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!