Travelogue #18: Across the divide.

It’s a general trend that most guide books on Belgium ignore the French part of the country altogether. And with good reason - Walloon cities are grittier and far more industrial than their storybook picturesque Flemish cousins. There are fewer museums, fewer landmarks, and more visible signs of stagnation across the language divide. But if there was one great thing about the French part of Belgium, it’s the terrain in the Ardennes - rolling hills, dense forests, meandering rivers, clusters of villages … 

On one sunny morning, I set off for the town of Dinant, on the banks of the Meuse river. As for the rest? I’ll let the pictures do the talking. 

Peep hole. 

Hey! Guess which country I’m in? 

The biscuits are a local specialty - couque de dinant. Basically, you should only eat it if you’re trying to get rid of one of your teeth. 

Yes, the saxophone was “invented” by someone. Yes, that “someone” was Belgian. And yes, he was born in Dinant, by the name of Adolphe Sax.

I judge every place I visit by the quality of its pastries. TRUFAX. 

When your coffee gets a little dull … 

Travelogue #17: Gent.

Everything back then felt spanking new. I had just moved into my new apartment in a new country, started a new semester at a new university, met new people, made new friends. And with such new friends, we headed out of town on a warm Saturday morning to Gent. 

In a way, Gent was a quintessential Belgian (or rather Flemish) city. It has nice market squares, river views, a Belfry, winding cobbled streets, and a young, vibrant, beer-drinking population.

Coming from Leuven and having just been to Bruges, Gent felt like the half way point between the two cities. Having a resident university in town meant that the city exuded the vibe of a student town, while tourist boats and rowers shared Gent’s busy waterways for a glimpse of the quaint views.

And like all Belgian cities, there was nothing spectacular or significant about Gent - just a gentle buzz beneath the surface and an atmosphere of a city intent on enjoying a good life. But on a warm, sunny autumn weekend, in the company of ace people, what more do you need? 

xx doots

Belfry, with the hideous construction crane in the background. 

One of the many squares in Gent. When we got there, the market was just packing up.

One thing I really miss about Australia: front lawns.

Gent castle. 

Decorations in the Vleeshuis, a medieval butcher’s house turned restaurant. 

What exactly is this country’s obsession with depictions of public urination? 

One of the two churches we went into - the first one being St Baafskathedraal where the famous Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (first known oil painting in existence) resides. This is the second, smaller church, which turned out to be much more photogenic. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called. 

One of the university properties currently being used as public space. 

Friend’s rooftop apartment. 

View of Gent from the apartment, just outside the city centre. 

Travelogue #16: Leuven, first impressions.

In hindsight, choosing Leuven over other alternatives was a fabulous idea. The city was big enough, and vibrant enough to have amazing bars, and nice restaurants and bookstores, but small enough to be spared the isolation, the motor traffic and all the inconveniences that ironically come with modern urban living. 

Locally, Leuven is known for three things: 1) university, which takes up a significant portion of the town and its fluctuating, young, and student-oriented population; 2) the brewery - incidentally now the largest brewery in the world after various mergers; and 3) the largest hospital in the region. 

So … if you follow 1, 2 and 3 above in that order, you get a fairly typical Thursday night itinerary around here. ;) 

As far as major landmarks are concerned, tourists generally come to Leuven to see three things - the giant overkill of a town hall, the university library, and Oude Markt - the self-proclaimed “Longest Bar in Europe”. 

So … this is the town hall. I mean … friggin look at it. If there was a bigger overkill for a smaller municipality, I have yet to see it. Every inch of the building surface is covered with some sort of statue. I was told the statues were actually a relatively recent addition to the building. “Recent” by European standards that is, so there’s a good chance they’re still probably older than my country. 

Hooverplein (Hoover Square), right next to the University Library, where all the major events in town and the weekly markets are held. 

Leuven is shaped like a ring, with a few squares in the centre, from which the rest of the town branches off in a circular, spiderweb-like fashion. The outer ring of the town is where the city walls used to be. They were pulled down many a centuries ago because - in the words of one of my professors - “we cannot defend ourselves anyway, so what’s the point?”

Living here has made me think a little about urban design and about the circles and squares of whichever part of the world we live in: the places where we gather, the pavements on which we eat and drink, places to sunbathe, places to socialise, places to read alone in public. It seems to me that somewhere in the process of building modern cities in the new world, we might’ve gotten some things wrong that the Belgians got right. 

(Still, I wish there was better coffee here … and front lawns.) 

The Beetle, in front of the University Library. 

Personally I find this a little gross. Even more perplexing is the fact that the beetle was given by the City of Leuven to the University as a gift and intended to symbolise “knowledge”.

Eh? Which part of “giant, metallic, dead insect” speaks “infinite wisdom” to you? 

But then again, I am living in a country where the national symbol is a boy caught in the act of public urination, so to say the Belgians have quirky taste is perhaps a mild understatement. 

University Library and Square. 

Oude Markt, a.k.a the longest bar in Europe. 

These photos were actually taken on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Come here Thursday nights/Friday mornings and you’ll get a pretty good idea of why they call this a student town. Fabulous vibe, cheap booze, populated by tourists and families during the day, students at night. I heart it so. 

University buildings near where I live. I was coming home one evening and stopped to take a photo because the light was so lovely. 

Mum: “Oh, that’s a nice alleyway.”

Me: “Mum, that’s a major street here.”

My too-girly-for-Barbie bike.

Being a town with more bikes than humans, bike theft is somewhat a sport among students here. I think mine’s safe from drunken, thieving men at least. No self-respecting specimen of Belgian masculinity would ever be caught dead riding this. 

Travelogue #15: In Bruges.

Maybe that’s what hell is. All the rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges. - In Bruges (movie)

Having arrived in Leuven a day before orientation, I found myself suddenly occupied with going Orientation sessions, registering my presence with various university and city authorities, buying home wares and setting up my new apartment. This left me with literally no time to explore Leuven itself outside the university buildings.

In fact, the first Belgian city I really visited was Bruges, as part of the orientation program. 

We went on the most splendid day - Belgium was going through a late autumn heatwave. All the cities around the country were basked in a kind of gentle warmth, blue skies, soft breeze, slightly browning leaves … don’t be fooled by the tranquility of my photos, because this turned out to be a misfortune in disguise. Bruges was simply suffocated by hordes of tourists.

Of course, the tourists came for a reason. For Bruges was so completely, endlessly pretty. While every European old town has its charms, rarely do you visit a place where beauty is so totalising. Every corner you turned was stunning, every view unfolded with delight, every house tucked out of sight looked quaint and cosy. And too much of a good thing made it feel unreal and Disney-like. 

But Walt Disney could’ve never recreated this view. 

In a way, it is good that Bruges these days is prospering because of international tourism. Historically, the city declined from being one of the major commercial centres of the 13th century to a place of poverty and stagnation by the 1500s. This was because the Zwin Channel, which had given the city its wealth, silted and quite literally turned Bruges into the backwaters of Belgium.

In hindsight, never has economic decline looked so good. Bruges’ fall into irrelevance helped preserve the city quite remarkably from the scourge of modernity. Well … that is, until hordes of tourists descended upon this city. 

I know. It’s ironic and slightly hypocritical to be frowning upon tourism, especially when you are a tourist. But in a town like Bruges, with a population of 20,000 living within the ring of the city, tourists come in and suck the flavour out of the place. They turn everyday grocery stores into boutique touristy chocolatiers and lace shops selling “Belgian” lace made in Taiwan. 

But by the time the sun was beginning to set, the tourist were already leaving in droves. We wandered through the now deserted squares in the centre of the city, relieved at last to be walking without bumping into other tourists, or being run over by horse carriages carrying families with heavy machinery cameras.

The town was growing quiet, and unlike Leuven - there was no music coming out of bars, no students racing through the streets on the bikes, no locals gathered on the sidewalks, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and looking exceedingly happy with life. Bruges was morphing back to the sleepy, backward town that it had been for hundreds of years before the coming of THE TOURISTS. 

Its tranquility unnerved me. Achingly beautiful as it was, I could not stay in Bruges anymore. 

“Let’s go home,” I said to new friends.

xx 

I felt compelled to re-enact a scene from In Bruges upon sighting this. *whips out toy gun*