The good news is that we've (still) been walking and getting plenty of exercise. On Thursday, we took a bike ride along one of the main canals to Damme (pronounced Dah-ma), which is a small village about five kilometers from the northeast gate of Bruges. It never actually grew to the full limits of its seven-pointed star shaped walls (now removed leaving a narrow tree-lined canal in its place), so we were able to cover most of the city in about 30 minutes. For comparison, I would guess that if you took downtown Watkinsville, made it more dense, and put it on a river, you'd have something similar. After lunch, we decided to ride farther north to where the canal from Bruges linked up with the main canal leading to the North Sea. Today, these canals are no longer used and have been replaced by a much wider canal running due north from Bruges to a newer port city called Zeebrugge (Sea Bruges), but it's interesting to think that for a time in history, farmers and town people were able to watch the merchant ships from all over the world sailing down the canal past their small town.
The point of our trip was to document what my professor has called “Urban Spatial Types”—essentially streets, avenues, boulevards, squares, plazas, etc. that are found in traditional cities—so we spent Friday doing just that. These are the pieces that also make up historic American cities and towns, such as main streets and courthouse and church squares. In modern planning practice, these are unfortunately reduced to words like “arterial” and “collector” and “highway” that refer simply to automobile traffic patterns rather than the good stuff found in towns and cities, and “space” refers to the area surrounding buildings rather than the area contained by buildings. Savannah is one of the best examples locally that has many of these types. There are several boulevards with planted medians, such as Oglethorpe Avenue, and Bay and Broughton Street would be main avenues, to give two examples (obviously, the given names don't always correspond with my professor's categories). The majority of the smaller roads are either streets or alleys. Each ward has its own square as well. The key to all of this is that there are buildings surrounding all of these spaces, creating the sense that you’re in an outdoor room, and probably one that you’d enjoy being in (at least in Savannah and the other traditional cities I’ve been to). On the other hand, if you’re in the parking lot at the Publix at Butler’s Crossing--the area around the shopping center building between the McDonalds and the Rite Aid--would you want to stay there any longer than necessary? The answer is probably no (unless you’re 17 and it’s a Friday night).
Our last few days were spent in Ghent and Antwerp. The weather was miserable both days (high in 30s/40s and pretty constant drizzle/rain), so we weren't able to do nearly as much as anticipated in either city. Not only that, but Belgium is a pretty windy place in general, so it is rather difficult to keep an umbrella functioning properly. My cheap Martin's umbrella I got in South Bend was already in bad shape, but I had to throw it out after a few days in Bruges because I was down to only 3 of the 6 or 7 metal arms holding the umbrella open. I bought another one at a souvenir-type store which lasted less than 24 hours before inverted became its default position. I finally splurged and got a better one at a department store, though I nearly lost it to the canals during a few gusts. I don't know how the Belgians do it.
In Ghent, our main purpose was to see the Ghent Altarpiece, or The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, in the cathedral. It is an incredible work by brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck, who were part of the group of artists known as the Flemish Primitives because it was prior to the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy. While this is technically true, the 10-panel altarpiece shows a mastery of perspective (although perhaps not as scientific as Brunelleschi and other Italians) and very realistic imagery that represents the pinnacle of Medieval painting. The picture doesn't do it justice really--in reality it's maybe 15 feet wide by 10 feet tall. The altarpiece's history is interesting as well, involving various instances of being saved from fire and Protestants, having pieces sold off and stolen, and being confiscated by the Germans and returned in the Treaty of Versailles. Afterward, we walked around the city a bit, but several of the main squares were a muddy mess because of construction (we got the authentic Medieval experience speed walking through the mud to get to the cathedral in time), so the effort was a bit futile. The trip to Antwerp was a similar story. We just walked around, saw the main market and city hall plaza, went to mass in the cathedral, and decided to head indoors to the Peter Paul Rubens House and Studio Museum. Rubens was one of the great Flemish Baroque artists who painted the altarpieces at the cathedral in Antwerp in addition to a good deal of other well known paintings. Rubens also had the benefit of being successful and appreciated in his lifetime, so his house was rather large and elaborate.Belgium Part III to come...
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