Brugge & Ghent

Most of this blog is going to be setting the scene of this beautiful country I spent the past few days in.

We got to Brugge, Belgium at 10 o'clock on Friday night so when we got off the train and opted to walk the mile distance to our hostel, the streets were abandoned. In uniform with the rest of Europe (except Luxembourg, oddly) the streets and sidewalks blended together in a cobbled mess of grey stone and houses rose just barely over our heads. Gold street lamps cast shadows every couple feet and the occasional biker would ride by to remind us this country is actually inhabited. As we walked on and absorbed the quaint town around us, we heard music up ahead. We walked towards a crowded bar with people in their early twenties pouring out onto the street, drinking and chatting. We noted how fun that place looked, that we had found the popular place to hang on a Friday in Belgium. Turned out, that place was our hostel.

I stayed in a "dorm" style room with four other friends and had one empty bed. We hung out downstairs for a while, met the band that had been playing, an American, an Italian and a Belgian, and then headed up to bed to get some sleep before exploring Saturday.

Saturday morning we got up decently early and immediately began our search for good, cheap coffee. After weaving in and out of a few shops and bakeries, we headed to the square and people watched in the sun for awhile. The square is about the size of San Marco in Venice, but about a quarter less beautiful and half as crowded. Beautiful, nonetheless. All the buildings are bright shades of red and peach and gold. It was just touristy enough that there were things to do and see and reasonably priced food, but not so touristy that it was impossibly crowded and stripped of real culture.

We wandered around a street market, sampled some cheese, bought cheap jewelry that has already left a green ring around my finger, and watched the preparation for what appeared to be a bike race. I loved how many flower boxes were hanging from second stories windows, overflowing with red flowers and how many old dogs with gray faces walked, leash-less, right next to the their owner. I was certainly in no hurry to leave Belgium, I can't imagine these dogs were either.

We got some lunch at a nice place after a mean place lied directly to our phases, telling us they were full as we stood amidst a sea of empty tables. Then we went to the chocolate museum where I learned that chocolate was equivalent to champagne back in the time of Marie Antoinette... and just about nothing else. Thankful for free samples and cheap student ticket prices to make up for an otherwise skippable museum.

We headed back to our hostile and enjoyed to company of each other and our huge sunny window. Right before we were going to leave to head downstairs, our sixth roommate showed up. Another Canadian, we are meeting a ton of Canadians here! We ended up hanging out with him and his friends (students from all over the world studying in The Netherlands) for the majority of the night.

Sunday we woke up and took a train to Ghent. While I was in Ghent, I had the feeling that the walls were going to collapse around me and reveal I had been on a movie set. We thought Brugge was abandoned, that was nothing compared to Ghent. On the route we took from the train station, we didn't see a single person, no lights on, not even any cars driving down the stone streets. We did see plenty of frightening, anarchist street art. On one building, on the second story, there was a small bronze boy sculpted to look like he was being hung from the wall. Chilling, yet incredibly interesting environment.

When we got into the center of town, there were plenty of people milling around and we got lunch and wandered a bit. I am becoming an excellent wanderer. We saw the street famous for it's "graffiti" style art and climbed to the top of a tower for a city view. Then we took the next train home, exhausted.

Belgium wasn't my most active weekend or my most spontaneous, wild weekend, but it was still one of my best so far. It was cool to see where my family had come from (not the exact city, but close enough) and to just lazily meander through the streets. Not to mention we ate some seriously good chocolate.

This weekend I'm flying to Copenhagen! Ideally we will also be able to hop over to visit Sweden, but either way I'm very excited. It's crazy how fast time is going! I have the rest of my weekends planned and I'm visiting great places. I know I'm going to be on the plane back to America before I know it, so I'm going to make sure I'm really absorbing everything I can these next few weeks. I'm really learning a lot about myself, mostly how independent I can be and how capable I am of doing amazing things that are outside my comfort zone.