Bruges and Ypres Salient - Beautiful and Horrible

We leave the Loire Valley reluctantly and spend a good part of the day on trains: Orleans to Paris' Gare d'Austerlitz, taxi to Gare du Nord, Thalys super-train to Brussels Midi, and local train to Bruges. We get confused by the three train stations in Brussels, but manage to find one to Bruges.

We fall in love with Bruges. The taxi driver is a welcome change from the surly one we had in Paris. The Grand Oude Burg hotel people are welcoming and the room is a good size for a change. Plus, we have access to a great rooftop view of Bruges. The hotel bar is a good retreat for discussing the Tour de France with some real fans. It's Belgian National Day, so we join some of the festivities after a great Flemish dinner.

The next day, we explore Bruges on foot, visiting many sites, including the Bell Tower, City Hall, Basilica of the Blood, Groeninge Museum, St Mary's Church, and Beguinage, which served as a retreat for widows and is now a convent. We tour and drink beer at an old brewery and discover a beautiful park by the river. Happy hour at the hotel is happy. We eat our dinner alfresco on St. Steven's Square, getting good food and so-so service.

Each of these sites is described below if you want to know more about them.

On our last full day here, we join a tour of the WWI Ypres Salient Battlefields. The experience is both fascinating and sobering. There is more on it, with photos, below. We also visit Ypres proper, much of which has been completely rebuilt according to the original plans, which were safely stored during the war. We see where "Flanders' Fields" was written and visit the Menin Gate Memorial and many cemeteries and other memorials.

Returning to Bruges, we dine at one of the oldest restaurants in the city, the Breydel de Connick Restaurant on Beder Strasse. I once again order my favorite, steamed mussels, and other to-die-for dishes before ending the day back at the hotel bar.

Quick Tips:

If you are headed for Bruges, chances are you will have to change trains in Brussels. Be careful. We arrived at Midi Station in Brussels, and I noticed the departure board had no listing for our train number. The nearest information booth agent gave me the track number and time for the next train. Relief! Later I figure out how I screwed up. There are three train stations in Brussels, and the Belgians can't seem to make up their minds which one they want to feature, so there are trains going everywhere in Belgium from each station, unlike Paris and London, where different stations serve different regions. The train number I had left from Central Station, not Midi, and the Internet site I got the information from did not specify the station. I also discovered later that there is an underground shuttle between all three stations. Nevertheless, more careful reading could have saved me some anxiety.

There are horse-drawn carriages that appeared to be popular. I resisted, but others seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Do not leave Bruges without having a waffle with any combination of fruit and whipped cream that suits you. Don't forget the chocolate.

Best Way To Get Around:

Since the inner city only covers about 1 square mile, the best way to explore Bruges is on foot. Besides, you'll see a lot more. We used Rick Steves’ walking guide. There are also walking tours for a price.

There are minibus tours and taxis of course. Rental bicycle shops abound. Bicycling can be risky on some streets because of the pressure of the pedestrians.

If you want to explore areas outside of Bruges, you can rent a car or sign up for a tour.

You can also ride a boat around Central Bruges. All I saw were tour boats, which might be expensive.

This is a full-service hotel with a TV, telephone, minibar, and safe in each room. It is right in the center of the old town near the Belfry on Market Square. It has a somewhat rickety metal terrace you can access to get a rooftop view of Bruges. It also has a small garden where you can order snacks and drinks.

When we get there, the check-in people are eager but seem a bit harried, especially when we ask about an Internet connection. We once again run into what I am labeling the "Internet disconnect." That is, though the hotel says it has Internet service, what is meant by that is open to wide and variable interpretation.

In this case, they have wireless access but the guest must purchase a converter and a card that costs €25 for three hours. At my wife Pam's rate of Internet usage, we may end up paying more for the Internet connection than the room itself. Additionally frustrating us, no one seems to know exactly how the whole thing works because hardly anyone ever uses the service. In addition, they have a €10 an hour terminal in the lobby which doesn't work very well.

I give up on emails and head for the nice, friendly bar, order a beer, and get into an interesting discussion with the bartender and his friend about Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France, which is being shown on the TV set in the bar. Pam and I return to the bar more than once.

Overall, I would rate this as a slightly overpriced three-star hotel.

We walk from the Municipal Square to the Groeninge Museum also bureaucratically called 'The city museum of Fine Arts'. This museum is housed in an old restored palace-type residence and is one of the most efficiently organized museums I've visited. The collection was started at the beginning of the 18th century, but the restoration and installation is recent, 1929-1930. The collection spans several centuries, from the 14th to the 20th. It focuses primarily on works by painters who lived and worked in Bruges.

The audio guide is most instructive. It tells you more than you may have ever wanted to know about each of the paintings. The bulk of the collection is focused on early or "Primitive" Flemish artists particularly Jan Van Eyck, but they have a good selection of more modern paintings.

The museum also has a delightful garden. We took a break under the shade trees to give us time to absorb what we had seen.

Unfortunately, no photo taking is allowed. You can learn more at: http://www.trabel.com/brugge-m-groeninge.htm

In addition to the Groeninge Museum, described elsewhere in this journal, we visit the City Hall, the Basilica of the Holy Blood, the Church of Our Lady, and the Beguinage. All are easily accessible by foot.

The Gothic-style City Hall dates back to the 14th century, when Bruges was a major trading center and seaport. The murals inside are both beautiful and historically interesting. The vaulted ceilings and 17th-century frescoes are also very impressive. It has a small artifacts museum, too. The entrance fee, at 2.5€, is very reasonable. It is certainly worth our time. See more information at http://www.brugge.be/Musea/en/mgze.htm.

We next visit the Basilica of the Holy Blood, where supposedly Christ’s blood re-liquefies periodically. There's a Roman-style St. Basil's Chapel on the ground floor and a Gothic-style chapel on the first floor. While we are in the basilica, a ceremony is going on to honor "His Sacrifice." I don’t see the blood liquefy, though. Darn! It is, nevertheless, a fascinating ceremony taking place in a beautiful setting. There is a small museum on-site, but we somehow miss it. You can find much more information at http://www.holyblood.com/EN/G.asp.

Our next stop is the medieval Church of Our Lady. It has the highest tower in the city and contains Michelangelo's Madonna, originally intended for the cathedral in Siena, and the tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary. If you want to visit the tombs, which are in the choir, there is an extra charge. As you can see from the photos at (http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ed_hk/), it is a beautiful church. Pam has enough energy to visit the choir, but I decide to save mine and sit in one of the pews, admiring the statues and paintings. There is a more information at http://www.trabel.com/brugge/bruges-ourlady.htm.

We next head for the Beguinage. Originally founded in the 13th century by the Beguines, it is now a Benedictine convent. It was, at one time, a place where religiously inclined women, particularly widows, who did not want to be nuns could live away from the rest of society. It is certainly a peaceful spot, with a beautiful garden surrounded by living quarters and a small chapel. We visit the Beguine House, which gives us insights into how the former residents lived.

We leave the Beguinage and cross a bridge over the Minnewater or Lake of Love, which, before it silted up, was an important dock for barges that traveled between Bruges and Ghent. It's now considered a lovers' tryst spot. We take a break to enjoy the park-like atmosphere. There is a lot of shade and a flock of geese to watch while sitting on a nearby bench.

We finally run out of steam and return to our hotel for a short rest. Even the walk back is fascinating, as we pass chocolate shops, antique stores, and many interesting restaurants.

We decide to visit the local Half Moon Brewery for a tour. The 45-minute tour is fun but a little disappointing because, in 2004, they were no longer brewing beer at this location. In checking their website, though, I found they are now brewing and taste-testing a new beer, "Dilemma," at this location.

Nevertheless, the guide, who is actually a family member, puts out a lot of historical and brewing information. The tour features the old tradional brewing methods, and we see 200-year-old machinery and bottles from at least that long ago. It's hard to absorb it all. It is obvious the Belgians take their beer seriously.

We go all the way up to the roof of the old building, where we see an amazing panoramic view of Bruges.

The tour costs only 4 euros per person and includes a huge mug of their beer, drunk in the beer hall. While sipping our brews, we meet an interesting 30-something American couple who've carved a year out of their lives and careers to travel throughout Europe. I don't know if I would have had the courage to do that at their age.

Half Moon has a restaurant too, so it's a nice place to take a midday or mid-afternoon break. You can learn much more here.

This tour is done in a small, comfortable van. Our guide is the knowledgeable, Sharon. Unfortunately, I never write down her family name.

We visit the following sites in the morning: the Tyne Cot Cemetery, the New Zealand Memorial at Gravenstafel and Hellfire Corner which every soldier had to pass on his way to the front.

We stop for lunch at the Hooge Crater Museum. After lunch, we visit Hill 60, which is riddled with tunnels, and was the site of the Battle of Messines and an American Memorial near Mt. Kemmel.

In the mid-afternoon we go to Ypres to see the Menin Gate Memorial. We explore the town itself with it's re-built medieval buildings and guild halls. We also visit a recently uncovered trench in an industrial area North of the city. Our last stop is the Essex Farm Cemetery which contains the dressing station where Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian Doctor, wrote "In Flanders Fields."

I've written about the day in much more detail elsewhere in this journal in an experiences entry, "Visiting Flanders Fields." If you have any interest in the history of WW I, this tour is an absolute "must." Even if you don't have an interest, I think you will find it fascinating.

In the Historical Tour entry, I could not describe everything I saw and felt during the Quasimodo tour of Flander's Fields so I'm offering that additional information, here.

We have booked a tour of the WW I battlefields in the Ypres Salient. On an appropriately grey day, we walk to the pick-up point for the tour. Sharon of Quasimodo Tours picks us up in a van. She is an interesting person: half Flemish and half Aussie but born in Penang, Malaysia when her father, who had joined the Aussie air force was stationed there. Our tour companions are an Australian couple living in Cambodia, a couple from New Zealand and a very knowledgeable British gentleman. A most interesting group, and we are looking forward to the day.

Our first stop is the Tyne Cot Cemetery. It got its name because members of a British regiment from Newcastle thought a cottage in the area reminded them of their homeland on the Tyne River. It is the largest cemetery in the salient and contains a wall with the names of almost 35,000 British Empire troops who were killed after August 16, 1917 and whose bodies were never identified. The cemetery includes two German bunkers, one with the Cross of Sacrifice on it. There are over 30 British Empire cemeteries in this area, consolidated from about four times that number after the war ended. Pictures of this cemetery and all the other places we see on this tour are on my Ypres photo site: (http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/ed_hk/).

We visit the New Zealand Memorial and Cemetery at Gravenstafel near where many New Zealanders and Australians died in the Third Battle of Ypres sometimes called Passchendaele. Many Kiwis and Aussies, to say nothing of Canadians, Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, and other soldiers from the far reaches of the empire died in this 10 or 15 square mile area. It was a slaughter house. I have a great deal of trouble understanding how men could have faced the terrors of not only the German guns but also drowning in the swampy bog, they were fighting in. The thought of it reminds me of a scene from The Bridge On the River Kwai, when, after the bridge is blown up, the camp doctor wanders down the river bed uttering the words "Madness, madness, madness" over and over.

We next visit Hellfire Corner, which every soldier had to pass on his way to the front and which the Germans had zeroed in on with their artillery. One of the most interesting facts is that approximately 3 tons of unexploded ammunition is dug up by farmers and others every year. There is a Belgian Army unit that does nothing but collect this ammo and dispose of it. There are pick-up points along the roads where the farmers leave the shells to be picked up weekly. As we drove around the area, we could see shells in the cement containers provided for them.

We stop for lunch at the Hooge Crater Museum. It is a small but very well done museum with a small cafeteria: well worth the 30 minutes it takes to browse through it. After lunch we visit Hill 60 where the British spent over 18 months building tunnels in which to place 19 huge mines which would then be detonated just before a planned attack. The mines were indeed exploded and Hill 60 taken in the Battle of Messines. We climb up the hill and see that the craters from the explosion are still there as well as German bunkers and other artifacts from 80 years ago.

By this time we are getting confused as to what happened when and so we buy a small study guide to try to fix the chronology in our minds. It's titled simply YPRES 1914-1918 and was written and self published by a British history teacher, Leslie Coate. This helps considerably. I find that Michael Duffy's First World War.com website is also a good source for understanding the chronology of WWI.

We visit an American Memorial near Mt. Kemmel. Evidently a few American National Guard units were assigned to the Ypres Salient, poor bastards. Calling Mt. Kemmel a mountain is a definite overstatement but in this area it is the only rise that is over 100 meters above sea level hence the title: mountain.

In the mid-afternoon, we go to Ypres to see the Menin Gate Memorial with its 58,000 names of soldiers whose bodies were never found. It is also the site, every night, of a ceremony in which at 8pm. traffic is stopped and buglers from the Ypres Fire Brigade play the Last Post. While we will not see the "Last Post" ceremony, the Memorial is overwhelming in its size and the events it memorializes.

I have a difficult time sorting out my emotions about a war that happened 80 years ago but was so brutal and useless. The British man on our tour, points out that WWI and WWII were the European equivalent of the U.S. Civil War with a 20 year cease fire and an outside intervention from the U.S. to end it. I think that observation makes a lot of sense and helps me see the conflict with a different perspective.

We also explore the town itself, and I am really impressed with the care and detail that was brought to rebuilding Ypres after 1918. We visit a recently uncovered trench just outside Ypres. The trench and a number of corpses were discovered by an amateur group of archeologists who call themselves "The Diggers." They have done an excellent job of re-building the trench so we can experience a little of what it was like for the Allied soldiers.

Our last stop is The Essex Farm Cemetery where Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian Doctor worked at a medical dressing station during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. He is best remembered for his poem, "In Flanders Fields," written during the lulls between batches of arriving casualties. The dugouts he worked in are still preserved. There are paper and plastic poppies everywhere we visit as they have become the symbol of remembrance of those who died so needlessly in the so-called "Great War." It's time to head back to Bruges before I become terminally depressed.

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.