And Another Couple of Months Goes By

(Extremely belated) greetings from Bruges, Belgium!

Back in December I received an e-mail from the History department at UW-Milwaukee notifying me that I had won an award for best Master's Thesis for the previous academic year. Since we hadn't been anywhere exciting for a month, we figured why not take a trip to Bruges? (Yes, inspired by the Colin Farrell movie...) It was a mix of "Merry Christmas to us!" and "Congratulations, Adam!" and it was well worth the more than 12 hours (one-way) on the train that got us there.

Given that we had already been to Bratislava and Vienna, we figured that we were old hats at this train-travelling thing and boarded our train from Dresden to Frankfurt. It was a fairly uneventful trip, and other than a bit of a crowd at the local McDonalds for lunch, we quickly took our spot on the train to Brussels, which was our next connection. At first we were a bit nervous, since we hadn't reserved seats for the trip, but the electronic notification above all of the seats showed us a couple of open spots, and we were able to ride in style into Brussels, one of the most international cities in the world.

Our route from Dresden.

Oh, but the thing that no one tells you: Brussels, as one of the most international cities of the world, has a huge, crowded, and confusing train station. To her credit, Nadine is usually a public-transportation guru, who really enjoys the fact that I am still not quite comfortable making connections. I guess I am still worried that I will get on a tram to come home here in Dresden and wind up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with no money or a way home. Inside joke:
We always joked in Madison that I would take the wrong bus and wind up out in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, WI, also referred to as Oshkosh. In any event, our guru was a bit overwhelmed in Brussels, and as we made our way to the appropriate platform, neither of us got a good look at just what train we needed. We knew it went through Ghent and St.-Someone-or-other, but beyond that we were just hoping to catch the right one.

Another major difference between the Brussels train station and the one in Dresden: in Germany, there is only one train assigned to each track during a significant time period; in Brussels, the train pulls up for about two minutes, everyone gets off and on quickly before the doors close and the next train pulls forward and takes its spot. Now, at the time, neither of us knew about this little tidbit. So, though I was fairly sure that the train would not be five minutes early, since that DOES NOT happen with trains, I saw Nadine confidently hop onto the train at our track. Considering that she is my wife, I love her, and besides, she was carrying our money, I chased after her. In the intervening 3-and-a-half seconds, approximately 5 people had stepped in front of me and were shoving their way onto the train, so I could hardly see Nadine as I started shouting "Nadine! I don't think this is our train!" I could see Nadine's fashionable gray coat moving forward, deeper into the train, so I tried again with the same lack of success. Finally, we came to a compartment between two train cars, and I finally said, "Nadine-" The train slowly pulled forward. "-I don't think this is our train." Her mouth agape, Nadine the guru asked me: "Now you tell me?"About thirty seconds later, we noticed that we were standing under a sign that warned travelers without valid tickets (and ours were only for the other train) would be fined a minimum of 200 Euros. Exciting times!

In an unplanned brief detour we swooped into Ghent, but luckily hopped the right train to Bruges there and finally arrived in that city, tired, hungry, thirsty, but otherwise none the worse. Well, "swoop" is probably not the right word, considering that the train was agonizingly slow, all the more so because we knew about the fine and kept dreading that a ticket controller would catch us. In any case, we got to stroll into the by-then-darkened old city of Bruges - only 30 minutes after our ETA, mind - and it was really a sight to behold. Bruges was spared the destruction of WWII and still looks like a medieval market town, complete with old church towers, canals, and beautiful sculptures. After a short walk, we happily checked into our hotel, the Hotel Malleberg, and went in search of dinner.

Pretty building near our Hotel.

After passing a few places, we settled on the Panier d'Or. At nearly nine-thirty at night, with more than twelve hours of train travel under our belts, we picked that restaurant because they advertised authentic (well, for tourists, anyway) Flemish cuisine and were close to our hotel. We actually got a fair deal with their tasting menu, and I got to have some locally made ham as an appetizer, a tall glass of Stella Artois beer (which I loved all the more since this was the first time I drank it when it hadn't been imported) and some Flemish Beef Stew that had some good dark beer in the sauce. Nadine had some breaded, fried cheese sticks (which a blasphemous heathen might have called "mozzarella sticks" until they, too, partook in the deity of all things fried and cheesy) and some Flemish rabbit. Topped off with some delicious ice cream, and a frosty yet oddly shaped glass of the local beer, Kwak, it was the perfect end to a very long day.

A word of caution regarding Kwak: while one may think, "Hmmm. 'Kwak' beer. Sounds like beer for ducks. Hee-hee. Quack! 'Kwak!' Ducks drinking beer…" and proceed to drink without caution, given the logic that duck-beer can't have that high of an alcohol content since they still need to be able to fly home, consider yourself warned.

Dangerous Kwak beer.

The next morning, we had a full schedule since we were leaving very early the following day. After a GREAT breakfast at our hotel, we headed out to the city. First stop was the Dalí Exhibition, where we got to see some pieces that were used in illustrations and small galleries, but which haven't been published anywhere. Nadine loved it, since she's quite the Dalí fan, and she even found a statue that she loved. Unfortunately it was out of our price range, but now we know what to look for at Christmas! Okay, maybe not this past Christmas…

The Dalí Exhibition sign that lured us in.

After that we hustled over to the Diamond Museum, to watch diamonds being cut. Turns out that Bruges was one of the major European cities to deal in diamonds in earlier centuries, and the city grew incredibly wealthy due to their trade. The diamond cutting show was really interesting for us, and we learned a lot about the terminology and the process. Not that we're ready to go into the diamond cutting business ourselves (although it would probably be more lucrative than our current career-paths!), but now we can spout out random diamond facts to amaze friends!

Canals on the way to the diamond museum.

Diamond museums are a historian girls' best friend.

Detail of a statue spotted during our meandering.

After Dalí and diamonds, we headed through town to find someplace for lunch. I picked a bustling bistro that turned out to be one of the hot spots in town. Their Panini were great (I had a local ham and cheese Panini… Mmm!), and I also had some weird chocolate drink to wash it down with. Then we went off to do a little shopping and scale one of the towers that dominate the city skyline.

Lincoln comics are apparently popular in Belgium for some reason.

The Market Square

Unfortunately, by this time I wasn't feeling the greatest. I'd been sickly off-and-on before then, but I think that the train ride the day before and the sneaky duck beer did me in. By afternoon on our only full day in Bruges, I was really starting to feel feverish and getting chills. Despite this, we climbed an enormous tower to get a look at the city, but discovered that Bruges looks rather unimpressive from above. Really, it was just a lot of red roofs and a few points of church spires dotting the roofscape. Plus, to make matters worse, as soon as we got to the top, the batteries in our camera died. We stayed to hear the tower bells play, but without any pictures, it just wasn't the same experience. Not that hearing old bells play needs pictures, but still.

Me, starting to feel feverish...

...and the tower we climbed.

Even though I was starting to sway a little bit and I was starting to sweat, we hit one last museum: the chocolate museum! The other thing that Bruges is famous for is that it is where the praline (chocolates with a filling, like Whitman's, for example, are pralines) was invented. Suffice it to say, we had to have freshly-made pralines while we were there. Not that I hadn't been eating them all day, since they were sold at nearly every shop, and one can't walk more than ten feet without getting to a new shop that boasts Belgian chocolate and pralines. Mmm. Even sick, they were phenomenal.

The chocolate museum was interesting, but it's about that time that things started to go a little fuzzy for me. I vaguely remember eating a true Belgian waffle, and I know that we had some pommes frites, since in my fever-addled brain I remembered that the Belgians are supposed to make a mean French fry. Dinner and dessert taken care of, we hit our hotel room to try and get some sleep before our 5:00 a.m. train left.

Yay! Belgian waffles!

We took a cab from a square near our hotel (I tried to make it on foot, but was simply too exhausted), hopped our train, and started out.

Now, please remember that our trip to Bruges was exciting, but that we were all healthy and hale. On the return trip, it seemed like nothing could go right other than the fact that we got onto the right trains. For starters, when we stumbled onto our connecting train in Köln, the electronic system was not working properly, and we couldn't tell which seats were reserved and which were free for us to take. After being ousted from several seats, we finally found a place to crash for a few hours. Or so we thought. The reservations system wasn't the only thing that wasn't working, and before long there came an announcement that everyone would have to get off the train and board a new one. We had been scheduled to couple with another train, but when the electronic coupling from our train malfunctioned, we were all packed into the single train in front of us. I, of course, was near delirious at this point, but we somehow managed to find seats and I settled into a fitful fever-dream-riddled slumber.

Wyatt, have I got some dreams to tell you about!

Anyway, we knew that we had a short layover in Berlin, and that it was jeopardized by the failed train coupling, but the final blow came when the announcer said that we would be 27 minutes late getting into Berlin. We looked at our train tickets. We had exactly 27 minutes as a layover in Berlin.

Fortunately, we flagged down a train agent who called ahead, and the train was held for us. Okay, for us, other passengers on our train, and a different train coming from Hamburg. By this point, my fever had broken, and I was becoming more coherent, so I was able to fully appreciate that we'd made our connection. Finally, nearly fifteen hours after we'd started that day, we walked in through our front door. Home, sweet home. And it was all the sweeter with the chocolates we brought back!

So, we're finally caught up with the big trip summaries! On a side-note, we are heading to Barcelona tomorrow, which I'll hopefully blog about before we come back to the States!

P.S. Thanks to everyone that congratulated me for finally finishing grad school! It was and is much appreciated.