Showing posts with label Belgium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belgium. Show all posts

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Continental Out-Takes

Just a few, as we left the Continent...
Another Bosch image that appeals

God as air traffic controller

All kinds of traffic

A Jordaens piece, originally identified as a lost work by
Michaelangelo de Merisi, known as Caravaggio, also known as
Mr. Fruity Butt Pants

In late Medieval/Renaissance eschatology (look it up), tooting
was associated strictly with the damned

Millet, Scene in Antiquity, with Fly-By

Brussels' Mannequin Pis in a clever disguise

Nice ghost sign

Horta gets a restaurant, not a shopping center

In Flemish, duvel means devil

WWI French hand-gun practice target...early in the war

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

In De Vrede

Our long range plans do not call for our being in this part of the world again for a few years, so a return to St. Sixtus Abbey and its restaurant/visitor center In de Vrede was in order. As in past visits, there were pleasant surprises, and we got away with a few more souvenirs. See my previous post http://roadeveron.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/best-belgian-beer-ever-so-far.html or Wikipedia's good article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westvleteren_Brewery.
In the abbey's visitor carpark
















#12, just as great as I remembered it; we had lunch, and then
another, just for good measure

















The abbey is very popular with bikers
















Perhaps a bit less so with cyclistes; it's way out in the boonies,
a few miles from Poperinge, the hops-growing center of this
beeriest of nations
















Mostly what you see, this time of year, are locals, and beer
tourists from all over the world

















Flanders fields today
















Of course, if you care to look, there are ample
reminders that this is an abbey and not a
brewery; "We brew beer in order to be monks."






















The abbey is now down to 20 brothers (Vicki
asked), which ought to concern discerning beer
drinkers everywhere...

In Flanders Fields

En route to Calais, we stopped in Ypres to make good on our vow last year to see the In Flanders Fields museum at the Cloth Market.
Another canal-side camper-stop (improvised)

The Cloth Market; rebuilt in the 1920s and re-opened in 1932; the
original, centuries old, and one of Europe's very greatest buildings,
was destroyed by the Germans quite early in the war; In Flanders
Fields is in the Cloth Market

Last good days, 1913

Depicting the first battle of Ypres (there were several)

Most of the death and carnage was caused by artillery

And machine guns

The Germans initiated the use of gas warfare at Ypres in 1915

The countryside is dotted with beautiful little ponds like this;
enormous craters resulting from underground warfare...dig under
the enemy's lines, set a charge, blow him up; one was so large
its detonation was heard in London

Ypres...early in the war

A Canadian enlisted man's kit

German

American...Ypres was contested throughout the
war, as armies advanced and retreated over the
same ground for 4 years; the Americans didn't
arrive until 1918, but some of the worst of the
fighting remained

French (somehow I missed the British)

Ypres by 1916 was a wasteland

After the war, temporary housing; Churchill had proposed leaving
Ypres as it was as a memorial to the hundreds of thousands who
died in its precincts; the Belgians refused this and rebuilt

Memorials

One exhibit simply names and identifies all who were killed
here

A sad long list of all the wars since "the war to end all wars"

McCrae's famous poem


Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Brussels Art Nouveau, 2

Continuing our art nouveau tour in Brussels...
Inside Schaerbeeks's PS#1

Exposing kids to beauty, and history

Thus

Hundred-year-old signage, too beautiful to replace

Ditto; a family lives at each of the district's schools

Ecole Primaire #1; the architect, H. Jacobs, is listed at the bottom


But wait, there's more...the school gymnasium
down the street

Beautiful, but not open to us

Where we are

Panning around

Another art nouveau, criticized by our guide as
"art nouveau baroque." that is, over the top (so
to speak)

I thought it was pretty neat

Next stop, back downtown, is the former Waucquez store, Horta's
last art nouveau undertaking, with just traces of the style


Inside

It's the museum of comics

But still identifiably art nouveau