Benelux Field Trip - third weekend
(stepping back to the weekend before my trip home for a scatter-shot rehash)

Thursday

Ditched out of work a few hours early to enjoy a beautiful afternoon and evening. Saw the Royal Museum of Ancient Art, spending a good bit of time looking at the 15th/16th century sections including works by guys like Peter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch. Also breezed through some of the 17th/18th century collection.



Strolled around the European Union Parliament building and then walked over to Park du Cinquantenaire (arch pictured above). Randomly ran into some of the Brussels ultimate players I've been playing with lately and tossed the disc around. On the way home, saw people playing soccer right outside the back of the EU Parliament building which seemed appropriate.

Saturday

Walked past the Royal Palace (pictured below) once again on my way back to the Royal Museums of Ancient and Modern Art.



At the museum, I returned to the 17th/18th century collection so I could really appreciate some of the goodies like Jan Bruegel, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck. However, the one famous Rembrandt in the collection had been loaned out elsewhere. I then moved on to the modern section focusing on the 19th and 20th century. Renoir, Seurat, Manet, Paul Gauguin, Rene Magritte, Francis Bacon... guess I've been spoiled now.

Moved on to the Museum of Musical Instruments just down the street. This place was really neat. It was basically exactly what the name would suggest, set in a really awesome old building that was once a late 19th century department store. They have things from all sorts of cultures all around the world. And they give you headphones which are triggered by radio depending on where you stand so that as you walk through the museum, you hear the various instruments playing, sometimes with additional accompanying music. I wish I had had longer at this place before they closed.



I then walked over to the St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral. It looked really nice from the outside, but the interior was actually a bit underwhelming -- I read that it had been looted numerous times over the years -- except for some wonderful stained glass windows. Finally, I took a quick walk through Gallery St. Hubert, a classic covered, 100+ year-old pedestrian shopping mall as well as Rue du Bouchers, "the restaurant street," before heading home. Instead of being social, I decided it was time for some enhancements. Kicked back, drank a couple good beers, and watched the awesome season finale of Battlestar Galactica at the apartment and then passed out.

Sunday

A co-worker and I took the train out to the town of Ninove, about 40 minutes from Brussels to catch the end of the Ronde van Vlaanderen, or Tour of Flanders. This is apparently a pretty big deal one day cycling event. There were plenty of commercials on Eurosport TV in the week leading up to it, anyway. The weather was perfect and the beer was flowing. We got there early enough to scope out the town, have lunch, and have a few beers before the cyclists made it to the finish. I felt like we were the only tourists amongst a crowd of real people/sports fans. It was nice not hearing American accents for once.



We also almost ruined the race. We set up about 200 meters from the finish, pushed the railing out into the street a bit more for a better view, and leaned over to see the leaders come in. I leaned out WAY too far with my camera and almost had a disaster. As I looked through the view window while taking video, I didn't even see them coming. Then all of a sudden, the first two racers were no more than 18 inches from the lens of my camera which scared the crap out of me. I recovered in time to snap the above picture of a couple guys fighting it out for 6th or 7th place. On another funny note, we actually ran into Steve (one of the guys I met on the train from the Netherlands a week earlier) a little while after the race. And on yet another funny note, check out the racer in the Team Discovery bus in this picture below. I had no idea someone was half-naked right behind me until later.




- One more general Brussels thought:   Though I'm not enough of a foodie or chocolate lover to really appreciate those things in Belgium, I certainly have no problem appreciating all the awesome beer. Tried a locally brewed Witkap Pater in Ninove which was quite nice. And along the way I also had my fair share of Pere Abbe, Chimay, Leffe, Palm, Corsendonk, Hoegarten, Duvel, and Stella Artois. The funniest thing is that over there, Stella = Bud. And I guess Bud = unusually awful tasting water. I never made it to a brewery or monastery, but for me that's not the experience that matters. The beer experience that I was in love with was stepping into the local supermarket to do some shopping and being able to buy a bottle of Chimay for one euro!


- Finally, it's probably worth noting that I am going back to Brussels again on Wednesday for another 3+ week stint there. When this is all over, I will have spent 50 days in Europe out of a 60 day period. At least this time, Mary will be able to come visit me while I'm there.


- And in case you haven't noticed, my postings here have been/will continue to be pretty infrequent for a while.

All I wanted to do was fly from DC to northwestern Europe and back...

... but apparently that's like flying to the Moon when I'm slated to be a passenger.

On the heels of my 19 hour marathon last month, I've already got a new travel story brewing. After catching a taxi this morning to go to the airport, our French-speaking driver spoke in broken English about how the airport was closed. The forecast for Belgium today called for sunny skies, so we weren't quite sure what he was talking about. Then we got to the airport where we walked into this.

Yes, I'm a flaming liberal with serious socialist leanings. So I'm typically as pro-union as anyone. But today's been a tough day to be a fan of unions. Nobody at the airport had the slightest clue what was going on. We checked our bags in. We went through passport control. We went to one gate. Then they moved us to another gate. Then they cancelled the flight and basically closed the airport. Then we exited passport control and collected our bags. Then they told us "come back tomorrow at 7am and we'll put you on a bus to Amsterdam."

So after taking 19 hours last month to fly from DC to Brussels, I'm flying home from Amsterdam. From Brussels. 24 hours late. This trip earns my rare four star "WTF?!?" travel award.

Benelux Field Trip - second weekend

I caught a train to the Netherlands on Friday night after work. I got off in Delft where I would be staying with Anneke, an old friend from our time on the kibbutz, and her fiance, Vivian. The first thing I noticed as I walked out of the train station was the bicycles. There were perhaps thousands of bikes parked and locked up all around the station. I was visiting a nation of full-time cyclists!

After a pleasant evening and morning with my hosts, I caught a train to Amsterdam while Anneke took care of some wedding dress matters for the day. I caught a tram and went straight to the Rijksmuseum. Though the main museum is closed for massive renovations, they do have a special wing open called The Masterpieces which is sort of like a "greatest hits" collection of their Golden Age works from the 17th century, including plenty of Rembrandts. I then moved on over to the Van Gogh Museum just down the street. In addition to all the great Van Goghs, there was a very nice collection of other late 19th century pieces on the upper floor. Amazingly, much of the crowd seemed to be skipping these "other" paintings which meant they were missing out on Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Picasso, Pissaro, and Seurat!


at Museum Square - you can click on the images for a better look

I then walked around the nearby Museum Square and park and did a good bit of people-watching. At that point, I realized that it was becoming a bit late in the afternoon, so instead of trying to cram in another tourist destination or two before things began closing, I decided that other things like the Anne Frank house could wait until I returned for a longer visit with Mary some day. So I just wandered all over the city for the next four or five hours.

I'll just simplify here and say that I love Amsterdam. The place is beautiful with the canals and interesting architecture everywhere. And perhaps it had to do with Saturday being one of the first truly nice weekend days of the Spring, but everyone just seemed to be having a grand ol' time. Everywhere I looked, people were smiling and laughing. And in a few cases, merrily singing while sitting on patios outside the pubs.


looking up a canal towards the Church of St. Nicholas

The city also had quite an interesting mix of sanity and insanity. Everything seemed very busy at first glance with bikes, trams, people, cars, horses, buses, etc zipping every which way. However, after a little while, it occurred to me that there were no car horns honking, there were no accidents, and there were no near-misses. Everyone was very calmly able to navigate their way around the busyness in a laid back way.

The Red Light district was the only slight downer for me. Seeing the windows from afar (like from across a canal) was sort of funny in the sense that it was something you don't see everyday, but seeing women in the windows up close wasn't so funny to me. No need for me to get into it here, but that's just not my thing. On the plus side, there was quite a concentration of "coffee shops" in and around that part of the city.

The next morning, Anneke and Vivian took me around Delft. I had never heard of the place prior to a few weeks ago, but I was seriously impressed by their hometown. The place is beautiful (yes, I'm aware I already used that description above) and has some real history to go with it. For example, I saw Delftware on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. And all the Dutch royals have been married and buried at the New Church in Delft for the past 500 or so years.


the historic Eastern Gate to Delft

First of all, there are plenty of canals which seems to be something a town can't go wrong with. And there's a huge old church, called the Old Church, with a tower that leans quite dramatically. There's the New Church (which is over 500 years old) mentioned above which has the second tallest church tower in the country. There's the picturesque City Hall building from the early 1600s. And there's the fabulous canal-facing Oostpoort, or Eastern Gate, to the city from about 600 years ago. We also walked around the Prinsenhof, a Middle Ages monastery which later served as a residence for William the Silent who is known as William the Orange in the Netherlands. Okay, I'm done ripping off Wikipedia now.


with Anneke and Vivian

Our last stop was something totally different. We went to a local sports complex and walked around something called Juggling Day. Lots of people getting together to show off, learn, and teach things like juggling, unicycling, acrobatics, magic tricks, etc, etc. We were able to get in for free thanks to Anneke knowing a unicycler there. Quite a novel way to cap off a weekend in the Netherlands. And perhaps my favorite part was that I got to ride a bike over to the complex from the apartment which really made me feel like I was taking part in the Dutch culture after a weekend of watching everyone else riding around. The little things...


The train ride home sucked. After only taking a little over two hours on two trains coming from Brussels Friday, it took me almost four hours on three trains -- plus a trip in the middle on the Rotterdam metro -- to get home thanks to widespread Sunday maintenance issues in the Netherlands. On the plus side, I met Steve and [somebody], two local Belgians and hardcore football fans, returning from watching Ajax play in Amsterdam. We had some great conversations about sports as well as other cultural matters. And they tipped me off to the Tour of Flanders which is happening this weekend. They claimed it's a pretty wild party out there and it is a huge cycling event that finishes only a 40 minute train ride from my apartment, so I'll most likely head out to watch the end of the race on Sunday.