Monday, June 2, 2008

Von Mainz nach Brugge nach Koeln nach Mainz

So I am back in Mainz after a brief trip to Bruges, Belgium. Marc is from there and was planning to visit his mother this weekend, so I (along with Vlad) tagged along. I had never been there before, so it was nice to see something new.

We started Bruges at a brewery, and took a tour. The beer they brew there is called Bruges Zot (the Bruges' Fool), and since the tour ended with a free beer, all the better. We walked all around the city, which is very medieval, since it was a major shipping port during the pre-14th/15th century era, before Ghent became a (presumably safer as it's more inland?) more substantial city. Thus, most everything is sort of preserved from those early days in Flanders.

One of the churches there has a "Madonna and Child" sculpture by Michaelangelo, and it's a gorgeous church in and of itself. The roof was made entirely of red brick, and it's the only church I've seen done that way (I'll show pictures later). After that, lunch, and a trip around the canals on a little mini tour, we had waffles (when in Belgium...), and headed back for dinner at Marc's mom's. Well, before dinner we had to go to the Food Lion (there it's called Delhaize and not nearly as trashy) to get beer and chocolate, but details details.

Sunday was a day on the beach, although I must say that Belgians have a different idea of beach weather...I had my jacket on the entire time...But it was still a nice relaxing day.

One of the highlights of the journey was when we arrived at 1:30am Friday night (Sat morning), after Marc's mom had fed us, we were all chatting about who-knows-what, and his mom came in and yelled at us (it was 2:30 by this point) for not going to bed yet, because we needed to "schlafen" before we got up to head to town the next morning. I felt like I was in high school again.

Since Vlad and Marc had to head up to Bochem, I was dropped off at the train station in Cologne, and just headed back here to my exciting life in Mainz. I will just chat with the C-man for a while and head home to a nice "home cooked" dinner. Good times.

by Topher at 2:27 PM |