OK, so I got up this morning and it was snowing outside. We decided to go see the Museum Dr. Guislain. I'm writing this almost three weeks later, and I'm in a hurry, so I'll be brief. The Museum Dr. Guislain was a really bizarre museum, but I found it immensely entertaining. The museum is housed in an old insane asylum and depicts artwork by the mentally deranged. The exhibit I went to that day was called "Pijn" (Pain) and focused on art that was about, or influenced by pain. Wild. [View Full Entry]

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There's something you should know about Gent. I don't know if the rest of Belgium is like this, but everything is closed on Sunday (except for museums, and bars, and the movie theater...OK, so not everything is closed, but a lot of stuff is. Leave me alone). Anyway, on this particular Sunday I was bored, it was drizzling outside (it drizzles quite frequently in Belgium), so I decided to walk around. I moseyed through a couple of markets, including the Sunday junk market. I bought a few used books, one of which was a youth hostel guide from 1966. I also [View Full Entry]

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Daniel and I took a trip to Antwerp today. Antwerp is a short train ride from Gent, and one of the largest oil refining areas in the world, next to Houston, TX (of course). I'm not going to write a whole lot about it because I've been on the computer for two hours now, and because I'm writing this about three weeks after we went. Also, it was REALLY cold that day so our walking tour of Antwerp was somewhat accelerated, and I don't remember a lot of the details. What I do remember is that Antwerp is a really cool [View Full Entry]

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OK, so I've been over here for almost three weeks now, and I bet you are wondering where I've been sleeping all this time. Well, I'm currently on my third dominion, and I'll try to describe each of them to you now. My first two weeks in Gent were spent in the Hostel De Draecke (see journal entry "Biorenewable Materials Intensive Program" for more details). While I was staying at the hostel I was looking for a more permanent place to live. Fortunately I found an apartment relatively quickly, but I was not able to move in until a few days [View Full Entry]

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Well, everyone from the short couse left yesterday, so today I decided to see a new town. Got up this morning and hit an open air market for coffee and a pastry. Wandered around Gent for a while and then went to another market for a half dozen oysters and a glass of wine. Then I hopped a train to Ieper (Dutch, Ypres in French), which was where some very significant fighting took place during WWI. Unfortunately the "In Flanders Fields"museum was closed until February, but I still saw St. Martin's Cathedral, the Menin Gate which is a monument listing the [View Full Entry]

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For the first two weeks I was in Belgium I participated in the Renewable Biomaterials Intensive Program. It was a ten day series of lectures on various aspects of green chemistry, sustainability, renewable materials, etc. The course was amazing. Professors from all over Europe and the U.S. came to lecture, and a very wide range of topics were covered. Everything from supercritical fluid extraction, to biodiesel, to biodegradeable plastic cups, to wood preservation without the use of arsenic. I've been involved with renewable resources, biodiesel specifically, for a couple of years now [View Full Entry]

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No trip to Belgium is complete without a trip to Brussels, so I went with Daniel and Dr. King, both from the U of A. We took a train to Brussels Central, got off, and started walking around. We walked past the royal palace, down to the Grote Markt (Grand Place), saw Manneken Pis, and had a late lunch of what else...mussels. [View Full Entry]

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Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst Municipal Museum for Contemporary Art Went to the SMAK on the Friday night that I arrived in Belgium. Fortunately they were having a "Nocturne" (first Friday of every month), so the museum was open late, and admission was free. What can I say about the SMAK? I wasn't sure what to expect from a modern art museum, but I enjoyed it immensely (which kind of surprised me). The artwork exhibited a level of creativity that I've never encountered before. Don't get me wrong...some of it was weird, some of it was disturbing, some of it was [View Full Entry]

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So it's still Saturday, the second day of my time in Belgium. It's about 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon. I've been touring Brugge all day, there's only about an hour or two of light left...what to do next? Hop a train to Oostende. Oostende is a port city on the North Sea and it is very close to Brugge (everything is close to everything in Belgium). I thought the town was great. Didn't spend much time there, just long enough to walk down to the beach, dip my hand in the North Sea (just to say I did), and walk [View Full Entry]

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OK. So I've been in Belgium for 24 hours now, what to do next? Hop a train to Brugge. Brugge is a very old Medieval city, with lots of great buildings, streets, towers, and markets. I don't really feel like writing about it right now (honestly, I'm posting this blog about a month after I visited the city) so I'll just show you the photos. You may be wondering about the ice festival. Yes, that was my idea. I found it on the internet before I left the U.S., and I had to go. I know, I know, it's kind of [View Full Entry]

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