Now, rewinding a bit... I mentioned in 'Coming soon' that I am now obsessed with taking the bus. Between the bus and walking, I am acing my geography. Since it's also a lot slower than the metro, it gives me time to watch the sights pass and ponder great questions. But really, it strikes me how strange it is that places that are icons throughout the entire world have settled into the everyday scenery -- on my bus ride from home to Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, I pass the Madeleine, Concorde, see the Eiffel Tower, Tuileries, cross the Seine, see Notre Dame in the distance, stop at Luxembourg Gardens, sail down Boulevard Saint-Germain, and end up at the Pantheon. Today I met my friends for our picnic on a bridge over the Seine next to Notre Dame, and as I waited I watch couple after couple after excited school group pose for pictures in front of me. It's a little bit sad to think that I won't ever again have the same sense of jaw-dropping awe that you get the first time you come to Paris, or the only time. It's hard to imagine ever being wowed again by the Eiffel Tower, and that's a little sad. But having 'our places' in Paris is a different kind of special, and so I suppose there will be a (different) sort of magic when I return later.
In any case, this week was filled with actually needed to buckle down and do work. I delivered my first French exposé on Tuesday in my Anthropology of the Berbers class -- on French colonial politics in Algeria in the 19th century vis-a-vis the Berbers, and the "Berber myth" created by French politicians and anthropologists. I was pretty nervous even though there are only 8 people in my class, since speaking alone aloud for a long time makes you really conscious of your wrong accent. When Monsieur LeSaout asked me how long I would take, I said about 20 minutes. Wrong, 43 minutes. People were looking at me with perplexed faces and the professor (and students) were not afraid to interrupt and say "nope, that's wrong," which is hard to imagine in an American class. The positive is that the students were engaged, which is typically not the case here. Anyway, at the end, I actually had several students come up and tell me my expose was super, that I went above and beyond, and that they learned a lot. No comments until next week from the prof... the most bizarre thing, though, was that a random older man who suddenly joined our class and had been giving me somewhat of a hard time during my presentation came up afterward, told me he was Berber and that despite some of my factual errors he learned new things, and then asked if I was also Berber. I was mistaken for being Berber by a Berber! For a little Scandinavian like me, quite the coup. It's the blue eyes I think. Exposé conquered, I prepared for the next day's art history midterm. We had to identify 10 Neoclassical and Romantic paintings with dates and painters, then write an analysis of one painting -- Bonaparte visitante les pestiférés de Jaffa (1804), by Antoine-Jean Gros. Fortunately, I'm a big fan of that one and it all worked out.
Last weekend was Belgium. It really deserves more credit -- quite a nice country. I went with two friends, Olivia and Allison, taking the train early Friday morning and arriving only two hours later in the city of Ghent, in the Flemish-speaking North. We were met at the train station by our Couchsurfing host, Eva, an architecture student at the university there. She lives in a beautiful old but renovated rowhouse by the river and the old city, and there was plenty of room for us to lay mattresses out on the floor. Eva showed us all around the city in the morning, which has charming little bridges, three famous tours along a diagonal in the middle of the old area, and lots of traditional northern-looking facades (hard to explain in text, but basically very Dutch/German-looking, not French). And not many tourists! She also took us to an excellent himschoot, aka bakery, cart in one of the main squares, where I got a delicious mattetart (almond pastry). We learned all about how Belgium has been lacking a government longer than any other country in the world, and how the Belgians had a big party to celebrate their title when that happened. We learned about the king of Belgium as well, and how Thursdays are now Vegetarian Thursdays to balance Fish Fridays. This would never happen in France. But we did eat a great lunch at a veggieburger joint called Tastyworld Hoogspoort (I am not making this up). Eva then left us to explore on our own (in what quickly became a very rainy situation). Our first visit was the Gravensteen Castle: this castle is serious business, and is definitely a castle and not a chateau. These may technically mean the same thing, but a northern castle is the kind you want your sand castles to look like, or your Lego sculptures. Anyway, there was a torture museum inside, too, an added bonus: apparently there was a lot of torture carried out at various points in history inside this 12th-century fortress. Next, we wound our way through the cobbled streets to the tall and imposing Saint Bavo Cathedral. Having lately been in lots of French cathedrals, which are generally much lighter, the heavy black and white stone inside felt distinctively northern. It's a really spectacular cathedral though! It's major claim to fame, however, is Jan Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece, also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. The altarpiece has 24 different panels showing Adam and Eve, various saints and martyrs, Mary, John the Baptist, the central scene of the adoration of the lamb, and a central figure whose iconography (I listened to the audioguide, as you can see) suggests both God and Jesus. Whether it is Jesus, a rare representation of God, or a combination of the two is a big point of scholarly contention. Our third stop of the day was the local folk museum, Alijnshuis. This consisted of a very charming but puzzlingly random collection of funerary garments, brass band instruments, 1960s household appliances, small mechanical children's toys, and aged photographs of miscellaneous individuals. We then spent quite some time making circles around Jacobskerke, a church which will forever go down in our memory as synonymous with being incredibly lost. For dinner, at Eva's suggestions, we went to get "Turkish pizza." There are quite a few Turkish immigrants in Ghent, and an entire street has been dedicated to Turkish pizza restaurants... not pizza as you might imagine it exactly, but a special kind of toasted bread with all sorts of toppings: I had chicken, beef, egg, cheese, pepperoni, and something else on mine. Afterward, we met up with our lovely hostess again for an evening of hearty conversation at a cozy troll-themed little joint aptly called Trollekelder -- the troll cellar.
The next morning, ending our stay in Ghent on a sunny note, we took the 25-minute train to Bruges, Ghent's more touristy cousin. It felt a little like Colonial Williamsburg - everything very neat and tidy, extremely pleasant, quaint, and not inhabited by very many locals (or so it seemed). The best part of Bruges was just walking around in the sun, through cobbled alleys and over little bridges, discovering hidden churches and blossoming courtyards. Unfortunately, the art museum (with Bosch!) was closed, but we did hit the Burg square, where the spectacular City Hall can be found. The inside of the main chamber is covered in frescoes showing local history, mostly from the 15th century or thereabouts (even though the paintings themselves were basically done in the 19th century). Bruges, we discovered, was not doing too badly for itself even as early as the 9th century, and the City Hall had some Carolingian coins on display from the area.
Exterior of the City Hall at Burg Square in Bruges
Adjacent to the Burg is the Markt square, the main one, where the iconic bell tower and lots of buildings with pointy turrets can be found. We eventually wound our way to Chocostory, the museum of chocolate (which turned out to be an advertising gimmick, but no worry, at least there were chocolate sculptures and a free sample). Between there and Jeruzalemkerk, we stumbled across one of the several collections of whitewashed almshouse cottages, also sort of iconic of Bruges. At Jeruzalemkerk, built in the 15th c. and a little off the beaten path, a group of elderly Flemish ladies was doing their daily lacemaking session. The altar of the small church is especially notable because it is covered in eerie skulls and crossbones. Winding through the back streets in the late afternoon, we wound up at one of the many large cathedrals, Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady), which houses a 1504 Michelangelo Madonna and Child. Then, after a tasty pasta dinner at Poules et Moules, we hopped on the bus again for the one-hour ride to Brussels.
I have to say, having spent a glorious day in Bruges, we were not enticed by the neighborhood of porn shops and shattered glass hotel door that initially greeted us in Brussels. The man who checked us in at the Hotel Manhattan (an ironic name, to be sure) was simultaneously filing a violent incident report with two policemen. In the morning, he told us that someone else had used my friend's name. This is not to say we did not have a great time in Brussels - we did! Our final morning, Sunday, we started off by getting big fat gaufres (waffles) with chocolate and bananas and sugar for a well-rounded breakfast. Then we headed off to see the Grande Place, i.e. the central square with the trademark architecture:
Grande Place, Brussels
For the most part, though, Brussels is a city where business gets done, but one doesn't necessarily stroll around outside for the beauty of it all. The museums, however, are first-rate. We hit the museum of musical instruments, which is 4 floors and has an accompanying sound-track so you can listen to the sound of all the instruments. My favorite was the bagpipe collection, including one with lots of fur and a carved goat's head from somewhere in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, I had to choose between the national museum and the Magritte Museum, so I went with the latter - where else?! Four floors of all Magritte -- his drawings, letters, poems, paintings, videos, etc. It's hard to say what my favorites were - most of these were works I'd never seen before, since The Son of Man and many of his other most famous ones were elsewhere. The Dominion of Light, the painting that shows a house in darkness with an illuminated streetlamp but a daytime sky, was there, however. I really like his skies, and of course his witty titles: one of my favorites was The Memory of a Saint, which shows a red curtain unfurling to show a well-done but totally bland blue sky, against a plain and placeless background.
After Magritte, we hustled to our Eurolines bus, just waiting to take us back to Paris.
Coming soon...Jenna's trip. This actually happened before Belgium, but I don't want to bog anyone down with reading!
I'm going to comment even though we are currently fbook chatting it up.
ReplyDeleteThis entry makes me deeeesperately want to go to Ghent and Bruges. I love your descriptions of both! Also, you saw so much, so you clearly took advantage of the short time you had in each place. I love the Troll Cellar thing, haha.
Also, Dutch words are the funniest. So many "o"s. Love it.
It's so crazy that one of the people in your class was actually a Berber!! And that he thought YOU were a Berber! Man, I'm surrounded by Scandinavians. You should come to L.A. in June and see Norwegian dreamboat Sondre Lerche with me...only $20....
Also, I think I told you this, but we will TOTALLY feel magic and awe again when we come back to Paris and feel incredulous at the thought that we actually lived here for a while! As idealistic as it sounds, we should all try to plan some sort of Paris reunion a few years from now. Or...you know, a few months from now.