A Long Weekend in...Bruges, Belgium
"I like to say that while antimatter may seem strange, it is strange in the sense that Belgians are strange. They are not really strange; it is just that one rarely meets them," wrote the renowned scientist Lawrence Krauss. When a theoretical physicist specializing in multiple dimensions and dark matter refers to something as "strange," well...
The tiny nation of Belgium, wedged in uneasily as it is on Europe's Atlantic Coast by France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg (also a "strange" place, but one we'll visit another day), is somewhat unusual. Its landmass rivals Maryland's, its population rivals Ohio's, but there are more than 2,000 chocolate shops within its borders. A quick note on what's up with that: Chocolate gained mass popularity in Belgium in the second half of the 19th century, when Belgian King Leopold II colonized the Congo and cocoa cultivation began to shift from the Americas to West Africa, which provided an ideal environment, as well as plentiful slave labor, for cocoa production. Since then, Belgium has had a reputation for especially smooth, velvety chocolate made with the best ingredients; today, the Brussels national airport sells more chocolate than other place in the world. More about this soon, I promise.
Belgium was established during the Holy Roman Empire and its land mass has been ruled by virtually every dominant world power subsequently, and yet it's technically a young country: Belgium's official constitution was drafted in 1830 but, due to the amendments proposed by various German, Flemish, Dutch, and French factions, was not fully adopted until 1993. And it has three regions, Wallonia, which is primarily French; Flanders, which is primarily Dutch; and Brussels, which as the capital stands alone (and where, by law, all signs and all street names must be written in both French and Dutch, which makes getting around both easier and, um, stranger than you're probably used to in an English-speaking European country). It is the birthplace of Tintin and the Smurfs, more than 650 kinds of beer, and boasts one of the lowest proportions of McDonald's restaurants per inhabitant in the developed world. Euthanasia and gay marriage and marijuana possession are legal and chocolate consumption is strongly encouraged.
What do most Americans outside the Jean-Claude Van Damme fan club know about Belgium? Beyond waffles, beer, and chocolate, you mean? Probably that it's the headquarters of the European Union, and maybe that it has what is arguably the single most beautiful town in all of Europe within its borders: Bruges.
If you are contemplating going to Belgium, or if you're passing through on the way to someplace else, there is one thing you must do, and that's see Bruges. Of course, this isn't exactly a secret. More than 2 million tourists flock to this medieval town annually, which is often referred to as "The Venice of the North" because of its system of canals. They exist because in the Middle Ages, Bruges's Reie River was turned into a network of canals that enabled traders to easily transport their wares to the large market in the center of town; in fact, the city's name is probably derived from a combination of the Latin Rogia (the Latin name of the Reie) and the Scandinavian bryggja, or mooring place. For a time in the 14th century, Bruges was one of Europe's top trading cities, especially its cloth market, with a population to rival London's; but eroding soil basically stopped up the economy and the boom was fully busted by the 16th century, the trade having all moved to the busy port of Antwerp about 70 miles to the east.
Modern Bruges is not obviously modern in any way: It looks kind of like the movie version of the hamlet Marie Antoinette was trying to create for herself at Versailles — picturesque, quaint, and full of swans and little stone houses with lace curtains in the windows (lace-making being the "industry" behind tourism and chocolate here). In this bucolic setting there are curio shops, intimate museums, french fries (fact: they were actually born in Belgium) and waffle stands, horse-drawn carriages, and many, many bicyclists. There is a Belfry, two churches of historic significance and another of real intrigue, and a whole bunch of nuns. That's why it's so funny when, in the cult-classic 2008 film In Bruges by the playwright Martin McDonagh, about a pair of armed robbery suspects on the lam in Bruges played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, one character says, "Maybe that's what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in f*cking Bruges" — because, frankly, this town is pretty much the European ideal of heaven.
Here's a suggested itinerary for a long weekend in the city:
Friday:
1:30 p.m.: Take a canal tour of town. While the horse-and-buggy option is also available, it's the motorboat version that offers the best bang for your buck and the chance for more and better scenery. This is not Venice: The "gondoliers" are generally charming grizzled ship-captain old man-and-the-sea types, all Bruges natives, who pilot low-speed comfy motorboats and toss out a few lines of history as they warn you to duck your head as you cruise past the city's monuments. This is photo-op central, and the leisurely pace of the voyage is in accordance. Boat tours are offered from March to November, last 30 minutes, and run every half-hour from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, have five embarkation points located throughout the city, and run about €8 euros per adult.
2:30 p.m.: It's always beer o'clock in Belgium, where, according to the great English beer authority Michael Jackson "the greatest variety of styles, the most gastronomically interesting specialties, and the most unusual beers in the world are produced." There are more than 100 unique breweries in Belgium producing several hundred brands of beer: look for the trappists (made by monks, each is unique but all tend to be distinctly floral; Chimay, Westmalle, and Orval are great examples, but while they're expensive sold in bottles at Whole Foods, they're often on draught or in bottles for just a few euros); the lambics (beers that are fermented once and then double-fermented a second time with the addition of fresh fruit; these are bubbly, cidery, on the sweet side, and utterly refreshing; the kriek, or cherry, flavor is generally the Belgian favorite, but there are others, too); and the witbiers (wheat beers or white beers, similar to the German hefeweizen they are light and crisp and often flavored with coriander or orange peel; Blanche de Bruges is the best local version while Hoegaarden is the most internationally known). There are many beer bars around town, including Het Brugs Beertje, the beer geeks' favorite with more than 300 varieties available, and De Koninck, the very strong and very delicious amber ale brewed in Antwerp, on tap. For a more well-rounded "bierbrasserie" experience,
I prefer the gastropub Cambrinus, with its hearty menu of Belgian standards like addictive salty shrimp croquettes (kroketjes, a Dutch specialty), steaming bowls of the beer-based beef stew known as carbonnade flammandes (whose preparation is derived from classic provincial French dishes like beouf bourgignon), and its excellent frites, and 400 beers for the sampling; it's also good to go at an off-time like mid-afternoon, because the pub-style dining room is generally packed and reservations-only at lunch and dinner.
4:30 p.m.: Because Bruges is small, the pace is leisurely; although it can feel tourist-infested (especially during summer, its high season), it seldom if ever feels rushed. Make your way over to the "Minnewater" area of the city. Minne means "love," and this "lake of love" marks the spot where the Reie enters the city, from which all the canals emerge. There's a lovely little footbridge (built in 1740), many benches, and patches of soft grass from which to perch — and there are a lot of swans roaming around. Local legend has it that Bruges has had swans for a symbol since about 1488, when an allegedly crooked town administer from the court of Maximilian of Austria, husband and successor to duchess Mary of Burgundy, was executed. The coat of arms of the hated cleric, Pieter Lanchals, bore a white swan; lore says that Maximilian punished Bruges by obliging the town to keep swans on their lakes and canals for all eternity.
Although they're a bit used to being fed (read: aggressive, so watch small kids' fingers), the plump swans are not nearly as sinister as they are graceful to watch. On the other side of the park is the béguinage, a beautifully serene cooperative of nuns who live together in gorgeous whitewashed brick row houses lined with cobblestoned walks and gardens full of popular trees and daffodils where you can stroll — quietly, please — and commune with nature. The béguinage tradition began in the lowlands in the 13th century as places for Catholic women to band together and live and worship — but still be a part of the outside world to some degree — after the Crusades. There are 29 such béguinages in Belgium, all UNESCO World Heritage Sites today, and this one in Bruges is said to be amongst the most lovely. For the low price of €2 you can contribute something to the lifestyles of these women who offer up their homes for the photographing and tromping around, and it's well worth it. Serenity now, indeed.
Dinner: For all its charm, Bruges is a day-stop city for many, so the dinner hour tends to be early and the nightlife, beyond a few, dare we call them "Eurotrashy," clubs near the center of town, is relatively nonexistent. It's nice, though, to get dinner on the later side, which in Bruges means around 8 p.m., when the locals come out for a bite and the restaurants are more relaxed and convivial. Then you should head to 't Schrijverke, a dimly lit (OK, I'd go so far as to call it "romantic"), elegantly casual, understated bar and dining room. The muted walls and gorgeous flower arrangements enhance the mood at this family-owned and -operated standby, where locals have been coming for sophisticated versions of the Belgian classics since it opened in 1970 (the name refers to a religious poem of the same name, meaning little writer, by the Flemish poet and priest Guido Gezelle, a statue of whom stands in a little square in front of the restaurant). The menu doesn't exactly set the world on fire with its innovation, but the mussels and bistro-style grilled steaks and fillets of dover sole and plates of carbonnade are all done nicely, seasoned properly, and served with great grace and care by the staff.
Saturday:
9:30 a.m.: Be at the belfry first thing for the best view of the city with the least amount of people to fight you for it. Bruges' Grote Markt, or Market Square, is framed with beautiful old gabled buildings (and do skip all of their extremely touristy restaurants with pictures of "mussels'n'frites" hanging in their windows) and as its centerpiece has a great old bell tower that's open to the public. To scale the belfry, which has been there since about 1300, you must first climb up 366 steps in what may be the world's narrowest, windiest corridor (claustrophobics should maybe sit this one out, or wait until there are no crowds) — but once you've done that, you are rewarded with a spectacular site, a lowland panoramic that hasn't changed a whole lot since it was established in the Middle Ages, a breathtaking peek (and peak) at the past. If church bells get you going, there are 47 up at the top of the tower, too, and they're rung (mechanically, with a barrel and tabs) on the quarter hour. There are also concerts with those bells, hosted by a live carillonneur, weekly that you can check for on the Belfry's official schedule.
11 a.m.: After all those stairs it's time for a little retail therapy. Antwerp is famous for its fashion design scene, and some of that has trickled west to Bruges, so there's a small boutique scene, the best of which includes L'Heroine and Essential (Noordzandstraat 32 and 42), and the more mainstream shops along Steenstraat, which range from H & M to Swarovski. There are many antique boutiques along that road and its little subsidiaries, especially Victoria Antiques on Vismarkt, as well as the art gallery Koen Broes, owned and operated by its namesake, which has a small but uniquely curated selection of paintings, photographs, and prints from emerging European artists, especially, obviously, Belgians. If you're into popping tags, Bruges has some really good thrift shops: Madam Mim is a favorite for beautifully preserved table linens, pieces of antique lace, silk scarves, funky retro glassware, and even some high-fashion finds (spotted: a small Hermès scarf for €15). At Kringloopwinkel, there are more usual finds like old records and books, and tons of specialty pint glasses made by the different Belgian beer brands and sold for many more dollars in the souvenir shops (open Tuesday through Saturday, located near intersection of Bapamestr and Peperstraat).
1 p.m.: Splurge for lunch at Den Gouden Harynck, a restaurant ensconced in a 17th-century building on the corner of a very well-heeled part of Bruges that is the epitome of a Michelin one-star restaurant experience for impeccable service, food, and ambience. "The Golden Herring" has been churning out exquisite French-inspired haute cuisine for 36 years. This is rarified dining at its best: unfussy yet sophisticated, inspired by tradition but inflected with modern ingredients and technique, and served in a room that manages to be both cozy and warm and also fine. Chef Philippe Serruys owns the restaurant with his wife Marijke, who runs the front of the house, and he tends his own herb gardens, which are visible from the restaurant's tiny courtyard, and prides himself on keeping abreast of international restaurant trends and how they might be applied to his native ingredients. The lunch menu of three courses for €39 is a bargain; one day it included a starter of expertly seared mackerel in butter and soy accented by avocado cream and small jewel-like pieces of eel sushi, and an entrée of Spanish pork medallions topped with thin strips of melting lardo. It was a unique meal in a very, very unique setting, and well worth saving up to enjoy.
3 p.m.: Although some of us found religion on the plate at Den Gouden Harynck, others may want to discover it in its usual location. When a European city is built in during the Holy Roman Empire, you can expect it to have a "church of distinction," or two, or three. And Bruges has three, two of which of quite grand. The Church of Our Lady is a testament to the riches of Bruges in its prime and is enormous with all the attendant stained glass windows and soaring marble archways the church's riches could buy; and it is famous because it's got a Madonna and child statue on its altar by Michelangelo, considered by scholars to be the only one of the artist's works to have left Italy during the artist's lifetime. Then there's the Basilica of the Holy Blood, which houses a vial that allegedly contains the blood of Christ and was brought to the city from Jerusalem in the year 1150 after the Second Crusade. (You can pay a few euros for the privilege of touching the vial, if you like.) But to my mind the most interesting church in Bruges is the Jeruzalemkerk. It was built in the late 1400s as an attempt to replicate the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Israel, which had inspired its benefactor, a wealthy Italian merchant named Adornes (the church is privately owned by his descendants to this day). The church is tiny and tall, with an altar made of skull bones and ladders, a high choir with a wooden staircase leading up to it, and a crypt underneath it. Inside the crypt is a replica of the grave of Jesus Christ. The experience is weird, creepy, and spiritual all at once, a perfect example of the kind of "off the beaten path" attraction most tourists don't get to but that you ought to seek out for yourself.
6 p.m.: You had a big lunch; the last thing you need is more frites. However, it would be positively remiss of you to go to a small town with 52 chocolate shops, one of the so-called European capitals of chocolate, and not sample the goods. Fresh filled chocolates, or "pralines" as they're called in Belgium (nothing to do with what people from New Orleans call "pralines"), are available on every street corner, in every nook and cranny — they're impossible to avoid, but you want to make sure you spend your calories wisely. For purists: Dumon has two branches, each operated by a brother of the longtime Bruges chocolate Dumon dynasty, and all of the chocolates are handmade freshly daily with no additives or preservatives or even assembly lines in sight. Expect the chocolate to be exceedingly smooth, to melt in your mouth like velvet — that's the difference between what you find here and other, mass-produced chocolate (the experts call it "mouthfeel," and after you have a Dumon praline you'll understand exactly what they mean). For modernists: The Chocolate Line is owned and operated by Dominique Persoone, the reigning rock god of chocolatiers (Persoone calls himself a "shock-o-latier") complete with requisite tattoos, his own line of chocolate lipstick, and his own share of a cacao plantation in Mexico. These pretensions would be insufferable if Persoone's chocolates weren't mind-bending. Although he's known for his unusual flavor combinations — the Havana is filled with a chocolate ganache that was perfumed with a distillate of Havana tobacco leaves; the Atlanta is cola ganache flavored with hazelnut; the Yuzu is filled with white chocolate ganache flavored with raspberry and caramelized yuzu fruit (incidentally, all three of these are delicious) — even his standards are superlative, like the framboise, a simple chocolate filled with chocolate-raspberry ganache that you can find a version of in every shop in town.
6 p.m.: OK, maybe it's time for just a little more beer and a few more frites. "French" fries, by the way, got their name because they are "frenched," as in "trimmed into lengths," not because they're from France. Most food historians agree that it was the Belgians who initially came up with this preparation, but that American soldiers who experienced them during World War II in Europe mistook people who were speaking French for people who actually were French, and a phenomenon was born. Regardless, freitkots (frites carts) scatter the city, especially around the Grote Markt, and locals swear by the two competing stands at the base of the Belfry. If you're capable of something more substantial, the De Halve Maan ("half-moon") brewery, open since 1856, has a soaring bar and dining room, light and airy with floor-to-ceiling windows and lots of blonde wood, and is a family-owned operation that produces Straffe Hendrick and Brugse Zot beers, both with a huge local following. "Straffe Hendrik" ("Strong Henri") is named for the current brewer's forebear, the brewery's founder, and its "Straffe Henrik Brugs Quadrupel," at 11 percent alcohol by volume, is incredibly rich, dark, malty, and intense — a special favorite among beer connoisseurs (the original Straffe Hendrik, a blonde number that's much hoppier, is 9 percent alcohol by volume and pretty great, too). De Halve Maan offers tours and tastings, but you can belly up to the bar for a beer or take a seat in the proper dining room, which serves very good renditions of moules frites and the rest in big, hearty portions in a surprisingly refined ambience for a brewpub.
Sunday:
10 a.m.: Having slept off the chocolate-beer-frites coma, you will no doubt wonder what the generally thin Belgians do to keep their waistlines under control. They bike, and you should, too. It's generally difficult to brave Bruges's tourist-lined streets on the bike without sufficient practice, so head out of town along the scenic canal path to the nearby hamlet of Damme, just 5 miles northeast. It's a flat ride and you'll pass windmills and orchards and quaint low-country landscapes. Eric Popelier, in Bruges, is a great place to go for good bikes, maps, and advice; Mrs. Popelier is friendly and accommodating and his prices are reasonable. Once you get to the tiny town of Damme, which looks like Bruges in miniature, you can wander down its main street and take in the town hall, erected in 1464 and a prime example of late-gothic architecture, and visit the Café Uilenspiegel (Owl Café, named for an owl figure in German and Dutch folklore who supposedly fought against Spanish oppression in the Middle Ages), where the lovely older couple who own the place will whip up a repertoire of the usual Belgian favorites — more frites, and here they're very good. And more beer, too, of course. The inside of the café is tiny but the outdoor patio is lovely and expansive, ideal for a warm weather day. Then you have to bike back.
3 p.m.: You can't leave Bruges without experiencing the work of a Dutch master (or two). The Flemish artist Hans Memling, a hometown hero, is considered the great chronicler of Bruges in its heyday. You can take in his work in any of the several small museums scattered around town (including the official Hans Memling Museum, in the former St. John's Hospital), but my favorite is the Groeninge, an intimate and yet more expansive museum that nevertheless offers a perspective on European art in the 15th century and beyond, and of the Flemish artists' place in that world. Don't miss Jan van Eyck's "Portrait of Margareta van Eyck" for perspective on Flemish noble fashion circa 1439. The painting of the artist's wife shows the high-forehead look so prized in that day, and is a striking example of what art historians believe is one of the advents of humanism — a portrait of an "ordinary" person, rather than a king, pope, or saint. Margareta's double-horned hairdo might just be the thing to ready you for re-enter the modern world.