4.30am or so, sitting in my brother’s yard and listening to the world wake up.
I think I’ve been away from home for about 32 hours and my body is absolutely confused. I can’t tell if the sun’s coming up or if it’s just city light, the birds are going a little bit crazy and though it’s 11.06pm by Baltimore time, rob’s body MIGHT be ready to get up. I’m highly discombobulated, conscious, and typing from my brother’s backyard which is filled with twilight, or dawn, or diffused overhanging European greyness, or perhaps just atemporal gloaming.
And maybe it’s NOT quite as warm as I thought it was.
An hour or so I woke up and was STUNNED by how silent the city was. I can’t shut down the mental comparison as Brussels (or at least wherever the Hell *I* am) was completely silent. No rush of traffic, no distant sirens, no close sirens, no helicopters, no murmer of the neighbours, no movement, no nothing. Just silence. As the … gloaming… filtered in a couple of early birds have filtered in, and it’s not till NOW – just this moment, 5.11am, that I’ve heard a car of some sort, the slow swish of brakes. I’d heard a jet and now the bird noise is getting a little broader. Human movement in the form of the rattle of kitchenware, and one solitary dog bark.
My brother’s wife, Del, has been taking some sort of extract of cat dander in order to overcome her cat allergy. Even as much as I Love OUR cat, this clearly seems a case of the cure being FAR worse than the disease. This is the emotional and physical response to the process.
The birds are very unexpectedly different.
There … now I’ve sneezed and ruined everything.
The breeze is picking up and the smell of the honeysuckle in my brother’s tiny yard is submerged into something chemical for a moment, but the sounds stay… incredibly distinct. I feel like I can hear two distinct, more musical birds where I only had one before, one really awful barky kind of, raucous bird going raar raaar raaaaaaaar, and … an owl? Two of the latter.
HOURS after most of the writing here we DO get up and out and off to explore. The first steps are down to the tram past this local art gallery. Unfortunately, over the course of the next several days I never DO step in here to explore!
The wind picks up in the trees poking up over the garden wall and I think it’s just about time to go back inside – but I still remain in a quiet profound enough that I feel like I can pick apart every level and enumerate it.
And whatever’s going raaar raaar raaar I do NOT want to meet it or accidentally feed it. It doesn’t sound mean, or angry, but it sounds like something that would like some food and maybe I could give it some food and if I was foolish enough to give it food it would follow me, galumphing clumsily on massive stilt legs, clapping a large orange beak, begging for more…. ForEVER.
But it’s probably like…. A crow.
One passing jet. Another quiet car. Low-hanging clouds. One snail. No insect noise. A possibly distant susurration of distant, rising traffic that says to me maybe the Friday morning commute begins at 5.20am and a third owl from a distinctly different direction in wheezing conversation with the other two. An actual, definitely, fast-moving car has finally passed by and I feel like I’m maybe NOT alone in an otherwise depopulated city.
George is a good tour guide. He manages to keep ahead of us without leaving us out of breath. The public transit of Brussels is everything I’ve always heard about: clean, beautiful, easy.
For all that coming out of the airport felt disappointingly Maryland-esque, it’s suddenly very, very, very different here.
(and then everyone else gets up, we declare ourselves READY, take the tram to the metro, the metro to the train, and proceed to walk about a billion steps all over Bruges – it will swiftly become apparent over the course of this trip that though I have far MORE photographs than Kristen, Kristen takes the time to take much BETTER photographs than I. Mr. Fear? Just LOOK AWAY!!!!) (or better yet, look at Kristen’s photos)
Hee! A music festival is being set up here between museums as we wander through. I want to stand and watch but we are ON THE CLOCK!My brother, ladies and gentlemen!!!Pride week is being celebrated at Autoworld, one of the two museums facing into Le Parc Du Cinquantenaire.Looking at the architecture towering over us. I get where Washington DC came from now… but it’s a poor copy of Europe.Le Parc du Cinquantenaire is also ringed by the Musee Royal de L’Histoire Militaire and the Royal Museum of Art and History, but the latter looked like the back of a warehouse from where we were standing (and by comparison)Hrm. The Smurfs are from Belgium. Not really great representatives of Gender Equality. Voila – Les Schtroumpfs,All Starbucks are for Heather.I was just sucked in wandering down the street past Smurfs to churches. Again, we couldn’t explore too much because we wanted to catch a train to Bruges, but… wow. We turned around at what was clearly Allergy Alley.We whirlwinded up the train to Bruges and got off and just wandered. My brother had been here before, but it’d been a while, and so I’d like to think he had a good combination of getting to show things off and also being amazed by them. At this point I was kiiiiinda thinking “okay, so Ghent is a manicured tourist town” sort of like” but was appreciating the beauty of it all, especially after the hints of swarming metropolis of Brussels.Stepped architecture is apparently a hallmark of Flemish building. This was a fancy restaurant right at the entrance of town.George was describing that this was a very manicured town – they wanted to keep the historic visual as much as possible, so all the power and internet cables and whatever, all lurks down under the streets – but the streets often look like this! So they tear up cobblestones and replace cobblestones frequently – and with great skill.The Carmelite Monastery is still in service, so as we wandered these buildings we had to be quiet. With tiny hidden saints floating around, I was surprised that the monastery was kiiiinda whimsical.The swans of Bruges are apparently a thing. Closely tracked and highly adored, I don’t remember how many there were, but they are counted regularly.Everything is HIGHLY ornamented – and old. I don’t think it had entirely struck me at this point, but the idea that everything here is far older than almost anything I’ve ever seen in my LIFE is fascinating.We spent most of our time in these crowded “streets” (alleys?), filled with old buildings and beautful architecture… AND touristy shops and restaurants.SOOOO many Ave Maria thingies. I don’t THINK there was a Maria Avenue, I don’t think they were all depictions of the Mother Mary. But… maybe?Time for lunch! The way in which the food was served by people who seemed profoundly unhappy about being there was striking – but the deliciousness was striking too. My first food purchase in Belgium! Frites with Stew!Well, there MUST be bands here somewhere!Their meringues are absurd.This is Saint John’s Hospital in Bruges. Founded in the the mid 12th century it was apparently still in action right up till 1977. Our boat guide later in the day claimed to be one of the last people born here.There were a couple of street musicians floating around. A couple of accordion players and this organ grinder. In post I wonder where this guy goes home to and whether he takes the instrument with him and if so where it stays the night.Vaults vaults vaults!Who gets to park like this in front of the church?!?!?George thought I was pretty dumb for bringing a big water bottle cause there was free water everywhere. I thought George was pretty dumb for drinking out of THAT!Bicycles are a massive thing … and they are all lurking underground!We made pretty good time except for when George found a hole to explore.The Belfry of Bruges.Just a couple of people in gorilla suits inviting people to a party.Holy crap – that’s a McDonalds.
I did lose track of my churches somewhat. Walking into my first real European cathedral: St. Salvator’s Cathedral, “Sint-Salvatorskathedraal”, I realized that my old art school / history knowledge was failing me as I was simply overwhelmed by the glory of it. And glory IS the right word. Immense and intricate with an overbearing sense of importance – as you step back (and then step back again because it’s one of the biggest spaces I’ve ever been in) and realize the structure is older than most of the structures on my continent, certainly older than anything in consistent use (12th century? 900 YEARS OLD), I was ready to spend the rest of the day here.
I absolutely have a complicated relationship with organized religion, and I’d be hard-pressed to point to which organizing principle of human existence : Capitalism or Christianity, has done more harm to the species as a whole. But it did make for some incredible art.
