Binche, Luxembourg, Ostende


Binche (March 6th)

On Sunday, March 6rd I took a day trip with several Americans to Binche, a small city in the east of Belgium, to celebrate the first day of Carnival, the traditional pre-Lent festival. Binche is famous for it's Carnival parades, so we decided to stop there. I found out though that the 'parade' in Binche isn't really a parade in the sense of people marching from point A to point B, but rather it seemed to be a bunch of small groups of crazily-dressed people 'dancing' to a drumbeat treading somewhat randomly through the huge crowds.

It's hard to describe, so take a look at my photos. At any rate, the “parade” was interesting to see, though after an hour it started to become kind of repetitive, not to mention claustrophobic within the huge crowds, so we left to grab something to eat, and afterwards headed back to Brussels. I heard from the Belgians I am living with and from those I work with that on the following Tuesday the Carnival celebration in Binche becomes significantly crazier – among other things, they start throwing oranges. I'm not sure whether to be glad or disappointed I missed out on a mass citrus-filled food fight...

Luxembourg (March 13th)

The following Sunday I took another day trip to Luxembourg city, the capital of the country of Luxembourg. While it's big by Luxembourg standards, at a mere 88,586 people the city is rather small even in comparison to many of the suburbs I live by in Illinois.

The train ride to and from Luxembourg is about 3 hours each way, so I was glad to be going with Mary and Liz. Once we finally arrived, we first tried to figure out which bus to take to the American World War II military cemetery, only to find out that that bus line no longer exists. Given that, I recommended we first go to see the city center, which is partially on the way to the cemetery, and then take a taxi the rest of the way.

To get to the center of the city, we crossed a very tall bridge that is built over a large valley and a tiny river. We saw the famous Gëlle Fra monument honoring Luxembourgers who fought for the Allies in World War I, stopped for lunch, walked around the city center, and then visited the 'casemates'. The latter is the tunnel system built as part of Luxembourg's fortifications – several centuries ago, the city was a major stronghold in Western Europe. The main part of the casemate tour, about a floor or two below the road above, wasn't all that exciting – we could look out of various openings built into the rocks, which provided a nice view of the city, but after a while that got old. As we made our way through the Casemates, though, we happened to find one tunnel that led downwards. Going down involved climbing down several unsettlingly-steep and narrow spiral staircases. But once we made our way down two of those we found out from some other visitors that the way we were headed was a dead end. So we had to return the same way we came, which involved waiting for a while at each staircase for people coming down to clear out.

After that adventure, we took a taxi to the American military cemetery, which is a bit off a highway leading out of the city. There we saw various monuments to the fallen soldiers, found Patten's grave, and walked through the cemetery. Before leaving, we stopped by the information desk to ask a few questions. The man working there was very knowledgeable, and pointed out, for instance, that there is no particular order to the graves in cemetery – fallen soldiers are not grouped by their state, company, or religion (as you can see in the photos, most gravestones are crosses but there were also some Jewish stars). This was done in order to emphasize that everyone buried there fought and died in the war as Americans, period. The only exception to this is Patton's grave. He too was originally buried amongst his fellow soldiers, but after a few years the administration moved his grave to a separate location at the front of the cemetery. They did so because of the multitudes who sought to pay their respects to Patten – and in the process were trampling through the graveyard to find him. That said, Patton's gravestone remains the same size, shape, etc as the others. We also, belatedly, saw that in the information center there is a map showing where the real Band of Brothers are buried, and we discovered that among the fallen men a female nurse is also buried at the cemetery.

Ostende (March 20th)

Next, on March 20th I went to Ostende, a Flemish city on the Belgian coast, with several interns. These included Maria, an Austrian student whom I met in Illinois the semester after I studied in Vienna (we both happen to be doing internships in Brussels at the same time – a fact I only discovered after our mutual friend Joachims pointed it out to me in an email), three of her Austrian friends, and Mary. We took the train, arriving in the small port city at lunchtime. We stopped by an Italian place – I had their specialty pizza – and then headed to the city's park. There, we saw Ostende's famous statue of a naked lady, and then went to the beach. It wasn't exactly swimming weather, of course, but I did get to see the Atlantic from Europe for a second time. After checking out the beach we went to the bar on a really long dock for drinks, and then headed back to the beachfront to browse the shops there. I didn't get any souvenirs, though we did stop for ice cream. On the way back to the train station I saw plenty of docked boats.

Brussels, Maastricht, Ghent

This and my next blog posts will summarize some of the things I've been doing in Brussels and also several day trips I took to a number of cities in Belgian and neighboring Luxembourg and the Netherlands.


Brussels (February 12th)

On Saturday, February 12th, I visited the Museum of Musical Instruments and the Cantillon brewery with two American interns, Mary and Siobhan. The Musical Instrument Museum was... unique. I'm not exactly a musical instrument aficionado, so I wasn't expecting it to be very exciting for me. Still, I've never been to such a museum before, so if nothing else it's a first for me. As it turns out, included in the ticket price are headsets that play back a sample of the music of whichever instrument you are standing in front of. That, of course, made the tour far more interesting for me than it would have been to just walk around staring at instruments.

Afterwards, we went to Cantillon brewery on the advice of one of the other interns. They brew a type of lambic beer (a type specific to Belgium) called Gueuze. We paid for a self-guided tour, which didn't include headsets, of course, but we did get guidebooks detailing the process of making beer there. And more importantly, after the tour we got samples of a couple of their specialties. They, and the tour, were fine. Later that night, we met up with several other interns to go to the Carnival Party put on by the US Marines at the Marine House, which was nice though unfortunately is located a fair distance from the center of Brussels (i.e. couldn't take the metro but had to ride the bus).



Maastricht (February 19th)

My trip out of Belgium was to Maastricht, a medium-sized city in the south of the Netherlands. I went via train to meet Andrew, another American intern, an employee of the embassy, and her sister and Belgian friends. We all met at a coffeehouse and then set off to explore the city. Luckily one of the Belgians knew the city well, and she gave us a tour of the main squares and buildings.

Among other things, we went to a famous bookstore that interestingly is inside of what used to be a church, we stopped by two churches: the large St. Servass Church and St. Jan's cathedral. The latter really stood out with its red steeple. and later we crossed the Maas river (which runs from France to the Netherlands through Belgium). In 'The Markt' square we ate lunch, and when we left there was a small demonstration taking place in the square related to the revolution in Egypt (or something like that). After crossing the river again we headed for Bonnefanten art museum. I'm not exactly an art aficionado either, but again it's a first for me in Europe. I found some of the art interesting, but other exhibits were just confusing... At any rate, after finishing at the museum it was getting dark, so we wrapped things up by going to see the old city wall and then getting drinks.



Ghent (February 26th)

The following Sunday I went with Andrew and the Belgian who gave us a tour in Maastricht to Ghent,  a medium-sized city in the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) part of Belgium. The Belgian was kind enough to offer to give us a tour of Ghent, which is her home town. Unfortunately, we did not have good weather that day – it rained pretty much non-stop.

Meeting at the train station, we took the tram to the center of Ghent. There, among other things, the Belgian showed us something called a 'béguinage' (French) or 'begijnhof' (Dutch) – a 13th century residence for single women who needed a place to live but didn't want to go to the extreme of joining a convent. Most beguinages, or at least this one, consist of rows of city houses surrounding a park and a church. Nowadays, of course, they aren't confined to single women, and instead all sorts of people live there – though they aren't cheap. Next, we toured the major historic buildings and squares in the city, visiting, among other things, a large church (or cathedral) that contained at least 8 or more small chapels behind the main alter. Later in the day we stopped by the Leie River to take a photo at what the Belgian said was the most iconic view of the city: with the 'three towers' in the distance: two being part of St. Nicholas' Church, built in the 13th century, and the other Saint Bavo Cathedral, built in 942.  We then visited Gravensteen Castle, built in 1180, but due to time constraints we weren't able to take a tour. Still, I was able to take a couple photos from inside the Castle courtyard. Our visit concluded with refreshments and a walk through a couple parks.