Maybe it’s spelled Brugges…or Brugge…or Bruges, when you’re this old, spell it however you want to. Anyway, when visiting Brussels, or Bruxelles…oh what is it with you people! Everyone says take a day trip to Bruges. Why?
“Oh it’s really cool”
“OK, what’s cool about it? What’s there to do?”
“Oh just go there and you’ll see. All these little streets and shops.”
What? Streets and shops? You just described 90% of the world. What they failed to describe is the complex winding medieval town Bruges is. Well, at least downtown tourist Bruges. Think some kind of Disneyland Euro-town exhibit, where you walk around these twisted little streets, fully expecting to find the back set of a movie set.
Bruges literally has a suburb, a quiet entry point on one side of the town where we stopped for lunch. This also happens to be where the Halve Maan brewery built the worlds first beer pipeline, from the brewery in the old city, to a new bottling plant on the outskirts of town. This was due to the need for expansion, but they also wanted to stay in the heritage of the 500 year old brewery. And all those tourists. So build a pipeline, just like an oil or gas line, from the production location to the processing location. We walk along and in a little area called Walplien Square, there were several little cafes to chose from. We settle on a cafe, go inside. But you wants to eat inside on a day like to day? So back outside and sit under popup tents. Everyone was crazy over the mussels we settled down with. Apparently, this little enclave of cafes are famous for their mussel pots. Nancy enjoyed it, while I had a couple of beers and something else. After the second beer, who cares, we’re in Bruges!
The town is in its medieval splendor full of churches, a castle or two, the old city hall and parliament buildings from the 1500’s, quite amazing actually. On a Tuesday afternoon, the place was packed with tourists walking around. We wondered into the weirdest of architecture designs, The Belfry of Bruges. A church-fort-castle that seems put together over the centuries in two different worlds, and then folded over one-another and mashed together. As most buildings have a symmetry to them, this one does not. But as its build seems so familiar, another church with a tower, that it begins to pull on you like a sense of vertigo. Normal church with tower…and yet there are steps on one side, but not the other…and the steps end at a point higher than the other side ends…and there are no windows on that side, but windows over here…what is going on?
And if that wasn’t weird enough, there are dozens of fold up chairs in the courtyard that you by now have a sense of taking a load off the feet as you’ve been walking all day. And then a girl walks into the courtyard with a friend. He’s carrying a rather large case of sorts. He unzips it and unveils a beautiful harp. She takes it, sits, he walks off. And she begins playing a lovely sonata by an 18th century Dutch composer. And it’s beauty resonates off the courtyard walls, and for a moment, you are captured and entranced by this beautiful sound. Lovely.
Walking around the other buildings, there are several active churches that have been maintained over the centuries and are still active today. So unlike most European churches with their sense of stoic historian-ism, these churches are alive with choirs signing and gallery events on a daily basis. Sint-Salvatorskathedraal, St. Salvator’s Cathedral, is a wonderful cathedral from the mid-1500’s the lives and breathes today with singing from a children’s choir. They also have quite a collection of artifacts, Flemish paintings line the walls, small sculptures are everywhere as well as posters advertising new exhibits and cultural events. And suddenly, you see the church as a cultural hub from centuries ago communicating to the people of this little village. How exciting it must have been in those days. Well, at least compared to the farm life that surrounded the town.
