Side Note: Bruges

The long overdue Bruges entry commences. I apologize in advance for its lateness and its length, but you know you wanted all the juicy details…

The week after Maastricht was fairly unremarkable. Conny was off in Dusseldorf with the rest of the Rietveld Academy first-years, so I had the room to myself. It was quiet, so I finally got caught up with some reading and other school things.

Meanwhile, Stewart and I started scheming up travel plans again. We were bound and determined to get to Belgium, and apparently so were a lot of other IES folks. Word spread that we were planning a trip, and we ended up with a group of nine interested students. Information was gathered, rooms were reserved, and travel plans were made, and we went through the week in anticipation of spending the weekend in Bruges.

Of all places in Belgium, why Bruges? Honestly, we decided on it pretty randomly. Stewart had originally wanted to go to Brussels, and I was (and still am) game for that. But one of his friends mentioned that Bruges might give us the same taste of Belgium in a smaller, prettier, and more manageable bite, so we rerouted our plans in that direction.

Due to varying class schedules, we decided to split our large group into two smaller ones. The first group, comprised of five students (including myself) who didn’t have class on Friday, would leave Friday morning on the 9:54 train, while the second group would catch the 3:54 train after their classes were over. The first group would have time to eat lunch and wander around the city for awhile, and the second group would meet us for a late dinner.

That was what should have happened. But of course, nothing ever goes as planned.

The ticket machines at Centraal Station refused to accept any of our credit cards (apparently they’re supposed to take Visa, but every time I’ve gone they’ve only accepted MasterCard (or “Maestro” as they call it here). Annoyed, we headed to the international tickets wing of the station, where about ten desk spaces were being manned by about two employees. We waited in line behind a group of people who were so agonizingly slow it seemed like they were trying to book their next three years’ worth of train tickets. We had been there for nearly twenty minutes when we realized we would need to take a number before we would even be helped. We resigned ourselves to catching the next train, and finally got our tickets ten minutes after the 9:54 train had departed.

We were unsure of where to transfer trains, having heard conflicting reports to switch both at Antwerp and at Brussels. While either would have gotten us there in the end, we made the wise decision to ignore the advice of the large, talkative Dutch ladies sitting next to us on the train and jumped off at Antwerp, where I flagged down a conductor to direct us to the platform with our connection. After a much smoother journey than we had anticipated, we arrived IN BRUGES!*

Here we are ... in Bruges.*

*Naturally, we had to make as many cheesy dramatic references to the movie In Bruges (of which I’ve only seen the morbid last 15 minutes) as we could possibly cram into one vacation.

Group 1, consisting of me, Stewart, Adeola (also from Maryland!), Marie (also an Art History major!), and Tommy (also in IES – but I barely knew him before our trip) checked into our surprisingly respectable hostel about a ten-minute walk from the edge of Bruges proper. We picked up a great free map along the way, written by locals and aimed at young travelers, complete with a double-sided key for Bruges by Day and Bruges by Night, and tips on how to “Act Like A Local” (“1. Use your bicycle to run over tourists. It’s what we do as well.”). The map was full of helpful and humorous tidbits, the most exciting of which was mention of a restaurant that sold € 3 bowls of spaghetti. Feeling famished after our day’s travel, we wandered into the city to find this steal of a supper.

On our way we passed through the Markt – Bruges’ central square, which is surrounded by gorgeous old buildings, including an awesome bell tower and some nice shops.

Also this place, which should be my personal poster shop but which is actually a post office.

The Free Map did not disappoint. The restaurant, when we found it, was off the beaten path down a small alley full of Italian restaurants. Think little little Italy. The € 3 spaghetti was the “small” portion, but it was actually incredibly generous.

Marie, Tommy, and the best meal ever.

During dinner, Group 2 (consisting of four more girls: Kathleen, Tremaine, Joy, and Yuan) called, and told us that they had, unfortunately, missed two trains. The first because the same aggravatingly slow International Desk workers had taken too long to validate one of their Eurrail passes, and the second because they had missed an announcement telling them the train they wanted had switched platforms. They told us not to wait on them for dinner. Good thing.

Like in the Netherlands, most things in Bruges close at 6:00, with the exception of restaurants and bars. But Tommy wanted some french fries, and the rest of us wanted some waffles, so we looked around for some open restaurants to buy them. While we were eating our waffles, we got another call from Group 2. “We’re stopped,” they said. “We don’t know where we are, but the train’s not moving.”

We found out later that somebody had tried to commit suicide by running in front of the train ahead of the one that our friends were on. The person was unsuccessful, but the trains got backed up for at least an hour while thing got straightened out. Our friends simply asked if we would meet them at the station when they arrived in Bruges, since by then it would be dark and they didn’t want to get lost on their way to the hostel. Naturally, we agreed.

Meanwhile, it was time for a bit more wandering for Group 1. We strolled around, essentially window shopping, and then eventually decided to head back to the hostel and wait for our friends to arrive.

We saw some beautiful windows.

Adeola, Tommy, Stewart, Marie and I rested our feet, chatted, and played funny word games for the next two hours. We did our best to stave off exhaustion and summon up the energy we would need to trek back to the train station when the time came.

At around 11:30, Stewart’s phone rang. “Oh good,” we said, “Group 2 is finally here.” But when Stewart answered the phone we could all make out a hysterical Joy saying “No no no no NO! WE’RE IN THE WRONG PLACE!!!” on the other end.

Poor Group 2. Here’s what happened:

After their stopped train was finally able to get underway again, they arrived in Antwerp Station, having been only ten minutes away the whole time (had they known this, they would have jumped off the train and grabbed a taxi to Antwerp like some other passengers did). At Antwerp, much later than they should have been, they ran to an information desk and asked when the train to Bruges was. “21:06 is the last train,” the man at the information desk told them. “You can still make it, platform 13.” They sprinted to platform 13 and hopped on the first train they saw, but they didn’t end up in Bruges. It turns out the information man had misread his clock - the last train to Bruges really was at 21:06, but it was 22:00, not 21:00, when our friends had arrived. Kicked off their train at the end of the line in a town by the name of Kortrijk, late at night and in the middle of nowhere, our frantic friends asked a conductor how close they were to Bruges. His reply to them was, “very far.”

That was when we received the hysterical phone call.

All we could do from our hostel was look up how far Kortrijk is from Bruges (about 60km) and offer them some distant moral support.

We encouraged them to find a bar and call a taxi if possible, promising to split amongst the nine of us what was sure to be a fairly expensive fare. Fortunately, they were able to get a cab, and arrived at our hostel around 1:00 am.

Note: Those of you who had a hand in my formative years (I’m looking at you, family!) will be pleased to know that apparently I give off an air of wisdom and competence. At least, this is what I gathered when Kathleen greeted me with “All night we kept saying ‘I bet none of this would have happened if Jen were here.” This from a group of girls I’ve known for just a few weeks, and haven’t spent a lot of time with either. (I was also called the “sage,” “travel agent,” and “mom,” of the group at various points throughout the weekend, leaving me with a very funny self-image by the end.)

In the morning Group 1 grabbed breakfast from the hostel buffet, and managed to smuggle some packets of nutella, cheese, and a good half loaf of bread up to our recovering friends in the next room. Fortified with that, we set off into town.

Our second day in Bruges was decidedly touristy as we set out to milk every fun or pretty sight in the city for all it’s worth. We started with the Chocolate Museum and the Friets Museum, where we learned a lot about famous Belgian cuisine and, more importantly, got to sample some of it.

We also got to see some impressive artwork:

And get photographed next to giant depictions of food:

We moved on from there to the bell tower, where Adeola and I insisted we climb the 360 stairs to the top to take in the view. It was so worth it:

The bells were also ringing most of the time we were up there. It was almost overpowering, how pretty it was.

After the bell tower, some of us went to see Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkerk, which is a gorgeous old cathedral on the way back to our hostel. It’s filled with lovely statues, stained-glass windows, and 15th and 16th century paintings. It also has a sculpture by Michelangelo.

Unfortunately, the Groeningemuseum (which has a bunch of old Van Eycks and other cool Flemish painting) is closed at the moment, so the Michelangelo was the extent of my art history adventures.

After the church, we had our obligatory gooey, delicious Belgian waffles. Then we headed back to the hostel to rest.

You can never have too many waffle shots.

We ventured into town again for dinner, then we wandered around looking for things to do. Eventually most of the group set out to find something akin to nightlife, but Marie and I, who aren’t really big partiers, explored the center of Bruges at night (it’s not much different than in the daytime, but the lighting is pretty cool).

We also took some cheesy touristy jumping pictures.

When we returned to the hostel for the night, we found the rest of the group already there. They never managed to find any nightlife, but were entertaining themselves back in the room. Things got a little chaotic for awhile, but eventually we settled down to bed.

We left on Sunday morning right on schedule, and made it to Amsterdam by the late afternoon. Compared to our adventure getting down to Bruges, coming back to Amsterdam was a breeze.
I’ll admit I felt a little bad that not everyone in our band of travelers had an ideal travel experience. Mostly I think I just felt guilty that I was really enjoying myself while others were going through such an ordeal. At the same time, though, I really enjoyed the trip, and learned a lot about traveling, and about myself. I hope to go back to Belgium and see Brussels soon, but after two straight weekends of traveling, I’m also ready for a weekend spent at “home.”

P.S. I wish I could say these were all my own pictures, but I definitely borrowed quite a few from my friends here. When nine people go somewhere together, it tends to get really well-documented. Hooray!

Maastricht

This past weekend, I struck out away from Amsterdam on my own. Ok, not really on my own – my friend, Stewart went with me – but it was the first time I’ve traveled over here without the shelter of my program the whole time. It was actually Stewart’s idea to travel in the first place, and originally we had our sights set on Belgium. A lot of our other friends were interested in coming along, but this weekend was Volunteer Weekend, and they had already committed to helping out the locals. Volunteer Weekend was a chance for us to go out in the local community and get a real sense of what it’s like through volunteer work. There were lots of different places for us to choose from, including a petting farm, a soup kitchen, and a street festival near Funen.

Usually, I’m all about volunteering and working within the community (I sure didn’t spend twelve years in Girl Scouts for the campfire songs). But seeing new places is my priority while I’m abroad, and I knew that if I didn’t start venturing out soon, it would be easy for me to get comfortable and complacent hanging out in my own corner of the city instead of broadening my horizons like I’d planned. So I trusted my karma to years of volunteering past, and made plans with Stewart to go to Maastricht instead of Belgium (where we still plan to go when more of our friends can come along).

Maastricht is a city in the southernmost tip of The Netherlands, bordering Belgium to the west.

It’s a small city, but a beautiful one, with lots of cool medieval architecture and streets full of chic shops and lovely cafés. We took the train down from Amsterdam, which was an easy two-and-a-half hour trip, and spent most of Friday walking around town taking in the sights. The city center of Maastricht is the perfect size to get to know in a day. We wandered fairly aimlessly for the majority of the time, picking streets according to how interesting the architecture looked or how good the restaurants smelled.

We stopped for lunch at the Kaffee t’Perrepluke (The Umbrella Café), where the food looked good but not expensive. I got a baguette with ham and cheese, and Stewart ordered his new favorite Dutch dish: croquettes – or “seasoned mashed meat rolls in crusty jacket,” as our very-literally translated menu proclaimed.

There was a LOT of delicious food in the city, including the salmon quiche I had for dinner, the complimentary “bitterballen” we were served at the Café D’Artagnan (like croquettes, except ball-shaped with shredded chicken and a fancy sauce inside), and some of the most scrumptious waffles I have ever tasted.

When we weren’t wandering aimlessly or eating food, we also explored the local attractions. We spent awhile in Sint Servaaskerk (the Church of Saint Servatius), a beautiful 11th century cathedral with a museum of religious art inside.

On Saturday we ventured out of the city center to see the St. Pietersberg Caves, which are old man-made caves from the time of the Romans that you can take tours through.

The stone under the city is a very soft limestone that you can cut with only a knife.

People have been mining under there for hundreds of years, propping up the ceiling with cement pillars along the way, building ovens for their food and troughs for their horses’ food, and growing mushrooms from manure in the ideal conditions of the caves. Our tour guide took us through the caves, explaining all of these things to us in mostly-proper English. At one point, he let us experience the total darkness underground by running ahead with both the lanterns and letting us feel our way back towards him. The caves were definitely a good call.

After we were done with our tour, Stewart and I set off in search of a Pannekoekenhuis (pancake house) promising poffertjes (fluffy Dutch mini-pancakes) that we saw signs for on the way up to St. Pietersberg. The pannekoekenhuis in question was located on a mini-golf course. Or, as the sign said:

(The Dutch clearly do not share our view of political correctness.)

Anyway… At the Midgetgolf Pannekoekenhuis, Stewart and I proceeded to have the most Dutch lunch/dinner possible. We each had two croquettes served with a side of french fries and mayonnaise, followed by a dozen poffertjes each. It was second in deliciousness only to the chocolate-stuffed waffles, and it probably undid an entire day’s worth of walking in one go.

After our cave adventures and our sumptuous feast, we decided a quiet night was in order. Actually, a quiet night is really the only option one has in Maastricht, where the nightlife is more likely to encourage lingering over drinks at a café than going crazy at some club. We rested at the hotel for awhile, during which time I read about the city in a hotel guidebook. Fun fact: one of the rooms at the hotel is named after a man from Maastricht who went by Roeie Pierre (Red Pierre). Roeie Pierre’s claim to fame? Being drunk. Seriously. According to the guidebook, by the end of Roeie Pierre’s life there wasn’t a single bar in town where he was still allowed to purchase a drink, and his inebriated antics were notorious throughout the city. Stewart and I learned two things from this anecdote: 1.) the city of Maastricht is small enough to have a town drunk, and 2.) the city of Maastricht is easily impressed.

The rest of the night was quiet and fun, lounging in the cafés, people-watching, and so forth. We went to bed feeling like we’d seen all that Maastricht has to offer, and looking forward to a leisurely morning departure. On Sunday mornings pretty much everything in Maastricht is shut down, but we were lucky enough to find an open bakery where we got breakfast on our way to the train station. The train station was overwhelmingly full of activity, and after the ticket machine wouldn’t take either of our credit cards, we had to buy them at the desk instead. It’s probably a good thing we did that, because the woman there told us that the northbound train tracks were being worked on, so we would have to take the train to one stop and then switch to a bus to Utrecht, then get back on the train to go to Amsterdam. It was really hard for us to understand which stops we were supposed to transfer at, so the ride home was a little more stressful than it should have been. It also ended up being an hour longer than the ride down, but we finally made it back home.

Maastricht was a refreshing break from the noise and traffic of Amsterdam, and I had a lovely weekend there. If any of you ever have to chance to visit, I highly recommend that you do.

Living Here

As of Wednesday I have been in Amsterdam for two whole weeks, and it’s already starting to feel like home. I’ve started classes (which I’m really excited about), I’ve done homework (less exciting), and I haven’t been dragged around on an orientation activity for nearly ten days! This makes me happier than I can explain.

So what is it like living abroad? Well, this is the building where I live with all the other IES students.

Funen!

It has a roof-top terrace, magenta hallways, and big rooms.

My room!

The building is part of a complex of apartments called Funenpark, and it’s actually located in a quieter residential area of the city. Our building is the only one with students living in it, and the rest of the apartments are owned by families. This means it’s not really the best place for the loud, crazy parties college students are inclined to throw, but it also means we get treated to pets and cute Dutch children running around in the courtyard.

The courtyard. Note the small child on the left.

This is the room that I share with my roommate, Conny:

My room (and Conny)!

The setup is pretty basic: closet, bathroom, desks, chairs, and our beds with their weird cage-canopies. We had the option of bringing our own bed linens, or paying 30 Euros to get some when we arrived. I was planning on buying linens, but everybody who got them before I did said they weren’t that great, and only included one sheet and a thin blanket. I was told I might have better luck at HEMA, a Dutch department store equivalent to Target. I did find a large section of bedding at HEMA the first full day I was here, but all of the labels were in Dutch. When I opened up what I thought was the pack of sheets I’d purchased, I discovered that they were, in fact, a duvet cover. Sans duvet. So the first couple nights I roughed it on my bare mattress, swaddled in my duvet cover and a large pashmina scarf. It wasn’t until three or four days later that I managed to get back to HEMA and buy real bedding, but now my bed is made and comfy and not unstylish either.

Our room also has a small kitchen in it, and Conny and I try to save money by cooking most of our own meals. However, we only have a small refrigerator and a four-burner stove, so our cooking adventures have been limited to whatever we can throw together in a pot or pan. Apparently ovens are a rarity across the city, though, (it’s not just our cheap student housing). For reasons of space and a predilection for buying things already made, the Dutch don’t have a lot of ovens. Perhaps this is what necessitated the invention of the "Dutch Oven?"

What they do have a lot of is bicycles. More bicycles than people, in fact. Funenpark is all the way on the east side of the city, which means it’s a fair walk to most places in the city center, and quite a bit longer to some places more on the fringe. Having my bike is crucial, because it makes all my commutes about two-thirds less time consuming than they would be if I walked (it’s only a 10-15 minute ride to most places in the city center). The traffic in the city can be pretty intense sometimes, but for the most part the bike lanes are so well defined that the biggest hazard you face is other bikers (and bicycle road rage definitely exists). After growing up in a place where you couldn’t get anywhere without a car, it is incredibly liberating to be able to bike, walk, or take public transportation pretty much anywhere I want to go. I hope my rusty old bike makes it through the semester, because it’s quickly becoming indispensable to me.

After my two weeks here, I’m feeling at home enough to venture out a little on my own. Tune in next week for tales from my first weekend excursion: Maastricht.

Scavenging

As our last orientation event, the IES students were required to participate in a scavenger hunt with the other undergraduate international students. We were divided into groups and given a map, a mascot, and two hours to find the answers to a bunch of questions about the city. Nobody was particularly enthused about this task until the program directors told us that each member of the winning team would win a 25€ gift certificate to go out to eat somewhere (quite a lot when you consider that the Euro has averaged about $1.50 since we’ve been here). But even with this incentive to spur us on, the scavenger hunt didn’t seem like the greatest idea. Our groups were just a little too large to keep track of, and the time crunch combined with the heat of the afternoon sun made the task more stressful and confusing than fun. Nevertheless, we tried to find a couple of items on the list, and got to know each other a little bit in the process.

My group had nine students, including a girl from Sweden, a girl from Spain, a boy from England and… another student from Williams! That’s right. One of the girls in my group looked really familiar, and I concluded that I’d seen her on my college campus before. Williams is a small enough school that even if you’ve never actually met a person, you’ve probably seen them around or heard their name in passing. Sure enough, when I asked if she went to Williams, she said yes, and then, “I thought you looked familiar!” Her name is Annelise, and she’s studying with CIEE – another study abroad program that I had also considered. I thought it was pretty funny when our group got a cow as our mascot.

I disavow all responsibility for the poor quality of this picture. One of my groupmates took it.

In addition to answering questions about the city and finding all the buildings that will be useful to us as students, we were supposed to take pictures of our mascot with some hallmarks of the city of Amsterdam. Crazy decorated bicycles were one hallmark, tourists were another. Now, in America you can get away with almost anything if you tell people you’re on a scavenger hunt, but this doesn’t seem to be a universal truth. Most of the people we talked to, while helpful, were also really confused. Some of them were outright suspicious, like the group of tourists we asked to pose with us before we found this group of Spanish guys.

Dogs, apparently, are a third notable feature of Amsterdam. We were supposed to take a picture of our mascot with somebody’s pet dog, so we flagged down a man who was walking his dog and asked him to help us out. We tried to take a picture of the cow next to the dog, but the dog kept trying to bite it. His owner asked if he could put the cow in dog’s mouth, and we thought that would make a funny picture, so we said yes.

It did make a funny picture, but the dog thought his new toy was for keeps. He sat there with his mouth clamped around our cow, and absolutely refused to open up. We all thought it was hilarious, but his owner was clearly mortified. He tried to get the cow out of the dog’s mouth, to no avail.

After five or ten minutes of struggle, we decided to give up on the cow and go on our way. Of course, as soon as we did this, the dog dropped our mascot and we picked it up. It was only slightly worse for the wear…

We were nowhere close to winning by the time we made it back to base, but there was a barbecue for the international students afterward, so at least we got a free meal out of it. I also met by far the most stereotypical international student I’ve ever seen – a British girl who started chatting with us while we were in the line for food. She didn’t want anything from the barbecue, she said. Then why are you standing in line? We asked. “Oh,” she replied, “I just love a good queue.”