn't end up going to cologne. it was completely booked up, and i had too much to take of this weekend anyway.
well, that's about it for now. sorry for the delay in updates. if any of you have some time to email me, i'd like to hear what's new and how everything's going...
ok, lunch time.