Carnival in Leuven

As much as Europe is different from the United States - as much as we want to think that it's different - the people in both places share some basic desires. We share a need to mill aimlessly around a dirty, loud space with unnecessary lights. Both peoples love awful food from suspect carts. Everyone loves rides - or at least watching people get off of rides. Games of skill and luck are fascinating.
We got to Leuven on a beautiful Sunday, without realizing that there was some kind of carnival going on. We spent quite a bit of time wandering around before we noticed the ferris wheel. We decided that we really should take a ride - "to get pictures from the top," we told ourselves.

The pictures were great, of course, as was the ride. We were definitely the only people between the ages of twelve and forty, but that was fine.
Notice all of the empty tables at these cafes below us - it was tough to find a place to sit in the rest of the city, but here the noise and commotion limited the appeal of sitting outside. It was nice up high, though, in our little hanging basket.
The interesting thing, for me, was the juxtaposition of the old buildings and the blaring midway. It was very unusual to look up from the booths and rides and see peaceful, pretty Leuven in the background.
I'm used to county fairs, which are somewhat similar, but are held in muddy fields and purpose-built barn buildings. It's a very similar thing though. The smells are the same, the rush of excited children, the barkers holding microphones, the canned noises that create a sense of bodily displacement.
I didn't buy any food or go on any rides other than the ferris wheel. I was really, really tempted by the shooting booths, though. It just looks so simple!
These poor ponies have a pretty awful life. The combination of children, noise and a confined tent-track has got to be a hard thing to take.
Leaving Leuven - after we walked all afternoon, had drinks and dinner and more drinks - we'd almost forgotten about the fair. On the way to the train station, though, we passed by the ferris wheel and almost got on it again.

Hagel Face

We saw this in a gallery window in Leuven, Belgium. That's chocolate hagelslag all over her face. If I had money to spare and/or a home with a wall to hang it on, I would have bought this. I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but the print was about four feet tall and showed the length of this little girl's body. It was amazing.

Mechelen, a Pretty City

Mechelen is a very pretty city, even if nobody here thinks it's anything special. It's bypassed by tourists, for the most part, on the way from Brussels to Bruges. All the postcards appear to have been taken on a single day in 1992. People aren't used to having Americans around.

They have some very nice buildings, though, and it's a nice city to walk around. This is the main square during the day.

And at night. They light up a few things and let the rest of the city stay dark, which is kind of a relief after the excessive architectural spotlighting of Ghent.

Quite a bit of Mechelen was destroyed during WWII, and it's fun to wonder what it would have been like without all of the hastily-built, square, brick buildings filling in the bombed spaces. Like Holland, the people here built a lot of very ornate facades in front of narrow, sharp-angle roofs.

As you can see, the cathedral is massive. The tower dominates the skyline in a city where very few buildings are more than five or six stories tall. It's not particularly remarkable in any way, but it's amazing to look up at.
I'm including this picture, above (of an unknown building), to highlight how beautiful the day was, until...
...this storm came along. It appeared out of nowhere, and we had a half-hour of intense rain. Luckily, Rebecca had been lugging her umbrella around, so we only got half-soaked.

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.