breendonk and beer

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Greetings from Hoboken (town we've been in)!

Yesterday, was quite an interesting day as usual. Let me start by talking about something I haven't written much about... FOOD! Well, I've been trying a lot of new (and non-vegetarian) foods, including frog legs, escargot, horse meat, delicious sausage, whitloof, chocolates, and many beers and cheeses. Each morning for breakfast we usually have bread with different spreads, nutella, different cheeses (mmm!), smoked salmon spread, cheese & nutella together (really good!), accompanied with a glass of OJ and a cup of coffee.

Each day both or either Ludo and Ria have taken time off of work to take us around. Ludo is a teacher at a school, so we're real thankful he could do that. Yesterday morning, Ludo took Noah and I to the Breendonk Concentration Camp which wasn't too far away. It was a concentration camp from World War II mostly for political resistance, jews & others in the media. It is one of the best conserved concentration camps still in tact. It was pretty shocking and intense. We went through eating halls, barracks where they slept, torture chambers, as well as walking along where they killed many Jews by firing squads. It was pretty crazy to touch the holes in the post where bullets had penetrated after going through the prisoner.

I had been through the Holocaust Museum in Israel and the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC, as well as being taught so much about the Holocaust in Hebrew school. This was Noah's first kind of immersion in this kind of stuff outside of regular school. I think he was pretty moved by it.

We both really appreciated Ludo taking us to see that. At breakfast that morning, he came to me and said "Today, we're going to see something from your history" and I thought Didn't we see my grandmother's old house yesterday? but then he explained.

Later on, we came back to the house for lunch and met up with Ria. Then Noah, Ria, and I went to the Koninklijk Museum Voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen. We saw a lot of work by artists we recognized including Peter Paul Rubens, Jan van Eyck, and Titiaan. We specifically recognized The Annunciation that we learned about in art history. The dimensions were rather small in relation to how long we spent learning about it and the big deal that was made of it (it was smaller than an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper). Then we got kicked out of musuem because it was closing.

It was about 5:45pm and we went to meet up with Ludo in the town center because he had just finished teaching. On the way, we stopped by Peter Paul Rubens house which had become a museum. Then Ludo treated us to some Belgian fries (not french fries, because they claim fries originated in Belgium) which also included a zesty tarter or meat sauce on top. It was pretty good.

Then Ria had to take off by 6:30 because she was taking Portegeuse at the school. Ria speaks many languages including, English, Flemish, French, German, and now Portugeuse and I think I'm even leaving something out. So we went to this pub and Noah and I got a round of drinks. So far my favorites (of all the good Belgian beers) are De Konicke, Duvel, and some kind of triple-strong beer.

Ludo had to go to his Free Masons meeting, leaving Noah and I to walk around town in the evening. We went for a beer at this Irish pub, and the waiter was rude to us telling us that This isn't a tourist information center after just sitting down. He brought us a menu eventually, but never came to serve us after 10 mins, so we got up and went to another place to drink (don't worry, there are many places to drink). We had a Rodenbach (which was very cider-y) then a Hoégaarden with our pizza.

Then we met Ria after her class, went home, had some tea, and passed out.

Now its almost 11am and I think we are going to walk around town.

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Photos

Se'pa
the dog

Ludo and Ria in Bruges
Waiting for our drinks