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.