Art in Ghent

Something that struck me about Ghent was how much their art spilled onto the streets. This including graffiti, unique store signage and shop windows with oddities galore (like the squirrels playing poker).
We stumbled upon this alleyway that was pretty impressively covered with tags, more mural than vandalism.
I always love seeing graffiti when traveling, probably because in our own home city it seems to be painted over as quickly as it is put up, unless it was specifically commissioned. As much as I liked the feeling that I got a glimpse of art before it was 'erased,' it's also fun to see a week or month or year or decade's worth of it piled up.

This one's for my mom, whose favorite animal is the penguin, or at least it was back at the age where I asked everyone what their favorite animal was.
I can't vouch for the quality of the fries here at "Best Frit" but I did enjoy their fry sculpture. (My feeling was similar to Don Draper's opinion of Ali... if you have to say you're the best, are you really the best?)
As the day got grayer, we decided to go inside for some 'real' art - our very first museum visit of the trip. The man at the front desk of SMAK (the Contemporary Art Museum) thanked us for "our sense of adventure" and off we went exploring.
This was definitely my favorite. It looks like there's a glare, but when you move around it to see it more clearly, it still looks like there's a glare. From every direction. Merlin hypothesized that the artist took a photo with a glare and then took a photo of that photo - hence, the constant glare effect. It was really frustrating, which I enjoyed.

Here are a few pictures of Merlin 'sploring. I think art looks better with him in it.

Castle Hunting: Laarne

On a cool, sunny day we set out from Ghent by bus. We made our way to quiet Laarne, which seemed mostly empty, and walked to castle Laarne, which looked pretty attackable from the front.

We trespassed through a sheep field to get around to the back, and found it a little better defended. It's been more of a manor house, though, for most of its existence. Apparently, there's a great collection of tapestries inside. We didn't get a chance to look because it's only open to the public on sunday afternoons.
The sheep were pretty unimpressed by the tourists in their midst. This is the second castle we've been to with a flock close by. We think it might be a photogenic/faux-pastoral thing.

This is part of the outer wall and the smaller second moat. Notice how this wall is made of brick - it was added centuries later, but it speaks to a common problem here. Like in the area surrounding Slot Loevestein, there isn't a lot of rock in this part of Belgium. Brick was cheaper and easier to source, so they did as much as they could with it.

Nacht winkel, winkel little star

These stores are all over the place here in Ghent. These "winkels" (shops) are only open at night ("nacht"), and were pretty confusing to us when we first got here.

In order to get a license to do business during the night (which is apparently quite hard), they must forfeit their ability to stay open during the day.

It seems, though, that there are almost more of these nacht winkels than there are daytime deli-type stores. Seeing the surfeit of bars in the student quarter, however, made us realize how lucrative these places must be. In fact, Ghent seems like a town that really comes alive after dark. Today it was quite quiet when we were walking around - last night there were people on the street and packed into all the bars.

The standard nacht winkel seems to sell (we can't really tell - we haven't been in one yet!) basic necessities and small, packaged food items. Also, perhaps most essential to their business, alcohol and cigarettes.

One person we were talking to said that it was best to avoid these stores because they were so overpriced. He said that everything cost double what it would in the regular stores. He also explained to us that the regular stores were mostly outside of the city center, and that was why we couldn't find any during the day. I have to say, it was pretty frustrating to walk by two or three closed stores before finding one that deigned to stay open during the day.

The man in the above photo started harassing Rebecca when I was taking this photograph. He wanted to know why I was taking the picture, what we were doing, who she was, etc. She, being quick of mind, told him that I was taking pictures of the motorcycles, not his store. He was asking again about the nacht winkel, when I came back across the street. When I showed up, he left. Is there trouble in winkel-ville? Photographs nacht-allowed?

We were going to go out to a nacht winkel tonight, but it's raining and we have been enjoying the warmth of our room. We've had a nice picnic on the top bunk of our bunk bed, listening to the big drops splatter against the skylight in our little room under the eaves.

In Bruges... Or Ghent, rather

We arrived in Ghent, Belgium yesterday, a charming city with picturesque Medieval architecture. Apparently, it's a lot like Bruges, but far less touristy and/or kitschy. It's actually amazing that there aren't more people with cameras wandering around and that, before three days ago, I had never even heard of Ghent. The place is such a sight. It reminds me of a pan-European town in a Disney movie.
When we first arrived, mid-day Monday, we saw mostly grey-haired folks and women with strollers and I thought, "Well isn't this as quaint as can be." Then, I thought, "It's mid-day on a Monday. Who else is going to be around?" and -sure enough- as late afternoon turned to early evening the young folks came out to play.
They plopped down at cafes and in circles, like the one above, around the square. Ghent is a college town, really, with roughly 60,000 enrolled students per school year. They seem like a lovely, alternative bunch, many dreadlocked and carrying guitars. There are so many dreadlocks here. Since I have yet to become comfortable taking pictures of people straight on, I offer this picture of a mannequin with blonde dreads as proof:
The youth scene sure give this fairy-tale-looking place a healthy dose of quirk....
Squirrels playing poker! And some kink...
You'd think the antlers would get in the way. And on THAT note, I'm off to drink some beer...

Maastricht

We're in Maastricht today, and it's rainy. When we arrived, though, it was beautiful. The city was packed with people enjoying a late summer weekend. The lines at the ice cream stands were very long, and the sun felt great.The last time I was here it was close to Thanksgiving time, and there was a huge Christmas market in the main square - Sintrmarkt, as they call it. It was interesting to see all the space, free from lights and ferris wheels.
Loose seal! (that's a joke) It's not alive, and it was for sale on this little side street.
It feels, here, un-Dutch. Limburg, the province we're in, hangs down between Germany and Belgium and the people here are used to switching between languages. People in the main part of Holland like to say that it's not really Dutch, and I don't know that the people here would disagree.
There are hills, too. The city feels as though it's situated above the river (the Maas), instead of alongside it. Being on the bridges, you get a sense of height and space that I was unused to. It's an interesting place to spend our last day in Holland.

Castle Hunting: Slot Loevestein

We left Rotterdam early on a grim, foggy day to make the journey out to Slot Loevestein, a fourteenth century castle that seemed fun and remote. It was chilly, but not cold - the weather alternated between a light drizzle and a steady rain. We were in good spirits, though, and we felt very adventurous.

We took the train out to Gorinchem, via Dordrecht, which was a pretty little town on the Waal river. It was empty when we showed up, at about nine in the morning. A boy we met on the train was very surprised that we were going to Gorinchem - "What are you doing, coming from New York to Gorinchem? But there is nothing in Gorinchem!" - but we found it very charming. We walked through the village and out to the harbor. We waited for about half an hour for the ferry upriver.

This stretch of the Waal (below where the Maas joins it) is the busiest waterway in Europe, according to one of the men who worked on the ferry. There were lots of cargo ships - container ships going up to Germany from the North Sea and coal barges coming back down towards Rotterdam. We passed a number of pretty villages - above is Woudrichem, a small, fortified town where the ferry made a stop.

Woudrichem harbor, with about a dozen boats.

We had a little lunch, which we'd packed that morning. We had found this great, brown, hearty bread and made some terrific sandwiches. Rebecca's been really into the rivierkreeftjes, or crayfish, which are widely available at supermarkets around Holland.

Rivierkreeftjes sandwich, with apple, onion and lettuce. Great castle hunting food.

This is Slot Loevestein, which really was worth the trip. It's in the fork between the Waal and Maas rivers, which gives it a very important defensive position. It's also on a little rise (this is Holland, so we're talking fifteen feet - a mountain!), so it was safe from the strategic flooding the Dutch used against invading forces.

There are two moats. There was a flock of sheep inside the outer wall and moat, and we were free to walk around - mostly alone - and take some pictures. Later on, a wedding party showed up to take pictures of the Bride and Groom. We headed back on the ferry just as it really began to pour, and made it home to Rotterdam in time for supper.

Things Dutch People Like

Trampolines. Every walk we've taken in a suburban Dutch neighborhood, we've found trampolines in the front lawns.
Usually, when you see one, two or three more will pop up in succession. Obviously, one kid got a trampoline, which meant that the kids next door couldn't possible live without one... which meant the kids next door to THEM got one and so on and so forth.
Poor kids in the bigger city didn't have a front lawn to trampoline on (does that work as a verb, too?) Luckily, street fairs, like this one in Haarlem, provide ample room to jump.
And a harness! For super trampolining!
Surely there wouldn't be trampolines at the beach, too. There's swimming and sandcastle building! But there they were in front of strandhuisje.
If you weren't lucky enough to have one, you could go to the trampoline park. Which is, apparently "Trampoline Park" in Dutch.
I could provide more pictures, but I think it may get tedious for both you and me. As tedious as, say, jumping in one place. Over...and over...and over again.

Dutch people also really like Cylindrical Meats a.k.a. sausages, wursts, hot dog and the ilk. They can be found in the meat section of the grocery store:In the packaged meal section:And, most impressively, in the canned food section:
Lastly, Dutch people really do love their hagelslag, which I've already covered, so I won't rehash it here. Though, check out this amazing box:Update: I just found out that there's a National Dutch Trampolining Contest. So, maybe that wasn't a Trampoline Park after all. Maybe it was a training camp!

Rotterdam at Night

This is the view from our hotel window in Rotterdam, the city every Dutch person we asked said "wasn't worth going to" because it was ugly and "too new." I felt like telling each of them, "I'm American. I can handle new." Rotterdam was bombed to smithereens during World War II, and had to be rebuilt from the ground up. So, it really is completely different than any of the other cities in the Netherlands - all those lovely little places with lovely little buildings that date back to lovely little days of yore.
Our room is on the 9th floor, which would be the 10th floor in America (in most of Europe, the ground level counts as '0'). So, this is, by far, the highest up we've been in this country - whose land lies mostly on sea level or below. You wouldn't find a view like this in another part of the Netherlands and, I have to say, I'm pretty glad there's no windmill lit up in neon in the distance.

Rural Holland

A lot of people who we've talked to have said that there's no nature in Holland. That's a bit of an overstatement, but it speaks to a truth about the country - its rural areas aren't really all that rural. They can still be very pretty. These pictures are culled from a few different places and towns. We came across the fields above as we were searching for a castle (that turned out to be more like a manor house) on our bikes in the rain. If it wasn't so misty, you could see a highway in the distance.
We fell in love with this little gatehouse cottage - it looked like someone actually lived in it. The lighter green strip in the picture is actually a canal, not grass. On a lot of the less-used waterways, the duckweed grows so thickly that it looks like dense spinach soup.
This is in Haarlem, which is a "rural city." The whole river, here, was dotted with boats on this Sunday.
This house was also in Haarlem. This part of the city seemed to be the "painted-house district." It feels like a small town in the center, though it does have its share of sprawl. The population density is very high here in Holland, so it's nice when you get a chance to pretend that you're in the countryside.

There are actually quite a few windmills. This one turned outside our room in Santpoort Noord. We were told that it ground grain. They are much larger than I expected.

I had always assumed that the reason that Holland had so many windmills was because it had a lot of wind. While this is partly true, there are two more important reasons why they built thousands of them. First, because they didn't have any swiftly moving water to power mills. Second, because they needed engines to pump water out of the fields to keep the land relatively dry.

Domesticity Abroad

Today, we did laundry. Travelers, they're just like normal people!