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Published: February 26th 2012
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Huh
I don't know what to say really, but grafiti's generally cleverer here than stateside. Oh balls. It's been a while again hasn't it? Well in between working on homework, working on legal work at my oppressive law firm downtown, and being run ragged across the countryside I'll admit there hasn't been nearly enough time to do all that I've seen justice. Oh, and if there's one thing I can say for being busy, is that there has been a lot to see. This week I wandered into Amsterdam, den Haag, and a quiet little town that may be only interesting to a handful in the world today, but hopefully I'll be in such fine form I can write about that tomorrow.
For today, let's chat the last two weeks.
Let’s see, when last we left our hapless intern (me), Ghent, Leuven, and Antwerp were on the horizon so let’s start there. Thankfully I’m writing this now, after a mere, er, three weeks. Any longer and I’m sure my brain will melt the memories into one stew of an experience. That’s a little sad, given that all three had a very unique flavor to them, being Flemish cities and therefore neither Dutch nor French (thank you very much), but given Jerry’s breakneck schedule I’m
not sure there’s another way this would’ve happened. In short, I still kind of love this program.
Leuven : This was the first city we popped on by, and it’s pretty much a university town. At any point about half the standing population are students, which certainly made my little beer loving eyes light up when I saw the number of bars on literally every street (don’t judge). Seriously, this place knows itself. Pizza, beer, more beer, possibly Döner kebap, and the occasional reminder that this was Belgium such as a church and some creepy statues defined the place. It’s got a colorful little spot in history too, being the origin of Germany’s unfortunate nickname as the Huns in wartime. Remember at the beginning of WWI when everyone thought this was going to be a quick affair? Well as Germany waltzed through Belgium they rapidly discovered that the Belgians were rather more fond of the foxtrot. And by “waltz” I mean “full scale invasion” and by “foxtrot” I mean “civilians armed with rifles shooting anything with a pointy helmet”. One panicked night later and Leuven was essentially burned to the ground (sounds vaguely like a frat party gone
Leuven Library
Germany may have burned this down (twice) but I still wish AU had a library this awesome. wrong). Still, today it’s rather nice, and there’s some hilariously pro-American statues on the rebuilt library (which the Germans bombed in WWII), which included a donation from the New England public libraries, something I’m vaguely proud of.
Antwerp : Fantastic name for a city. Only place I know of that’s synonymous with “wanker” in British slang (translated it’s “Hand Toss” Belgium). Now Europe’s largest harbor, I sadly didn’t get to spend a lot of time in the areas near the docks, which are doubtless a (fantastic) hive of scum and villainy. Still, the old town was rather nice, wandering around the diamond district and seeing all those lovely stones and artificially outrageous prices was a great reminder of how poor I am. As before, it was a very nice local region, featuring the vague remnants of a castle, and a few very impressive Rubens inside a stupifyingly big Cathedral in the middle of the city. Most interesting though, seeing how the Belgian approach to construction isn’t to demolish things like the old city wall, but rather to simply build up and around. You could see chunks of it sticking out of more modern structures at points. All told,
Antwerp Train Station
We need more like this in the U.S. Seriously, here's a first impression. I suspect I might’ve enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been fifteen degrees outside at the time (that applies for all of these).
Ghent : Probably my favorite of the three for one simple reason. There’s a damned castle right in the middle of the thing. Seriously, in the event of a zombie apocalypse or related event, I don’t think there’s anywhere else I’d want to go in the lowlands, this place doesn’t look like it was converted into a palace at any point (it wasn’t, it was converted into a leather factory), it just looks incredibly functional. To make things even more wonderful, there’s a moat, and the whole thing just sits there like a humbling testament to Medieval power in the middle of the slightly more modern looking downtown. Other highlights included finding a bakery where I didn’t feel like I was freezing to death, strawberry candies that glued my teeth together, and the Van Eyck Brother’s tryptich, which was a completely gorgeous and surprisingly modern looking work of art. I think my entire class stared at this for an hour, there’s seriously a lot to take in about it. I still don’t quite get around
to explaining why King Arthur was floating around as a holy king in one frame, but go figure.
Well that's all I've got from these, keep your eyes out for a brief update on Karneval and some other wanderings, stay tuned!
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