Saket Vora

The weather in Brussels was not as cooperative as it was yesterday, but at least the weather in Brugges was good. We started off the day by walking to St. Catherine’s cathedral northeast of the Grand Place. This is very similar to Notre Dame in Paris and is done in the true Gothic style. It is a beautiful white cathedral that was recently restored to its old beauty. It took 300 years to complete, and I believe it. Intricate stained glass and great indoor lighting. This is the main religious building for Brussels. We then walked behind the Cathedral towards the Royal Palace and the Park of Brussels. It was barely drizzling and while the Palace building was sort of nice, we just had to imagine how nice the Park would be in spring. It has an enormous circular fountain in the middle of it. From there we took the metro to the EU part of town. Brussels is considered the capitol of Europe because it sits at the center of the three main powerhouses – England, France, and Germany. Just a day earlier the prime ministers were here hammering out the EU budget proposal, but alas we missed them. As the seat of government for the entire European Union, it’s not overly impressive like that of Rome. I figured the people wouldn’t be too happy if the ministers made these buildings very very nice. We hopped back on the metro and exchanged lines at Gare Centraal and made it to the Atomium park that is north-west of the city center. The Atomium lies in the ‘World Fair’ park and was built in the same spirit as when the French constructed the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps due to its location and admittedly geeky context, it hasn’t achieved the same fame. I personally think it’s really cool. It is an iron compound that has been multiplied in size 160 billion times. It is something like 100 meters tall I believe. Each nuclei has something in it, and there is an observation deck on the stop. We didn’t go inside it, cause it was so foggy around. In fact from where we were, about a third of the Atomium was shrouded in fog. It was just after 12pm at this point, so we decided to head to Gare Centraal to take the train to Bruges. After buying a sandwich baguette at the station and purchasing the train tickets, we boarded the train and an hour later we had arrived at Bruges. It is Bruges in French and Brugge in Dutch. The north-east part of the country speaks primarily Dutch, while the south-west of the country speaks French. Brugge is a quaint town (though touristy) that has been able to keep its medieval nature but still accommodate modern aspects. We took the bus to the city center (the buses are very similar to those used in Lund) and got out at a large square we thought was the Markt, the famous central square. It had a fountain the middle and then we discovered we got off too early. We started to walk to the Markt (Bruges is not very big) and walked through a crowded street with nice designer stores lining the street. We passed by one that had guild-like emblems on the top and I asked Sapana to take some close-up pictures of it. I thought I recognized some Masonic symbols and will e-mail a professor in Lund who I know is researching on the Freemasons for his opinion. We finally entered the Markt and were blown away. Belgian cities KNOW how to do their central squares. Like the Grand Place in Brussels, Brugge’s square features glorious buildings on each side of the square with impressive architecture. A Christmas Market setup dominated the center of it, with some small stalls setup and an ice-skating rink that encircled the large Christmas tree. But the building that continuously stole the eye was the breathtaking belfry that towered into the sky. 85 meters tall, 366 steps to the stop. I loved the architecture of this building – it reminded us so much of Orthanc, Saruman’s tower in Lord of the Rings, though not obsidian black of course. We climbed to the top and were treated to a breathtaking view of the town of Brugge. It was about 3pm and the sun had reddened the horizon, and at one end you could see both large churches with the red-orange horizon behind them and red-roofed medieval city in front. It was incredible. Also engraved at each window opening were lines which cities inscribed along with the distance to each. So that was pretty neat too. The bells started clanging so we went downstairs (Sachi slipped a few stairs in the beginning…it was rather steep). We tried buying some postcard stamps from this machine outside the post-office but instead I ended up with a single stamp worth 3.90 euros! D’oh! We continued to explore the city more, walking to the Berg square and over one of the canals. We stopped in a lace shop to buy some of the famous Bruge lace then ultimately made it back to the station then to Brussels. After getting back to Brussels we checked in with the travel information bureau and bought reservations for the train to Paris. We reserved an early one, the 7:10am arriving at Paris Nord at 8:30am, so that meant going to bed really early. We bought some falafel to go (the falafel was WAY too salty we discovered) and again bought some food for breakfast at the grocery store. We swung by a convenience store that had some computers setup to check e-mail. Our Normandy tour was set, and I got some responses from Laure. We should be able to meet her in Paris tomorrow. The internet at this café was something like 8 or 9 times cheaper than at the hotel. Back at the room we had dinner then watched ‘Enemy at the Gates’ that was coming on TV (earlier, they were showing South Park dubbed into French, which was hilarious, because part of what makes South Park so great is the insanity of the American voices). The movie could have been pretty good, except that practically the whole cast was British and didn’t make any attempt at masking their accent. The battle locations were done really really well I thought. I was completely convinced that they were fighting in the pulverized city of Stalingrad. I also downloaded the pictures off my camera and realized that we had taken more pictures in Brugge (we were there for 3 hours) than we had for the whole city of Amsterdam (we were there for 1.5 days). Heh.