Bruges... rhymes with "rouge"

The boss had a trip that she needed to take to The Hague, so we made plans to take a weekend getaway beforehand, and agreed on Bruges, Belgium... a picturesque medieval fairytale town steeped in history - and we'd get to add another stamp to our metaphorical passports!

We left Frankfurt after she'd worked a half day, so we were still on the road at dinner time, we just stopped for fast food on the way.

First things first. I know there's an "s" on the end of it, but the French must have gotten a hold of the name and decided that the "s" should be silent. The name of the town (in English) rhymes with "rouge." Something else you should know is that in the official language of Belgium (Flemish, or as I like to ignorantly call it "Belgish"), it's actually spelled "Brügge," and pronounced differently in Belgish than in English. This becomes quite important when your wife is the one behind the wheel on the last leg into town, and her choice of navigation apps uses a British accent. I've looked around on the map and can't figure out precisely where it happened, but at one point we got turned around and ended up missing the turn to Bruges, because Nigel (the stereotypical British name I use to refer to her navigator) told her to follow signs to "Brugga." We took the wrong direction at a fork in the road, and due to construction (and a spam call at the worst possible time) ended up having to circle twice past the turn we needed to make.

Regardless, we ended up at the hotel. Eventually.

Our hotel was a bit outside the city center (as is our wont), and it shares a parking garage with the main train station in that area. We could physically see the hotel, but couldn't figure out how to get to it, as we didn't immediately see any signs pointing us toward it. After circling the area two or three times, we finally saw a small sign next to the entrance to the garage with the hotel name on it, and were able to determine that we should indeed enter the garage. We eventually wandered through all of the sections of the garage and found the correct place to park.

We had a free walking tour scheduled for the next morning, so we got up bright and early and started the walk into town. At the main road into town was a little street market, kinda fun to look through on our way by. We stopped at a coffee shop and got some coffees and pastries for breakfast. They hadn't finished taking down the Christmas Market in town, so we stopped at one of the little squares to use one of the tables so thoughtfully (and temporarily, I'm sure) abandoned.

On our tour, we learned lots about the town, but I later found two pieces of information that made me doubt some of the guide's stories. First, lemme tell you about the town - this is the factual stuff, which I've confirmed with my customary research. I'll give you the bad info afterwards.

Due to its location on (just very close to, really) the North Sea, Bruges quickly became one of the most important (and richest) cities in Europe, as the location made sense for a major trading hub. In 865, the first fort was built at the site of the city, originally to hold off Viking invaders. Unfortunately, the river leading around 5 miles to the North Sea wasn't deep enough for ships to navigate it, so the ships would be unloaded at the mouth of the river, with their contents transferred to smaller boats. Those smaller boats would navigate upriver to the city, and be unloaded in the "waterhalle," the largest covered harbor in Europe. Goods would be stored at the waterhalle prior to their sale and the fine folks from Bruges would take a cut from every trade, quickly making the city one of the richest in Europe. Any goods that were going to or from any city in the northern half of Europe would go through Bruges - fabric on its way out to Italy, food from all over the world to be imported to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany or France, wool from England being imported to Europe... pretty much everything went through Bruges, and the city got richer and richer - eventually becoming the third most populated city in Europe.

English ships would come to town empty, and would fill up with goods to sell. Sailing those ships across the English Channel empty wouldn't be a wise idea though, so they loaded the ships up with stone as ballast, then would dump the stone when they loaded the boats with goods.

They built a glorious tower on the main square in 1240 which held the treasury and the municipal archives, and functioned as a watchtower.

In 1280, the building burned to the ground, destroying 400 years worth of municipal records. The city rebuilt the tower, but this time built the main portion of the tower out of stone - the same English stones that the empty ships had used for ballast. They constructed a wooden spire on the top of the building, decorated with the image of the Archangel Michael. Within ten years, the spire was destroyed by a lightning strike.

They rebuilt the tower again, this time using brick. Atop the new brick tower, they built another wooden spire. This spire lasted until 1741. They cleaned up the (seemingly inevitable) fire damage, finally adding stone parapets to the top of the building in 1822.

The story of the Bruges Belfry is evidently quite well known (despite the unassailable fact that neither the boss nor I had heard of it); well known enough that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about it in 1845. The poem starts:

"In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; 

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town."

Over the centuries, the tower has developed a significant lean; the top of the tower leans 34 inches. They're going to start construction to stabilize the tower this year, but I don't think they're going to make it any higher - they might have finally learned their lesson. Or maybe they'll use brick or stone on another spire.

Here are a couple of pics of it - the gray stone you see on the bottom layer is the English stone previously used as ballast:

An interesting thing about the belfry: it contains a musical instrument called a carillon, basically a keyboard connected to at least 23 bronze bells. Why 23? Dunno. I can't learn everything for you. There's your homework assignment - figure it out and report back to the class.

The fact that it contains a carillon isn't the interesting part though. What's interesting is that the guy who plays the instrument plays all kinds of music on it. While we were there, we heard songs by the Carpenters and Harry Nilsson. I don't remember what Carpenters song, but the Harry Nilsson song was "Without you." In memoriam to Matthew Perry, he played the theme song from Friends the day after he passed away. I found a couple of examples online as well:

• Harry Nilsson: "Without you" (just the song, not the bells) 
• The Rembrandts: "I'll Be There For You" ("Friends" theme) 
• Gloria Gaynor: "I Will Survive" 
• Henry Mancini:  The theme from "The Pink Panther" 

During the tour, we walked across the St. Boniface Bridge, which gives the appearance of being ancient, but in truth dates only to 1910. While we were waiting for the bridge to clear off (damn tourists!) the boss noticed a guy in the little plaza selling watercolors - so of course we'd have to come back and try and find him again. Here's the bridge - the guy selling watercolors was on the near side of the stream, next to the building you can just see the edge of on the left:

One bad piece of information that the guide gave us (which might not be "bad," but I just couldn't confirm): He showed us a crest atop one of the buildings and told us that it was connected to the origin of the dollar sign. My independent research has shown that the true origin of the dollar sign is unknown, but that it *might* somehow be connected to the Pillars of Hercules (the usual representation of the Straight of Gibralter), which our guide did mention as being features of the crest. While I was able to find that, I wasn't able to find any reference to Bruges (or anyone connected with the city) who would have put their crest on a building, or why a crest on a building in Bruges would somehow be connected with a currency symbol for a currency that they don't use, and that wouldn't be referred to in print until the 1790's (or in widespread usage after 1869). Here's a pic of the building / crest in question:

You see the two pillars in the middle, right? And how there's a pennant of some sort wrapped around them? Do you see a possible origin of the dollar sign there? Yeah, me neither.

After the tour, we walked around, looking for a place to eat. I think it's a requirement for places to put their menus on the outside of the building, and we found a place that had an onion soup that sounded really good (as we were frozen solid at this point); unfortunately they didn't have any tables available. They sent us to their other location a few doors down the road. Same ownership, but much different vibe, and they didn't have the full menu available (so no soup!). The second place was a little cafe with circular two-tops. We sat and ordered; the wife ordered a flight of four beers. They came out in a little holder that stretched across the entire table. When our food came out, they had to slide another table in to be able to hold it all.

The wife struck up a conversation with the couple at the table on the other side of us, they were Belgians who lived closer to the coast and had come into the city for the day - a gentleman in his 60's and his mother. Their wide ranging conversation ran the gamut of topics, including cultural and political affairs - in other words, I don't remember all they talked about. One thing that does stick in my mind though, they talked about voting in Belgium. Evidently, voting is compulsory in Belgium, and they have several different elections they're required to vote in: European Parliament, Chamber of Representatives, Parliament of the Regions, provisional councils, and municipal councils. When they vote, they get a stamped card to prove that they cast their ballot, and sometimes they'll have to show the card, or pay a fine. Additionally, in the past non-voters might have had difficulty getting a job in the public sector; since 2003 though, offenders are rarely prosecuted.

After lunch, we found our way back over to St. Boniface Bridge, and found the watercolor guy. While the wife was picking out her watercolor, another artist was standing a little back from us, cutting a piece of paper. The wife asked him what he was doing, and he'd cut a silhouette of me while I was standing there waiting. We bought it from him (because we hadn't seen anything like that). Pretty inventive, and after looking at my ugly mug in the mirror for a few decades now, it's a pretty good likeness - check it out for yourself!

Afterward, we wandered around town a bit more and found our way to the Basilica of the Holy Blood. In this church, there's a vial which supposedly contains the blood of Jesus on a cloth. It was saved by Joseph of Arimathea when he was cleaning Jesus' body for burial. Popular legend says that the vial was brought to Bruges by someone named Thierry of Alsace during the Second Crusades in 1149, but recent research found no reference to the presence of the vial in Bruges before the 1250's. Additionally, there has been no definitive evidence either proving or disproving the authenticity of the relic. We saw it, and were given a little pamphlet by the stern looking bouncer-nun who supervised our visit to the altar. I didn't see a ruler near her, but I don't doubt for a second that she'd have found something to crack us over the knuckles with if we'd even thought about touching the vial.

Afterwards we wandered over to the Church of Our Lady. We looked around the inside, then paid the fee to get into the museum portion. We followed the path around and finally found Madonna and Child, a sculpture created by Michelangelo in 1504. During our tour, the guide had told us about the history of the statue, and made the comment "Thank God George Clooney gave it back to us!" (referring to the movie The Monuments Men)

Belgium is known for their chocolate; during the tour, the guide had mentioned a specific seal to look for when buying chocolate. Evidently there are only 9 chocolatiers in the city who are members of the Bruges Chocolate Guild, and produce their chocolate by hand at their local facility. We encountered one of these shops, and did our part stimulating the local economy.

We did some more random shopping around town and ended up having dinner back in the room.

Sunday morning, there was a farmer's market that I wanted to check out, so we drove over there. We wandered around among the townspeople and bought a big wheel of cheese and the wife had a waffle (something else Belgium is known for).

In researching this post, I discovered something interesting about Belgium: It's the only flag in the world with a ratio of 1.154 (13:15). You may not find that interesting, and that's okay. Don't put it in your blog then. My blog, my rules. Since I'm writing about flags, turns out that there are only 2 countries in the world with square flags, and we went to both of them when we lived in Italy - Switzerland and Vatican City. See? We're learning random stuff together!

The guide had mentioned a free shuttle to the train station from the market square downtown, so we asked at the front desk and figured out where to go to catch it. We got off a block away from the main square and headed over toward an attraction our guide recommended (second lie coming up!): the Historium.

It starts with a little 6 minute long "virtual reality" tour of what the boats went through to get into the town, with the cheesy voice in your ear telling you to look to the left to see the Belfry, and describing the cranes to you. Mine wasn't adjusted properly, so to look at something "straight ahead", I had to look down in the direction of my left knee. Probably should have skipped that part of the Historium. 

After that, you follow the glowing footprints through seven or eight rooms, across two or three floors. The door opens automatically at the proscribed time and you enter the next room, to be shown an installment of a gripping drama about some kid named Joshua (I think), who was an apprentice to Jan van Eyck. One of van Eyck's most famous paintings is "The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele". Joshua was supposed to go to the dock and pick up the parrot that is pictured in that work, and escort the model (Anna was her name in the movie) back to the studio. The cage broke, the parrot escaped, and Anna took off looking for the parrot. Joshua looked unsuccessfully for the parrot and Anna for a while, then decided to go to the rosary maker to get his rosary (which was damaged in the fight after the parrot) replaced.

Eventually, after seven or eight rooms, he found Anna and recaptured the parrot. J-dawg ended up marrying Anna. I can't be bothered to try and find the name of the model (or any biographical information about her) - it's enough that the guide lied to me to get me to sit through that - I hope he got a good kickback from the Historium. Truly should have skipped this part too. That's an hour of my life I'm not gonna get back.

After that, I needed a beer (another thing Belgium is known for!), so we headed to the beer museum. I won't bother to describe it to you... if you need a lesson on how to brew beer, let me know and I'll set something up for you. Best part though, we got three beers with our tour. I happened across a beer that I really enjoyed, and the boss liked mine more than the one she selected. We ended up buying 3 four packs of it later in the week. The boss was impressed by the menu system that they used - they had magnum bottes available that had color coded flags across the top to tell you what they had on tap, with the color coding letting you know what language it was in:

We popped into the restaurant from the day before, and were able to find a table - the onion soup was worth the wait. Seemed a bit like French Onion Soup... but don't tell the Belgians I said that. Seems like it might be a touchy subject.

Next up was more shopping - didn't buy anything in particular, just helped support the local economy.

We found our way to De Halve Maan brewery. Beer has been brewed in that same location for over 500 years, but the current brewery has only been in operation since 1856 - still family owned, in its fifth generation.

Couple of fun things about this brewery... beer is still brewed at that location, but the tour takes you through all of the old area, and there is no definition of the word "accessible" which would cover that old building. The guide said there were something like 222 steps on the tour, and some of the stairs should really be called ladders instead. The portions of the building that we toured were definitely historical; we climbed all the way to the attic, then through a portal onto the roof, so she could show us the beautiful view of the city. She called our attention to a building around 2 miles off in the distance, and explained that as the beer had gotten more popular, they needed to expand their operation to keep up with demand. Unfortunately, their current location just didn't have the space to expand, but they wanted to stay in the same (historical) location. Their solution: a beer pipeline. They crowdfunded part of the cost and laid a pipeline to an area of town with cheaper real estate, and built a bottling facility there. The beer runs 3276 meters (a little over 10,700 freedom units - about 2 miles), and at its deepest, runs 34 meters (112 feet) under the surface. The beer that runs through the pipeline hasn't been fermented - that takes place at the bottling facility. Their most famous beer is called Brugse Zot (Bruges Fool, in English) - we got a 4 pack of that as well.

Here's a representation of the beer pipeline (not the actual pipeline):

That's in the entryway to the brewery, just a porthole showing the approximate size of the two pipes that run across the city.  

We were already halfway back to the hotel by then, so we just walked the rest of the way - the wife snapped a couple of cool pics:

 Had dinner in the room from a local fast food restaurant.

We left Monday morning on our way to The Hague. I'd planned a special stop that would add about a half hour to our trip, and give us a nice place to have lunch. On the way there (while still in Belgium), we stopped at a supermarket to look for a couple of Belgian beers we particularly liked. No dice (at that store), but the wife found a six pack of some beer that has gnomes on the label. One of her previous coworkers' husband has a thing for gnomes, so we're always on the lookout for things to send her to mess with her (as she's not a big fan of the little buggers). Of course, we had to get it. You'll see a picture later. 

If y'all have paid attention to my previous posts, you know that I like to look for interesting (to me, anyway) and off the beaten path places. I was looking around Atlas Obscura for ideas, and found a cool restaurant... so I planned our lunch accordingly.

SEE?!?!? I've got one foot in Belgium, and one in the Netherlands! Worth the detour, I'd say.

Lunch in the restaurant was fine, and I finally got to try a beer that I'd been wanting to try - simply because of the name. 

Just look at it - isn't that a wonderful name for a beer? I saw a neon sign for it in a bar window in Bruges (next to a Stella sign) and just knew I needed to try it, simply because of the name. Kwak. It makes such a strong statement. Unfortunately, based on the picture on the label, that statement is "Ducks make a different noise in Belgium." They missed a prime opportunity with their labels - all of their different beers have different grains in place of the guy's head. They could have had the same guy in the suit, but instead of different grains, use different duck heads. Unfortunately, they didn't ask me. I have, however, sent an email with that suggestion to their customer service team. They're owned by AB-InBev, so I don't expect to ever hear anything back, but... you never know.

After lunch, we found another supermarket in town and looked for our Belgian beers... SCORE! We found all of them we'd been looking for... except for my Kwak. I'll keep looking, but I'll post a pic of our final collection at the bottom of the post.

We continued our drive to The Hague. As an aside, I did some research on that pesky capital T. Interestingly enough, the "T" in "T"he Netherlands is never capitalized (unless it's the first word in a sentence, obviously). The "T" in "T"he Hague is always capitalized. Now we all know. I think I'll be able to remember that.

Now.... what happened in The Hague? We've been there enough times that it feels like a second home and I just need to hit the highlights, rather than a day by day diary. Standard stuff... the boss brings home the bacon, I fry it up in the pan. One day, I took the tram up to the beach area to visit a guitar store that I hadn't seen before... mostly higher end basses, nothing for less than about €1500 - way out of my price range... if I were in the market for another... which I'm not... at this point, anyway. Found a cool little shopping area in that direction that we'll have to explore more closer to summer. Most of the stores were closed, or had limited hours, but it looked like a cool little area.

I got another hat, a handsome little lightweight blue fall hat. Wore it a couple of times, but it's really too cold for it, since it doesn't have ear flaps that fold down. Better for cool fall afternoons, not a bitterly cold winter.

Went to tapas one night with the wife.

Finally found my Kwak at a local market in The Hague, right down the street from our hotel. Got 2 four packs on it. Speaking of beer for the final time, here's a pic of our overall haul... one 6 pack of the Gnome beer, two 4 packs of my Kwak, 1 four pack of Bruges Fool, 1 four pack of Duvel (a very popular beer in Bruges), and three 4 packs of my fruit beer I found at the beer museum:

And just so I'm not leaving you with a beer pic, here are a couple more shots:

This is from the roof of the brewery; over my right shoulder, you see the big blocky red building? That's the auditorium, and between that building and me, we're blocking your view of the bottling plant where the pipeline terminates. The auditorium is about halfway there.

Here's the waffle truck I got the boss's waffle from at the farmer's market. You can see me with my hood up. I didn't know that she was going to take the pic, or I would have found some other place to be.

A pic of both of us at one of the famous picture spots, taken by our guide. Supposedly a famous spot because you can see three famous landmarks from there, but I'm only counting one (the Belfry tower on the left side of the pic). All the others are blocked by yours truly. Sorry 'bout it.

That's all for now - watch this space for more adventures!

(Oh yeah, and if you have any questions, just ask! If I don't know the answer, I'll find it. If I can't find it, I'll make up an answer.)