Birthday in Belgium

Technically I took the trip the weekend before my birthday, but Baiba and I decided to pre-celebrate my 53rd in Belgium. The plan came together based on the cheap tickets I was able to find via Ryanair.

I am also working on visiting places I haven’t been yet, and I am slowly covering all the countries of Europe.

Before going to Belgium, I knew very little about this small country nestled between France and Germany on the North Sea. It turns out that after spending 4 days there, I still don’t know much.

Bruges

Bruges itself is a very cool city. The entire city center is all a UNESCO World Heritage site, protected because of it’s unique Medieval architecture. For me, it felt like I was walking through an old RPG like The Bard’s Tale on long, winding streets with tiny stone houses on both sides. It is also known as the Venice of the North for its magnificent system of canals. It was a major port city and trading hub until the river filled with sediment, but the romantic historic charm remains.

We stayed in a little B&B (not AIRB&B) in a quiet neighborhood near the center. Our hosts were a kind man named Peter and his wife, Iris. We were escorted up 3 flights of stairs to the “Cupid Room” where we spent two blissful days surrounded by hearts, cupid statues, and Murano glass chandeliers and sconces along with a host of antiques hand-picked by our gracious hosts.

Each day we had an amazing breakfast that Peter prepared for us. We had an assortment of meats and cheeses, but the highlight was the incredibly delicious bread. I asked him where he got it, thinking there was some secret bakery with some old Belgian woman baking some family recipes. “From the supermarket,” he replied with a grin. He also had bottles of crémant on ice, so I indulged in mimosas while he regaled tales of Bruges, Belgium, and the Flemish people.

My favorite story of his was of the small town where they had a muskrat problem. They used traps to catch the muskrats, and a local chef at a cafe asked if she could have them. She served them by the name of “water rabbits” and everyone was flocking to the town to try this mysterious delicacy. He finished the story sadly about a dog dying because of rat poison, but the part about the muskrats was funny.

Madonna of Bruges

He also told us the story of the Michelangelo statue that is hosted in O. L. V.-kerk Museum (Museum of the Church of Our Lady). This giant church, which is not to be confused with the cathedral, is a must-see for it’s architecture, artistry, and make sure to pay the extra 8 euros for the backstage tour where you get to see tombs of aristocrats and the Michelangelo statue that was featured in the movie The Monuments Men (which I have never seen).

The town is also relatively famous for the movie In Bruges, which I just had happened to see a few years ago. The climax of the movie features the imposing giant tower in the center of town, which we did not climb, but were impressed by none-the-less.

A Clean City

I referred to Stockholm as a “Tidy City“, which it is. But Bruges might have been the cleanest city that I have ever been in. It was on the 2nd day that I realized that not only were the streets almost absent of any litter, but there was no graffiti. I have not been to a city in Europe that wasn’t spattered with both beautiful and ugly images on walls, fences and buildings. But here it was, a clean city.

Peter also pointed out that there was very little crime and almost no police. I guess it is like a mini paradise protected by its status and imaginary walls that used to protect the city when it was a hub of trade back in the day. Another interesting tidbit is that Belgium has 3 national languages: French, German and Dutch. Our hosts, however, spoke Flemish natively which is an odd dialect. He told us that when he was young, people from villages just a few kilometers away could hardly understand one another because of how isolated the language is.

Belgian Food

As far as food goes, Belgium is supposed to be famous for it’s frites (french fries) and, of course, chocolate. We tried frites at a few places, and I didn’t see anything special about fried potatoes. They serve them with mayonnaise, so there is that.

We stopped in a chocolate shop where I bought a gift for Karu’s birthday and some dark chocolate orange sticks for myself. I still remember buying these treats at Russell Stover’s shops in Omaha. My brother and I would savor them as exotic treats. The only problem was that I happened to buy chocolates from a French chocolatier instead of real Belgian chocolate. And the gift that I bought for Karu was confiscated at the airport because I guess it was a liquid. (Don’t get me started on airport security.)

Belgian Beer

Prior to visiting, my main connection to Belgium was having tased several famous Belgian beers back in the States. I remember having been introduced to the concept of Belgians by my good friend Susan who explained the “Belgian funk” of these brews. She told me that in the old days, the monks who brewed the beer would let it ferment in tanks that were open to the air—kind of like a sourdough beer, I guess. And whatever made its way into the batches would flavor the ale giving it that special Belgian flavor. I am not sure if that is true, but there was something unique and interesting about the many beers I tasted in Bruges and Brussels.

The highlight of the whole trip was the brewery tour that Baiba arranged for us at De Halve Maan (the Half Moon) Brewery in the heart of Bruges. The brewery is most well-known for their Brugse Zot Blond beer, but I had not heard of it until we got to Belgium.

“Zot” means “fool” and the name was given to the people of Bruges when some king came to visit and everyone was drunk from celebrating him before he had even arrived, so he called them all fools. The most interesting part of the tour was that they built an underground pipeline to connect the brewery in the town center to a new bottling plant just outside the city. It was paid for, in part, by customers who now get free beer for the rest of their lives as a part of the deal. Isn’t crowd-funding great?!

On a funny side note, the German’s who were sharing the B&B with us had no love for Belgian beer at all. They went on at length to talk about their disdain for the fruity, flavored brews noting that they much preferred the purity of German beers.

Brussels

After two lovely, sunny days walking the streets of Bruges, we took a bus to Brussels to spend one night there before heading back to Riga.

Burges is to Brussels as Snow White is to Pulp Fiction. We stepped off the bus at the central station to the glorious sights of trash on the sidewalks, homeless people, and lots of graffiti. For those of you who don’t know, Brussels is the home of the European Union, and it has become a kind of refuge for people from all over the world. Like many larger European cities, it hosts a global population bringing with it the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t like Brussels—actually, I loved it. I like the gritty, dirty underbelly of cities. I like New Orleans. I like Brooklyn. Bruges was pretty, but it was a bit boring. While walking through Brussels, there is the tingling expectation that you could be robbed, confronted, or even accosted at any moment! That sense of heightened awareness really gets the adrenaline and dopamine flowing!

We checked into our hotel with a lovely view of a wall and a placard on the desk advertising The Museum of Infinite Realities. For some reason, the little advertisement spoke to me, so I booked tickets for us in the afternoon. This would give us a chance to walk and explore with a final destination already chosen. I think it is important to have things to look forward to in life.

Our walk took us along a boulevard that was under construction making it both perilous and uniquely ugly. Eventually, we found a path that led us to the center with its beautiful old buildings and countless beer bars and cafes. The sun was shining, so we wanted to sit outside, and we found one small table at the Golden Hour beer bar where I hastily ordered a meter of Belgian Beers to taste.

Tarot Reading

Our Greek waiter was very friendly. Because it was Sunday, Baiba and I indulged ourselves in our weekly tarot reading with the cards laid out on the small table. This drew the attention of some of the patrons. The waiter and his friend asked for a reading as did the Italian woman sitting next to us. I read their cards and made them all smile, which made for a wonderful end to the afternoon.

Infinite Reality

From there, we made our way to the Museum of Infinite Realities where we weren’t sure what to expect. They gave us magnetic lanyards for identification. We both chugged one more beer before following our guide inside. We were joined by two French tourists, and began the experience. The idea was that we were guided through 7 rooms with impressive technological displays of lasers, screens, and fog that had us making choices and interacting with spirit animals.

At one point, we had to choose between EVERYTHING and NOTHING. I chose NOTHING while everyone else went to the EVERYTHING room. I sat in the dark as a black ball with a deep, calming voice told me how incredible NOTHING really is. The experience was powerful, and it ended with us finding out our spirit animal. It turned out that mine is an Eagle, and everyone else, including Baiba had a Wolf. I always thought I was a wolf… oh well.

After the experience, we had a lovely dinner at Grimbergen Cafe where I had rabbit (not water rabbit), and mussels. It was wonderful.

We ended the night with a tiki bar nightcap, and then headed back to the hotel.

Leaving Belgium

The final day was a long bus ride to the Charlois airport south of Brussels. Then we made our way through the long security line into the airport. Our flight was supposed to leave at 1:35, and we had plenty of time. I ate Burger King for no reason other than because it was there, and we sat outside on a terrace which was a cool feature for an airport.

I even told Baiba that it wouldn’t be so bad if our flight was delayed because we could just sit here in the sun and have a beer. Oh, why do I tempt fate so?!

Sure enough, we went to board our Ryan Air flight, and Baiba got through the line as a Priority Passenger while I waited. Soon, it was apparent something was wrong. In my head, I heard the words from Die Hard: “They’re comin’ back down!”

There was something wrong with our plane, so we had a delay. First it was 30 minutes, then there was no time announced. The staff deserted the desk, so we went to our preordained place and I got a beer for me, and wine and pizza for Baiba. We sat there overlooking the airport where we could actually observe the broken jet on the tarmac.

Luckily Baiba has intuition and sense. As we sat there checking our phones for updates, she noticed that people were boarding the plane. We ran down to the gate and made it just in time!

The Wheel of Fate card told us that there would be some trouble on our journey, and sure enough, there it was.

Photo Gallery

Enjoy some more photos of Bruges and Brussels!

Side Note

I took a picture of this monument to immigration in Brussels, and I found it a bit off-putting and slightly ironic. I think that we live in a time of xenophobia in Europe, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about the situation. Having grown up in the States, I have this liberal mindset that we need to embrace the Other and all live together in harmony. But after living here, I listen to the common people complaining about immigrants everywhere I go. When you live in a country of just 2 million people that is slowly shrinking, you kind of understand how their entire culture and way of life is under threat—one city in India or China could swallow up all the citizens of Latvia without missing a beat. So when I saw Brussels with its dirt and grime versus Bruges all clean and shiny, I contemplated the impact of immigration (and poverty) on these cities.

It doesn’t bother me much, but I can imagine a near future when the masses will finally have had enough and turn to the darkness of populism to protect them from the outside world.

Sorry for the grim side note, but I just wanted to share this observation.