Gent, Belgium

On first day out, we stopped at the town of Zeebrugge in Belgium. In retrospect there wasn't really a whole lot to see compared to the other ports- I think it was meant to be more of an intro/lighter port seeing as how it was the day after we boarded, and in fact some of the passengers actually boarded from Belgium, but I was sort of caught up in the excitement of it being the first site to see that I didn't care much. Zeebrugge is more of a port/industrial town with only a few tourist sites that we passed by on the bus; the actual tour that we took this day was to Gent (Ghent? the locals seem to spell it without the h), about an hour away, for a rather pretty but short hour long canal ride through the city. (the only thing I remember about the bus ride was not seeing any moving cars anywhere... but it was Sunday morning and Belgian people like to sleep in too.)

About to take a TAXIBOOT.

One of the passengers from Belgium told us about college [which sounded like high school] and gymnasium [which sounded like college], except I have no idea how accurate that actually is considering I just tried to look it up and I don't see any sign of it. One of those might actually have been trade/vocational school, though.

A lot of the sights in Belgium actually foreshadowed or marked the beginning of trends that I'd notice recur repeatedly in later ports; I suppose in part a sign of how the people of Europe are pretty closely related to each other even though their nationhoods are distinct. Distance wise, this trip felt like traveling from the west to the east coast of the US, only everyone speaks a different language and culturally share less in common even though they still share something. I think I was more surprised by the number of trends that repeated themselves.

Examples:

- Windmills. Lots and lots of windmills, some seemingly over the ocean.

- Also in the picture, really gloomy weather. It rained at every single port in the trip at some point during the day.

- Canals in the city. I really wish there were more cities in America nearby that had canals like the ones in each of the cities we visited. They make everything so pretty.

- Shared religious heritage. Christianity has had a major impact on the development of each of the countries we visited, and incidentally the majority of the tourist sites we visited happened to be cathedrals. Belgium was actually one of the few places where we didn't enter a cathedral, but in place of that we did pass by an old monastery on the canal. The majority denominations of the areas we visited were either Protestant (particularly Lutheran, since the Reformation happened in Germany) or Eastern Orthodox, moreso the latter the closer we got to Russia. What few Catholic churches we came across had been converted for use by the other denominations, but I'll get to that  in a later post.

- St. Michael beating the dragon. This motif shows up in multiple countries; I'll point it out a couple of times later if I can find more pics. The first time I saw this sculpture, I misconstrued what the tour guide said (as he'd been talking about a different subject seconds before) as "the patron saint of the monastic beer brewers of Belgium, St. Michael, beating a dragon." Or maybe the beer brewers of Belgium did decide to adopt Michael as their patron saint after all. The reference itself is to Michael the archangel defeating the dragon during the war in heaven in the book of Revelation.

- Technically a combination of the last two, but reinterpreting Christian motifs and symbols within the country's cultural context. Which for Belgium's case I guess is the beer brewers and their patron saint. Belgians really love their beer. (and their chocolate and their waffles.)

- Odd expressions of egotism in history. I just thought of this one on the spot, and I say odd because... well, it might just be the fact that I grew up in a different age/culture, but some of the things the medieval Europeans did are just plain weird or crazy.

- non-handicap friendly restrooms and sites. I don't know how all of the wheelchair-bound people we saw on the ship got around at the ports... well technically, there were handicap friendly excursions available for purchase, but most of the major sites they mention at these ports aren't exactly that, so I dunno what they'd end up seeing.

- Families of ducks. okay, maybe just because I'm weird and love taking pictures of ducks. Just wait till we get to Copenhagen...

Anyways, this tour was the shortest one of the trip as it mostly consisted of the canal ride. I wasn't taking notes or too many photos at this point so I'll just note some of the random things I saw on the boat besides the ones already mentioned:

they have to cut the branches off the trees every year, or else the trees die. don't quite understand how that works naturally... unless they've just been trying to prolong the lifespan of these trees so that it looks pretty/ordered.

"and to your left you will see a naked man about to jump off." totally confused the hell out of me at first. (it's a statue.)

"and a naked woman on the other side."

replica of a barge used back in the day. apparently this one was horse drawn. O_o (and in other cases the guide mentioned the captain having his wife tow the boat because it was cheaper than a horse.)

open air book market on a Sunday morning along the canal. I wish I were over there right now.

I believe this used to be a Catholic monastery. during the iconoclast riots after the Reformation they threw books out of the windows (or I'm guessing anything with an icon on it. because Protestants hate icons.) to the point where it was apparently possible to walk across the canal without getting your feet wet. also was converted to a textile factory afterwards.

guide says this is a good chocolate store in belgium. take note.

to paraphrase the guide: typical Belgium, showcases a cannon that doesn't actually work properly and is more dangerous to stand behind of when firing than in front of.

the castle of the counts. inspired by the castles of other countries, the count (Philip of Alsace) came back from the second crusade and decided to build one for himself to showcase his... ferociousness or something. except it was too cold to live in so it only got used for administrative purposes while he slept somewhere else. and eventually got converted into a textile factory like every other historical building in this city.

After the canal tour, we had an hour of free time to explore an area around the center of the city called Korenlei... which happened to have a few chocolate shops (not pictured.)

view of the square at Korelei.

bathroom break at the Meat House.

we passed by a glass enclosure (on the left) of belgian people eating lunch who stared back awkwardly at us as we gaped about trying to find the restroom... which was upstairs and had absolutely no lights, so it was almost impossible to see anything save for the one window in the public sink area.

no trip to belgium is complete without having actual belgian waffles. in belgium! oh and I almost got run over by a street bus as I was running over to this window. seriously, who puts public transit tracks directly in front of a vendor like this? granted, there were no sidewalks here as the streets were entirely cobblestone.

all I recall here is something about a fish market where people used to bury their dead underneath because there was a church next door, and they believed that the closer you were buried to a church the more likely you would end up in heaven... which meant discovering a bunch of skeletons in a bad condition in the basement here centuries later. the church next door also smelled really badly because of all the dead bodies buried beneath it - only the filthy rich could afford to be buried there, so naturally it smelled like filth.

another view of Korenlei from the bridge.

And then we got back on the canal for the last stretch to head back to the bus.

I have no idea what this is but it looks pretty.

Another view of the barge from the opposite side.

All in all, it was a pretty decent tour, even though it wasn't as long or involving as the ones that followed in later days. Considering how long it took to make this post, though, I have no idea how the later ports are going to turn out. -_-

I decided to make a Flickr account (1 terabyte of storage for free is pretty cool) to upload and organize the pics this time. I didn't include all of them in this post, so the link to the full set will be added at the end of this and subsequent posts. I'm somewhat dreading St. Petersburg now...

But anyway, next stop: Berlin!

full photoset.