Where Is Joey Today?

If it´s Tuesday this must be Belgium


I landed in Amsterdam (or as the cool kids say: a´dam) about 5 minutes early and made my way to the Centraal Station. My plan was to drop off my backpack and walk around (possibly going to the Keukenhof, their ultra famous garden...it was featured in the inflight magazine). That paragraph took me ten minutes to type because all the keys on the Belgian keyboard are messed up. To show you what I mean, I will rewrite the paragraph above:

I lqnded in Q,sterdq, 9or qs the cool kids sqyMqùdq,0 qnd ,qde ,y zqy to the centrqql stqtion: ?y plqn zqs to drop off ,y bqckpqck qnd zqlk qround 9possibly going to the Keukenhof; their ultrq fq,ous gqrden:::it zqs feqtured in the inflight ,qgqwinbe:

At centraal, all the lockers were taken and given that I had three hours of train riding to get to Bruges (call Guinness to see if there is a record for the number of ways to pronounce this town...even from IT´s OWN RESIDENTS! (I think the accepted version is brew-::loogeysound::-geh with brew-juh being 2nd but 1st with tourists)) I made my way south to Antwerp. An uneventful train switch later and I was going toward Ghent and Bruges. The afternoon was still young when I got to Ghent so I jumped off the train.

I think I got lucky, while Ghent is a very cool middle age city, but Bruges appears to be far better for walking around. When you get off the train in Ghent, it seems like a nondescript Eurotown. Only the tops of two cathedrals hint to you that you should get off and poke around. There were lockers but I didn´t plan on spending more than an hour (it was more like 3) so I brought it all with me.

Along the way I met this guy to the right and figured Em would want a photo. The center of town has four interesting landmarks and I only know the name for two :-P It was this let me just check it out first bit that made me miss the Mystic Lamb but did get to see inside Mariakirken (top photo), so I may go back on the way to Brussels.

Apparently, from what I read later, these paintings (the mystic lamb) have a good deal of bizarre history associated with them. Their origin is suspect (one of the artists may have been invented), they were nearly destroyed during the 1700s, in the 1800s the nude portions were covered in paint, and then it was stolen during the 30s, held for ransom, only to reappear at a train station a while later. You can't make that stuff up.

Back at the station I picked up the train to Bruges and spent an hour finding the hostel. The travel guide says that the town was peaking in the 15th century and had a 400 year recession preventing modernization. Lucky us, because this feels like Venice only more "real." Since arriving at the hostel (the photo at the left is the view out the window) I have pretty much just collapsed and written this (54 minutes and counting). Not a bad day all in all :)

Below is a photo from Ghent in what can only be described as a rousing endorsement of Flemish cuisine :-P



--Joey