Brugge

The third city, the last, but for sure not least, that I saw in Belgium was Brugge. Also named “The Venice of North-West”, Brugge is the capital of West Flanders Province and it is without a shadow of doubt the most beautiful place from the entire country. The locals say that the origin of the name comes from an old Dutch word that means bridge.

How did I get here? Well, I took the train from Liege to Brugge, it was an hour and a half trip. After I “landed” at the train station, my friends and I searched for a map and went “sailing on”:). I am quite lucky that my friends are really good when it comes to geographical orientation, it seems I skipped that course:). After you exit the train station it is really easy to get to the city center of Brugge. You just walk straight ahead, you will see two crossing points, do not use the first one, it is longer, use the second one, you will get faster to your destination. Ok, after crossing the street just keep walking straight ahead, you will see lots of houses and you will see the really narrow sidewalks that you have to walk on. In the distance, you will surely notice an enormous tower, head to it and you will reach the city center.

What did I think about Brugge before seeing its wonders? Not much, it seemed like a small, quite, pretty place where ordinary people live their lives in harmony and undisturbed by the ravishing time and the always changing technology. The houses that I passed by were well proportioned, not big, but not grandiose. The rooftops of the buildings had the same color, a sort of burgundy and the architecture was beautiful, but similar. What I mean is that, every building had different carvings on the exterior walls, but the way that the carvings were made in the cement, the way that they were positioned similar. Moreover, all the houses were situated one next to the other, there was no space between them. It was like I was walking past a never ending concrete block. Some of the houses had the national flag hoisted in front of the building. I also saw places were there was more than one flag, the national one, of course and flags with different symbols on them, one being the dragon.

Wondering like crazy people just freed from the nuthouse :) we extensively stared with delight at the buildings, we liked looking at them so much that we did not realize that there were people inside :). As I was gazing at a certain window, I suddenly noticed motion inside, a woman was preparing something to eat in her kitchen. Curious by nature, I couldn’t help myself, so I had to look. She was making a kind of soup, I think. Inside, the kitchen was small, it had a table, if I saw and remember correctly, four chairs, a stove and a sink. It was as if I was part of a Big Brother show, actually seeing how life is taking place without the person in cause knowing that I know. That didn’t last long, since the woman turned to the window and saw my red, embarrassed face. I turned away really fast from the window and ran to catch my friends that were further on the road. I learned my lesson!

As I was thinking about the possibility to be watched in the same way that I was staring at that woman, by the government, we started to hear a strange song coming from somewhere. It was coming from one of the buildings from the center of the city, so we now were guided by the sound of music. The song strongly resembled a Celtic hymn. I could even picture in my big head the gigantic and powerful Celts running around the city center, but obviously things did not pan out like I imagined them.

We got to the center and here we found more great buildings, bigger, in scale this time, palaces and churches.

A place that every tourist that reaches Brugge should see is the “Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk” (Thanks God for the existence of Google, for I could not remember the name otherwise :)). Here, you can find the only sculpture made in marble, entitled “Madonna”, that is not under the heritage of Italy. Does it ring any bells? Yes, it belongs to the famous Michelangelo. The sculpture presents the holy Mary and her child, baby Jesus and from what the people from the church said and from the written descriptions on the wall, it seems that this piece is very important and valuable due to the fact that it is different from the works that the artist made before. The metaphorical meaning of it being the idea that, Mary knows the fate that awaits her dear child, but doesn’t force the laws of nature to changes the awful destiny, since it is God who has decided it, to be so.

Another place connected with spirituality and religion is the church "Basiliek van het Heilig Bloed" or "Basilica du Saint-Sang" (hope, I wrote it's right). This church is even more mystical than the previous one. The legend says that, here, the men of cloth hold the deepest secret of life, for which men could kill for and for which people had fought relentlessly for centuries, the magical red liquid that made Dan Brown, the international and renowned author write more than one book about the subject. Now, it is clear isn’t it? The legend says that the church has a vial with the Holy Blood – The Holy Graal. This vial is brought to the attention of the public every year during the day of “God’s Ascension” in a kind of procession with medieval character since, as they say, the year 1291. How did the blood get here, that is another story, one that you must discover for yourself.

One way to visit the main touristic places to see all of the beauty and mysteries that the city hold is to rent a carriage, the driver will do the rest, he will explain you all the historical surrounding of the buildings and you’ll get to see all the main places.

The city center of Brugge is part of UNESCO heritage and here you can see only wonderful castles.

One thing that you must check out is the “Belfry of Brugge”. It is a medieval bell tower and it is considered one the most important symbols of the town being used in the past times as place for housing the treasury and municipal historical papers, and also as an observation tower, from here people could easily see if enemies were approaching. The “Belfry” Tower has a more deep meaning at least for me, because it is the house of the indescribable Salvador Dali. I think that everybody has heard about Dali, the Spanish painter, that revolutionized art by introducing more elements and more life in the surrealist current. He modified the perception that painters had about time and the physical existence, diluting and bending reality to his own dreams and views. The tradition of showing Dali’s paintings in Brugge started in the year 1997 when a small exhibition of the artist was presented. After the success of the cultural idea, the local authorities decided to open a museum dedicated to him and his art. The inside of the museum is great, not only due to the paintings of Dali, but due to the fact that you can see rooms where the architects played with gold, bright pink or shocking white.

After all this gazing around and discovering history, one needs to relax and what better way to do that, then to take a boat trip. The price is cheap and you can sail on the “Dijver Canal”. Brugge is the only city in Belgium that has houses actually “floating” in the water. I mean that the base of the house (the ground floor or whatever you call it) is under water. A most interesting view is when you see people sitting in their home balconies and having dinner there, while the water is gently caressing the outside wall of the house.

If you are not the happy owner of such house, do not worry, just pass over the bridge and you will get to a nice restaurant positioned perfectly in the middle of the “Dijver Canal”. As every tourist you can not leave Brugge without buying something for your loved ones. The offer in this department is generous, you can buy t-shirts, bags, pins, necklaces, bracelets, fridge magnets and postcards with the name / mark "Brugge" on them. But what I loved most were the amazing dolls, that one could buy from this small shop just in the city center. All the dolls were manually manufactured and, besides, the fact that they looked very real, the also had names. Every doll had a different name. Astonishing idea!

My story ends here, but your is about to be written. Have fun!

(Pictures made by me dear friend, Giorgiana Astefanei)

In Lille, there are many organizations that provide a lot of trips around Europe. One of them is a trip to Brugge. The first time I heard about Brugge was from David. He came up with a cool movie that I had to watch. Unfortunately, I did not like the movie so much but the whole story was happening in Brugge and the city looked really nice. Brugge is in Belgium, but from Lille it is only one hour driving by car. Since the beginning of my semester I knew I wanted to go there, I just did not plan anything on my own. After, my housemate Tanvi noticed that there was an event on Facebook organizing the trip to Brugge by ESN (student organization). Therefore, we went there!

Firstly, we agreed on going with my two housemates (Tanvi, Alma) and with my Czech and Slovakian friend (Katarina, Lucia). After, we were happy that other friends joined us – Juan, Torres and Juliette. The cost of the trip was 15 euros, which is a good deal. We started in the morning travelling by bus. One advantage was that we had the whole day free and we could do whatever we wanted. The disadvantage was that we did not search anything before. Therefore, we walked to the nearest information centre, we took the map and agreed on a common program. The information centre is located in the main square where we saw the main tower from the movie.

After checking the map we wanted to visit some museums. The most attractive one was The Chocolate Museum. We wanted to enter it but after finding out that the ticket cost 7 euros and it was all about history without trying any chocolate, we did not go. Even though there are many museums in Paris and Lille for free, there is nothing for free in Brugge. Since it is a small city a lot of people pay for it because there is no other option. We preferred having a good lunch instead. We went to the nearest restaurant where we had burgers.

It was really nice to walk there because the streets were beautiful like in a fairytale.

Next step was to have a boat ride. It was the thing I liked the most. We were floating through Brugge approximately 30 minutes. I was listening to the guide who spoke about history in both languages - French and English. I just had a good feeling to understand some words in French. Taking a boat is something different what you can not do everywhere. That´s why I liked it. That day the weather was again not appropriate for doing the trip. Basically, I was freezing whole day. Although the sun and boat made it better.

After the boat tour we decided to find some café to have Belgium waffles. I picked the one with whipped cream and Lucia chose the one with chocolate. We shared both and we were happy. I remember boys having chocolate that was quite special – they received only milk with the chocolate right next to it. They were supposed to put the chocolate inside the hot milk and melt it. In the end, I would like to recommend you Brugge. The city is worth seeing and there is a really beautiful atmosphere. In addition, we were together so it was an awesome day!