antwerp, amsterdam, and delft
february 26th-29th
antwerp was nice. it was snowing when we got there (you can see in the pictures). we went to the plantin museum, which had all kinds of printmaking things in it and had two gutenburg bibles from 1461. we did more walking aroudn and went to another Notre Dame cathedral. this had some big rubens paintings - the raising of the cross and the descent from the cross. lunch was at a little restaurant where we all crowded in and had some good vegetable soup and then beef stew. after lunch we went to st. charles borromeo church and chapel. from there we walked down a main street which was just modern stores - then to ruben's house, which was a little uneventful since the big parts were closed.
on to amsterdam - we got there at night and had it to ourselves. the hotel wasn't bad at all. friday we had a boat tour on the canals which was really neat. we went to a hidden catholic church inside a house. it's from when the protestants took over and cleared out the cathedrals, so they would hide the churches in the houses. it was cool - you walk up the third floor and all of a sudden there's this elaborate little church. during the lunch break we walked around the big flea market... and then i got a bagel, which i haven't seen since i got here. it was glorious. after lunch we went to the portuguese synagogue, which somehow survived the nazi occupation. all the guys had to put on yarmukles to go inside. after that we went to the van gogh museum, which i really enjoyed. they have most of his 'big' paintings there. i like him a lot more than rubens or rembrandt as far as dutch guys go (they're all dutch, right?). dinner was indonesian food at a place reserved by mme delsemme. good stuff, but i forget what it was called. just rice and different spicy meats, vegetables, and tofu. spent the night walking around the city with a couple people. saw lots of different things (to say the least).
saturday we went to the maritime museum - another winner. we toured a replica of an 18th century merchant ship and then walked around the museum, which i could have spent a lot more time in. i liked all the paintings of the dutch naval battles. the different old world maps were cool to see, too. then over to see where the first dam of amsterdam was. on that square is the town hall and the nieuwe kerk. that's where i took the picture of the kids with all the pigeons hanging out on them. from there we went to the amsterdam historical museum. either i was just really tired by then or it just wasn't interesting to start with there, because there wasn't much holding my attention. running along to catch trains and trams with madame delsemme was an adventure in itself. 35 of us hopping on these things had to really hassle people. oh well. the rijksmueum was next, which had lots of rembrandt paintings. i liked the different landscape paintings they had there (but they weren't by rembrandt). we walked around the museum park after that and then got some massive hamburgers at this tavern. walked around downtown some more at night.
sunday we got up early and went to the anne frank house. it was incredible. i'm glad we got a chance to see it. there's still the pictures she pasted on the wall there, and they have the original diary and everything there. after that we had lunch and made our way towards delft.
i really liked delft. maybe it's because it was so small and not really touristy (except for part of the main square). we had a local lady give us a tour of the city. i picked up some more little gifts for people there. there's lots of canals there and everyone's just hanging out and riding their bikes and being low-key.
monday gilbert was telling me about his father and grandfather and what they did in the war. he told me how his grandfather had actually walked from the netherlands to antwerp after he got out of prision, and then was blind for 6 months from the phosphorus bombs. his dad got caught for some other thing, and when they divided the belgian people up he went with the flemish people instead of the french-speaking ones and was able to escape. it was a really interesting story.
the rest of this week has been alright. things are picking up for the next couple weeks until break. i had an econ midterm, which was ok. i'm starting to book stuff for spring break - looks like it's going to be rome, florence, pisa, venice, and milan... maybe some other places on the way back, i don't know. we'll have to figure it all out.

"How could you confuse Pink Floyd with The Who? One is guitar-driven rock and the other is guitar-driven rock"
i forgot to bring my journal along with me so i could write a decent entry about everything i saw. in the meantime, you can see the photos from the trip.

stop bologna
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.

more pictures
some of my pictures of Luxembourg City and Bruges are up.
I have to write a paper now, but I'll try to post about Bruges soon.
This weekend I think we're going to Cologne in Germany.

luxembourg 61 revisited
short story about friday night first. rich and i were walking towards the computer labs at the vub and we came to the main road, which is a four-lane divided road. at this point we saw what may have been the stupidest car accident ever. someone turned on to the road in the wrong direction and began to drive for quite some distance. meanwhile, all the other cars were stopped at a light. so there was just one singular car driving towards a whole bunch of stopped cars. but he kept going! and then when he got close enough everyone started flashing their lights and him and beeping and it looks like he just kind of coasted into them going 15 mph. looked like nothing big though. just really really stupid.
anyway, we left for luxembourg early in the morning on saturday. we left from gare centrale at 8:40. it wasn't one of those fancy high-speed trains, so it was a three-hour ride. still, there was lots of great scenery as we rode through the southern part of belgium. our group consisted of me, rich, jason, caroline, eric, joanna, and john. right when we got to luxembourg the skies cleared up, which was great. we walked to the hostel, which was on the other side of the city but still only a 25 minute walk or so. the old walls and defenses were incredible to see. I was going to post my pictures, but I think those panoramas from the city's website do it a lot more justice.
the hostel was pretty nice. it was a Hostels International hostel, sheets and breakfast were included, it was clean, and was only 19.30?
we went for a walk along the chemins de corniche, which is a pedestrian path along the old ramparts. the views were great. we made our way down to the Grund (an old part of the city) and saw the church of st. jean baptiste. we went back up via an elevator built into the rock, which was neat.
for the rest of the afternoon we went to the cathedral in the city, which has an old section from 1622. then we just wandered along the different parks and valleys on the edge of the city. there are all kinds of towers and other fortifications still built into the rock that you can wander into. we also saw a little church/chapel that was built into the rock in the one valley. it wasn't in use, though.
at night we wanted to try some real luxembourgish food, so we went to a place called brasserie guillaume and four of us got Judd mat Gardebounen, which was smoked pork collar (??) with beans and potatoes. it was good. at night we just found someplace to get coffee and called it a relatively early night since we were all tired from all of our climbing and walking.
sunday was pretty quiet. we had our breakfast and made sandwiches for lunch. we headed down to the parks on the other side of the city and walked around for a bit, but the weather was pretty bad and we were carrying all of our stuff. So we ended up heading back to Brussels around 11:30ish. it was really impressive how quiet the city was on sunday. for a capital city, it was basically completely shut down.
all in all, it was a great trip. if the transportation was easier, me and rich would like to see all the castles in the north and the different mountain-y areas.
this week has been routine so far, though. the work is actually starting to pick up, but is still manageable. also, it's strange coming back from dinner and having it be almost 9 pm.
but anyway, i need to get back to writing my Stalin book review.

Luxembourg
Some of us went to Luxembourg City this weekend. I'll get a real entry up later, but I found some good pictures of the places we went to on their tourist site:
Panoramic Views
Sites & Attractions

today is a belgian holiday - i didn't catch the name. gilbert and paquita really didn't know what it was for, but at least it's an excuse to make tons and tons of crepes. the tradition is that you hold a golden coin when you make them and it will bring you wealth. they just laughed about that, but paquita showed me her coin as she was making them today...
one good quote i forgot to mention:
i mentioned how i was thinking of going to one of the old cathedrals for mass, even if it was in french. gilbert said it didn't really matter - you know how it goes anyway.
his exact words about the catholic mass was that "it is the world's favorite play"
i thought that was pretty funny.

Gilbert and his daughter express their shame over jean claude van-damme
first of all, i have some pictures of ghent posted.
ghent was great, except for the weather. we first went to the MIAT, which had the old machines that the textiles factories had. during our lunch one of the lafayette kids managed to break three beer glasses after the tower he made toppled. way to go.
after that we made our way to st. bavo's cathedral (gothic style), which was beautiful in its own right, but also housed jan van eyck's "adoration of the lamb" from 1432 (try link 1 or link 2). in the crypt you could see the foundation of the romanesque church that was there in the 1150s.
then on to the castle! we went to gravensteen castle, where the count of ghent used to live. it was finished in 1180. this wasn't even necessarily a big castle, but it was still impressive. it was a real deal with fortifications and a torture chamber.
the rest of ghent was nice as well. we saw the belfry and town hall, and we got to walk on our own for a while. it was a relatively low-key city, which was nice. we walked by a bunch of kids that were rolling up shirts and whipping each other with them, locker-room style. that was a little bizarre. the view from the bridges going over the rivers was great, and in nicer weather you can get boat rides along them.
that night a group of us went to meet dr. pribic and dr. katz at a little place called the anchois vert on rue stevin. pribic treated us to dinner, which was nice. the place probably only holds about 30 people, and had a great atmosphere. pribic and katz are regulars there since it is right across the street from their apartments. at 10 these two men from paraguay came in to play guitar and sing. they were incredibly talented and were really jovial.
on sunday we tried to go to the vieux marche downtown, which is a big daily flea market. we got there later, so most of the people must have left already. we struck out there, but paquita's sunday meal made up for that. we also asked about places in the south to visit since all of our art trips (and all you ever hear about) are the cities in flanders (ghent, bruges, antwerp). they suggested namur, dinant, or durbuy. we might look into them for a weekend trip.
i found a french cheese i liked - camenbert - give it a shot.
today was class as usual. i need to run some errands and that's really it. there's not much action between monday and thursday.
if any of you have some time, could you send me an email and let me know how everything's going/what's new/what you're up to? i'm not sure that i have everyone's email address with me, so it's easier if you contact me. my email address is on the "View Profile" page.

the english-language literature is a dead giveaway
sunday i got to drop by some of the museums. all in all it was pretty interesting. first I went to the musee des instruments de musique. it has a huge collection of instruments from all over the world. they give you a pair of headphones to wear as you walk around. when you stand near a display, you hear the instrument playing in the headphones. it was fun but a little confusing if you were walking by a bunch of things and got bombarded by bagpipes and trumpets and accordions and whatnot.
after that i went to the site archeologique du coudenberg. it's part of the old palace from the 1100s-1700s, a road, part of another nobleman's house, and the aula magna, where charles quint abdicated. it's all underground - you're actually under the place royale. you can even walk along part of a road - rue isabelle. there's arches everywhere and you can see some of the other things they found when they were excavating the area, like old armor and helmets from the 15th century.
after that i was directed to the bellvue museum by an overly-excited employee (you have to go in there to get to the underground site). the bellvue has things from the different belgian kings, but i couldn't really get into it. there were things like a letter from the prince saying what he wanted for his 8th birthday.
from there i headed over to the modern and ancient art museum. they had an exhibition on fernand khnopff, who must have been a famous belgian painter. it was nice, but i didn't have the audioguide to explain the paintings to me. i headed to the modern art museum first. it goes eight floors underground but has natural light from a big opening at the top of the building. i saw a dali painting and some other interesting things. after that i went back to the ancient art museum to try to find stuff by the few flemish painters we'd talked about in art class so far, but i didn't find much besides peter paul reubens.
the rest of this week has been pretty normal. classes are going fine so far. i want to try to get to the comic strip museum and the natural sciences museum some time soon. this weekend is our art trip to ghent, where i have to do a presentation on medieval guilds.
i've still got to check out some jazz here, but i've got to get the bulletin (an english-language weekly in brussels) to see what's going on.
i'm wondering if they have any kind of anti-smoking campaign for the kids here. it's an easy 70% of the VUB and vesalius students that smoke. it's nuts. they also seem to be fans of finishing the professor's sentences instead of just waiting for them to finish what they're saying.
it snowed last night and actually stuck to the ground. it's only about an inch or two. i'm glad i have waterproof shoes.
lunch time.

comme des connards
possibly the worst french song / knack cover i've ever heard:
http://www.mcm.net/clipbox/index.php?incId=851
click on the video icon next to "michael youn - comme des connards"
wow.