OK, these flemmish cities need to get the name spellings worked out. Here you can spell the name Bruges, Brugge, or Brug, or Bruge. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE. And they all sound like a very happy swedish chef. (Sergey thinks AMERICANS are fakey-happy all the time.... try the Flemmish.) This is my text impression of a flemmish shopkeeper. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! (FAKEY SMILE!!!) Its not bad its just that their joy takes you off guard at first.
I'm on the train right now from Brussels-Midi to Cologne, and then will hop onto the 30 minute train to Bonn. Magi's father was going to pick me up but it was during practice so I told him I would not mind taking a taxi and meeting him there.
Yesterday's Bruges adventure was quite fun but tiring. Its all walking and after an exaughsting three hours of stomping the cobblestone streets in my thin-soled pumas, my feet were aching and I stopped for a break and a shower.
Like a silly person, I planned my trip up the belfry made infamous by the movie In Bruges by the time they said the tower closd in the movie (according to Ray, 8 pm, except for that one day in the movie it closed at 6 because an american had had a heart attack in the tower.) So, I wandered over to the tower at about 6:30 to find that it stops accepting ascents after 2:30 hahaha.
The rest of the day was fun. I basically continuously got lost winding around the streets in the city of a really midievil town. Lots of cool churches (including the church of the holy blood-- they have a vial of jesus's blood, only shown during one hour a day! ha) in which I also saw one of the few Michelangelo marble sculptures outside of Italy. The canals are pretty cool as well, and the whole thing was very very beautiful. There's a certain part of the canal near a convent where a lot of swans live in grass with white daisies, made for some cool pictures. Mom, I'm sure you would have been in paradise picture-wise. I also got pictures of swans doing some sort of crazy mating dance and I hope they turn out well. I decided to take a boat tour (for 4.50 Eur) and decided in the future I wouldn't do the silly litle tours. While I was hoping to get some more background info on the city, I got a tiny bit, but it was too whirwind and it was me and a group of chinese tourists (aka-- computer-generated mandarine blasting out of the speakers after the tour guide said something short to allow for time for the mandarine.)
The only thing I didn't like about Bruges was that it was inundated with tourists during midday hours. I almost couldnt breath but I definitely wasn't the only one carrying a map around looking lost. I found that I'm improving on my french on my trip to bruges even though no one actually native to teh city will speak it, because I've been teaming up with other (normally french) tourists to find places a lot. I did find that I liked bruge a LOT when I ventured out again in teh evening as it was very tranquil and nice in the city.
While I generally find people who work in the center of tourist shopsto be extremely rude ( when prompted, they explain their behavior as a result of thinking tourists are exxtremely rude,) I find myself feeling a (barely tiny itsy bit) bad for them because they are right half the time. I almost revolked my purchase of a sandwich in a shop in Ghent because she was being crabby about how she WONT translate any fo the menu into english because" she didn't have time to do that for everyone." (yes, the shop was empty at the time) and then launched into a longer complaint (after I flippantly said "should I learn flemmish?" and then followed up that well in a lot of coutrnies it is not the culture to learn many languages) about tourists not learning the languae fof the country they're going to and how she hates americans for other various reason related to her shop. Anyways, I tried to talk her down about it and actually I think it kind of worked, because by the end she gave me a friendly goodbye. I was thinking the whole time though that maybe if she wasn't so grumpy or perhaps ONCE translated her menu (a whole 6 sandwiches) into english and taped it next to the other one her life may be a little easier in terms of income.
After I took my break in Gand, I had found a restaurant on travel advisor I wanted to go find and on my way ended up talking to this french shopkeeper in his embroidery shop right next to the brasserie bar I was going to. He ended up inviting me for a drink and so we ended up eating dinner and talking together. It was fun to have the company but I think the poor guy thought I was single until halfway through the meal. Oh well, we ended up talking for a long time and had fun anyways, before exchanging facebooks and parting ways.
I'm hoping that I can post this soon, and add the pictures to the post. I think you guys will think some of the Bruges pictures are really nice. I'm glad you all got home safe from Nevis and/or are doing well at home. Miss you all.
Love,
Eileen
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2 comments:
We are home. Sounds like Brugge is a place we should go sometime. I'm looking forward to seeing your pics.
Love,
Mom
I liked all the detail about Bruges. I think in those heavily-touristed towns that the locals teeter-totter between tiring of the same old tourist problems and knowing that many of their livelihoods depend on it. Also, I noticed in Nevis that there may be some resentment on the part of locals who are angry at the recession and attendant drop in tourism income, but they take it out on the tourists that do come to visit. Weird!
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