Bruges

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A couple years ago we watched the movie "In Bruges." It's a dark comedy that we liked very much and, although we're not big Colin Farrell fans, he was very good in it and actually won a Golden Globe award for his performance in this movie. After watching "In Bruges" we figured we'd like to go there sometime if the opportunity arose. So now we're here in Europe and last weekend the opportunity did indeed arise.

Before we left for Bruges (Dutch spelling is Brugge) we noticed that all our recent destinations, Bamberg, Berlin, Buchenwald, Bitburg, have all begun with B and this one is a double B; Bruges, Belgium. We'll probably have to break that trend on our next trip.

Anyway, Bruges (pronounced Brooj) is a wonderful city with a colorful history. In the 12th to 15th centuries it was the main commerical city of the entire world. During those years it grew to a population of 200,000, a huge city in those days. However, it's access to the North Sea became silted over and its economic role rapidly fell behind that of Antwerp. By the end of the 1800s its population had fallen to 50,000 and many considered it a dead city. The boom in international tourism has made Bruges a thriving city once again. Jeff and I were in Bruge last weekend on a mid-February Friday and Saturday. The streets were full of tourists. It's hard to imagine what Bruges must be like in the spring and summer.

Well we had a great time in Bruges!! Here's the stuff we did.

We drove into the city at noon and checked into our hotel which was a very short walk from the Markt, Bruges' main square. The most prominent feature in the entire city is the Belfry on the south side of the Markt. Since the Belfry plays a major role in the movie "In Bruges" that was the first picture we had to get. The Belfry was formerly a treasury. It stands 84 meters high and it takes 366 steps to get to the observation level.

On the opposite side of the Markt from the Belfry are these colorful buildings that now is a row of great restaurants. We were hungry and needed something to eat and drink before we started our afternoon activities. We ate in the far left building.

Jeff and I had some of the local faire to eat and a Belgium lager; Jupiler.

After eating we walked over to our first attraction but along the way we were inundated with chocolate. Belgium chocolate is world famous and Bruges has 72 chocolate stores in the old town. This store had a rather weird way to present their chocolate. Four pieces of chocolate in isolation. I suppose there's supposed to be some kind of symbolism here. Our interpretation was to go to the next store.

Well, yes it's strange but it must be a big seller because just about every chocolate store was selling some form of it.

Finally to our destination. De Halve Maan (Halve Moon)Brewery tour. Founded in 1856 it's the only brewery that still operates in the old town. At one time there were over 3000 breweries in Belgium. Today, just 173.

Brugse Zot is the top beer brewed at De Halve Maan. It's won highest honors at a number of world beer competitions. It is available in the US too. Of course, this free sample came with the tour.

After the brewery tour we had to check out a couple pubs that Jeff had read about. On the way we spotted this rather unique bicycle. Not surprising they came up with something like this since bikes are a major form of transportation in Belgium.

On our way we walked through the Markt again. The lights at dusk made for a very nice affect. Our little bit of art, no symbolism attached.

Almost to our first pub when Jeff made a sudden stop. It was like the culmination of a life long search, finally, the Beer Temple. Nice store.

First pub we were looking for, Rose Red. Wonder where they got the idea for the decorations?

We wanted to sample as many Trappist beers as possible while in Bruges. There are 171 Trappist monasteries in the world. Of those, only seven are brewerieis; six in Belgium and one in The Netherlands. To be an authentic Trappist beer it must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery under the control of Trappist monks and the profits must go to some type of assistance program. At the Rose Red we had La Trappe. Very good!

Our last stop of the evening was a place that was on the list of best pubs in Bruges and also best restaurants, Cambrinus. They advertise 400 available beers. Their menu was about two inches thick with a few pages of food and the rest a list of their beers.

Walking back to the hotel, past the Belfry at night. The Belfry is a 13th century bell tower that contains 48 bells that play various tunes throughout the day.

DAY 2. We had signed up for a Segway tour of the city. What great fun!!. The Segways were very easy and our tour guide was great too. They took our camera to take pictures for us during most of the tour since they didn't trust us driving their machine and simultaneously taking pictures.

Here's a couple pretty scenes in Bruges.


This is a housing development that was built in 1607. It was only for poor woman and children and some nuns. Men were not allowed inside the walls of this area because they were such notorious drunks back at this time that they were not to be trusted. (Things really haven't changed all that much. Haha!) These little houses are very small and inhabited even today. Originally, they had no toilets until three community outside stalls were built just to the right of us in this picture. Long walk for the folks at the far end.

Another little housing area for poor women. The building with the 1713 on it is the smallest church in Bruges. To the left of the church is one of the little homes. Woman who lived here had to promise to pray in the church twice a day. Seems like a fair trade for a free house.

This area is a convent. Twenty nuns, whose ages range from 55 to 92, still live here. Guess they need to get a new recruitment program. I thought these trees were interesting. Kind of obvious where the wind normally blows from.

This is Love Lake. It got it's name because this is where the proper ladies and gentlemen strolled during Bruges' golden era. Apparently strolling was all that happened along the shoreline and the surrounding woods, hence the name, Love Lake.

After the Segway tour we walked to some of the sightseeing highlights in Bruges. This statue, entitled Madonna and Child, located in the Church of Our Lady, was the only work by Michelangelo to have left Italy during his lifetime. It's a relatively small sculpture, only about four feet tall.

This is the Basilica of the Holy Blood. During the Second Crusade in the 1140s a returning knight brought back a vile of blood that was purported to be the blood of Jesus Christ. That relic of the Holy Blood is kept here.

We were lucky enough to be there when the relic of the Holy Blood was displayed. The vile of blood is layed on a display table and covered with thick plastic. People are allowed to place their hands on the plastic cover and say a pray or just look. The priest there watches over the people and cleans off the plastic after each person finishes their viewing.

OK, Jeff said that's enough sightseeing. So we walked to Café Vlissinghe, the oldest pub in Bruges, founded in 1515.

We were tired from all the sightseeing and the recuperative powers of the amber nectar came through once again. A nice Belgium lager, Vedett.

Inside Café Vlissinghe. Just a single square room about 20' x 20'. Big clear windows. Very cozy.

The heat in Café Vlissinghe was supplied by this old coal burning stove. It was cranking out some big time BTU's.

't Brugs Beertje was on our list of pubs to visit and what a great place. It was packed but the guys working here were so friendly.

We each had a different Trappist beer. Westmalle Tripel on the left and a Rochefort 8 on the right. Both have just over 8% alcohol content. Rochefort also makes a 6 and a 10. Both beers were great!

The last pub on our list was down this little cobble stoned alley. I'm standing here in the entrance to the alley. Luckily we found it on our first walk by.

About a 100' down the alley we found Staminee de Garre. It's a quirky, two story pub, both floors are small rooms with creaky wooden floors. We sat at a table with a British couple and had so much fun talking with them that we forgot the picture of our beer, Gulden Draak, Golden Dragon; a very dark beer with a surprisingly light taste. Tasty!

Well, we finished Day 2 with a nice meal and stopped in at the ice cream shop next to our hotel. The end of a great day.

Bruges was a wonderful experience. It is such a beautiful city that each time you turned a corner you just had to say "Wow" another amazing sight. We had one more day in Belgium which we would spend about an hour south of Bruges but that little adventure is for our next blog.

German Hooters

No, not those kinds of hooters; the restaurant kind of Hooters. There is one, just one, here in Germany and it's only 30 minutes from our house in the town of Neunkirchen (translates to nine churches, so we assume there must be that many in the town). Hooters in Germany is almost identical to Hooters in the US. Same celebrity pictures on the wall. Same pretty young ladies in the same outfits. Wings tasted almost the same, maybe a little more butter flavor but, still, very good. You could put this Hooters down in any city in the US and not notice a difference. Well, except for the two things we saw. Beers are available in the big, heavy one-liter glass mugs and, like most other German restaurants, it's OK to bring in your dog and let it curl up under the table, which we saw a few of the Neunkircheners do.

Here's the Hooters in Neunkirchen. Don't ask me what that large cylindrical structure is in the background. I don't think there was any intentional symbolism there but seems to go amusingly with the Hooters theme.

A little strange drinking Dutch beer, in an American themed restaurant, in Germany, but, as the Hooters saying goes, it's "delightfully tacky, yet unrefined."

Standard hot wings. Kind of over did it with the curly fries.

Everything tasted great and it was a refreshing change from schnitzel. Mondays and Tuesdays are all-you-can-eat for ten euros so we'll probably get back there again when the hot wings low-level light goes on again.

Beer and Guns

Back during the Cold War, most of the US fighter bases in Europe built Hardened Aircraft Shelters (HAS) to protect their jets from a Soviet attack. These structures still exist today and are in use by the active US fighter wings at RAF Lakenheath in the UK, Aviano Air Base in Italy and at Spangdahlem Air Base here in Germany. Most NATO fighter bases have and use HAS's also. Of course, with the Cold War long over, there are numerous closed bases across Europe. One problem countries have when deciding what to do with these disused bases, what to do with the HAS's? By design a HAS is a nearly indestructible building. The expense to tear them down would be huge and, as a result, most countries have decided to just lock them up and leave them in place. Sembach Air Base is about 15 miles east of Ramstein, a 20 minute drive from our house here in Weilerbach. The operational side of the base has been closed for over 15 years. The runway was pulled up and the land is now used by grazing sheep. The HAS's at Sembach have been taken over by a number of companies for various uses; storage facilities, actual company offices or just painting the side of the HAS like a billboard. However, one use of an old HAS at Sembach is quite unique.

This is a side view of a HAS. The doors and front opening are on the left. Two A-10's could be pushed into a single HAS and then closed up. The fan tail on the right is the rear of the HAS. Doors at the rear could be opened and a jet inside could then run its engines with the exhaust diverted by the fan tail.

Here you can see the front doors of the HAS that would split and slide open to either side. Behind this front HAS you can see the unique use of one of the other HAS's at Sembach.

It's a Schützenhaus (Shooting House), Zur Zielscheibe (The Target). It's an indoor shooting range.

The folks at the Zeilscheibe removed the sliding doors from the front of the HAS, no small feat. Then they built and attached a gasthaus on the front of the HAS. Shooters fire their guns toward the back of the HAS. Last Saturday day Jeff and I were there and found gun enthusiasts from Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany, all participating in Gunsmoke 8, Westernschießen (Western Shoot). See the second story windows? That's where the owners of the gasthaus live.

Well, here's the beer part. Jeff and I had a Bischoff in the gasthaus and watched the shooting through the rear, soundproof windows. Even though the walls and windows were soundproofed, when the shooting started the windows reverberated and muffled booms could be heard.

Here's the gun part. Can't see the shooters all that well. There were actually two, parallel identical ranges. This is looking back into the old HAS. Most of the shooters were wearing western style clothing; cowboy hats, chaps, vests, a couple with sheriff badges. The music in the gasthaus and piped into the shooting range was country western but with German singers and lyrics. They were shooting all sorts of western rifles and pistols; muzzleloaders, winchesters etc.

Shooting clubs are very popular in Germany. In fact, at Oktoberfest two of the tents are specifically named after the German love of shooting; Armbrustschützen and the Schützen-Festzelt. Not surprisingly, you have a love of beer and a love of shooting, a beer establishment linked to a shooting range. Germans are so smart.

Bäckerei

Bakery. Germans love 'em. A German bakery is full of all sorts of breads, pastries, pies, cakes, tarts, brezels, fresh sandwiches and more. It's really a culinary delight. Bakeries here open very early, six o' clock, so that people on the way to work or school can stop by for a morning pleasure or for something to enjoy later in the day. Many bakeries are meeting places for the locals with a large sitting area to while away the day looking over the newspaper or talking with friends.

In the Kaiserslautern area, including the city and the surrounding towns and villages, the great majority of bakeries are Barbarossa Bäckerei. They have a large facility just a few miles from our town of Weilerbach where they bake up most of their goodies and then deliver them to all their stores around KTown. Our local Bäckerei, which Jeff and I stop by on Saturday mornings is a Barbarossa. There's another Backerei that's equally close to our house which is apparently a privately owned establishment, Schmitt Bäckerei. Beyond these two Bäckerei there are at least five other bakeries in the town of Weilerbach. (By the way, the Barbarossa name comes from Frederick I Barbarossa, King of Germany, Italy, Burgundy and Holy Roman Emperor, 1122-1190.)

The Barbarossa Bäckerei just a short walk from our house.

Bakeries really are everywhere in Germany. When you go to Praktiker (like Home Depot) there's a bakery there, right in the hardware store. Go into Saturn (like Best Buy) there's a bakery there. On Saturdays, here in Weilerbach, there's a little open market in the parking lot next to our Barbarossa Bäckerei where they have a vegetable vendor, a meat and cheese vendor and a bakery vendor. A privately owned bakery vendor with no affiliation to Bararossa Bäckerei. More bakery products not even a hundred feet from the front door of our Bararossa Bäckerei. And, every Saturday, the market bakery guy sells out his complete inventory. Go into almost any gas station of reasonable size and they'll have a little bakery section with fresh items. Walk along the shopping area in any city and there's going to be a number of bakeries, not more than a couple hundred feet from one to the next, with an open air window to the street where you can step up and get a hot brezel or any other fine pastry they might make.

Privately owned Schmitt Bäckerei also just a short walk from our house.

Germans often visit their local Bäckerei with their wicker basket in hand. It's certainly not uncommon to see them walk out with four or five loaves of various types of bread. Not surprisingly, their breads are wonderful. In fact, I'd say that the world's greatest food combination is an excellent piece of bread and some real butter. Germans do both very, very well. And everything else in a German Bäckerei is equally good. And, in fact, on this Saturday morning, that's where Jeff and I are going right now. Can't wait!

Smoking In Germany

There's still a good amount of cigarette smoking here in Germany. Although at least one German state, Bavaria, has banned smoking inside all public/commercial buildings, a good percentage of businesses elsewhere around the country choose individually to prohibit smoking on their premise. In fact, it's gotten to the point that some establishments post an image like the one to the right that shows smoking is allowed within.

A pack of cigarettes goes for around 5€, or $6.50 so it's not uncommon to see people, young and old, roll their own. You can still see cigarette machines in restaurants, bars and some stores and that leads to an interesting oddity here in Germany. A familiar sight walking through German neighborhoods, city, town or village, is a cigarette machine on the street. Here's a few pictures we took here in Weilerbach.

This guy can walk out of his house in the morning, or any time for that matter, and grab a pack before he climbs into his car.

This machine is at the bottom of our hill.

You have to be sixteen to purchase cigarettes in Germany. These machines require a valid ID be swiped through the sensor before cigarettes can be purchased. Then you can make your purchase with cash or credit card.

Some brands you recognize. Every pack has bold warnings that cigarettes cause all sorts of health problems.

Here's another interesting picture we took during our last visit to Munich. Seven cigarette machines lined up waiting to provide a cancer stick to whoever needs one. These machines were behind the food vendor at the Chinesicher Turm, which happens to be the second largest beer garden in Munich. On a nice day this beer garden can sit 7000 people and since it's outside, in spite of the new Bavarian law, any number of people could be smoking. But seven cigarette machines?

We're not smokers but, thankfully, a lot of places ban it even though there's no law prohibiting smoking. However, it's not uncommon to walk into a gasthaus and find ash trays on the table and folks smoking next to you while you eat. Like the US, the tide is turning, just a bit slower. Interesting that there's such a strong "green" movement here to protect their trees and wildlife but protecting humans seems to be somewhat on the back burner.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Those are the words President Kennedy spoke in Berlin June 1963 almost two years after the Soviet Union had constructed the Berlin Wall. Essentially, it translates to "I am a Berliner." What "I am a Berliner" means is up for a little debate.

Obviously, JFK meant to express his and the United States solidarity with the people of Berlin. The statement "I am a Berliner" does that quite nicely. Certainly, the thousands of Berliners that were in the crowd that day understood what the President was trying to convey and they greatly appreciated it. However, the citizens of Berlin who heard JFK that day also had a bit of a chuckle. Now, we're certainly not the Pro from Dover on the German language but we'd heard this tale and asked some of our German friends here why this was any kind of issue at all. The proper way to refer to yourself as a citizen of Berlin would be to say, "Ich bin Berliner." By adding the article "ein" to the statement the sentence now references a non-human subject noun and, it just so happens, a non-human "Berliner" is actually a jelly pastry that's very popular throughout Germany. So the people of Berlin heard President Kennedy say I'm with you, I support you, I stand with you but they also heard, "I'm a jelly-filled pastry."

There's some dispute about this intricate twist in the German language but who really cares, it's all in fun. In fact, you can buy a key chain near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin that has a small Berliner pastry on a chain with "Ich bin ein Berliner" stamped prominently on it.

Just so you know. Here's a picture of the culprit, the Berliner. You can buy three for 1.29 Euro. Some people call it a jelly doughnut but it's much lighter than a doughnut and really not heavy at all. The ones we bought had a strawberry filling but we've seen them with a cream filling too.

They're very good. Jeff said "Ich aß ein Berliner." I ate a Berliner. The jelly pastry, not a citizen of Berlin. At least he got it straight.