May 12: Brugge

Groeninge Museum and Belfry

So far Brugge is definitely very different than Amsterdam. There are many kids, families and cars around in comparison. It’s hard to come here from Amsterdam when we finally acclimated to so many bicycles being around and the way things worked over there. But all in all Brugge is so beautiful and way less smoky. I feel a lot closer to finally getting a breath of fresh air, literally. Not to mention it is very chilly here and quite a bit colder than Amsterdam was. We even got our first real bit of rain today and had to layer up our clothes!

Today our schedule went a little like this: we woke up and went to the Groeninge Museum located along one of the canals. This was by far one of the most religious painting museums we have visited. The museum consists of Flemish primitive paintings, all of which are filled with beautiful colors with dark backgrounds. One of my personal favorites was “Last Judgment” by Pieter Pourbus, which was an oil-based painting. Kendyl pointed out that on the lower right part of the painting, the artist originally looked like he was going to draw a claw over a person's leg but changed his mind and the lines are left in blue and are very discreet. The theme of this painting was very deep and harsh, wrapping around the ideas of Heaven versus Hell and what Tribulation will look like.

Another painting I found interesting was a Gerard David painting of The Judgment of Cambyses. In it the Judge Cambyses was being skinned alive for his corrupt and unfair decisions as a town judge. One thing I felt was off was that all the people in the painting showed no emotion in this except a select few in the background. It shows the harshness of their feelings toward him to be able to skin him alive without showing any emotions of sorrow or pain for him. Overall, the museum consisted of many different versions of the Madonna, Last Judgment, and Christ’s Crucifixion. The different versions of these were fascinating because they were all so similar but so different at the same time.

Besides this, I learned the three main painting styles previewed in the museum were naturalism which reflects industrialization, impressionism most commonly connected with Frenchman Claude Monet, and Symbolism which shows spirituality and the mystery of the souls of people or objects.

After the Groeninge Museum we took a break for lunch and some of us then had delicious authentic Brugge food. Wanna guess where it was, yes you are correct, SUBWAY! After we ate we hiked up about 366 stairs to the top of the Belfry to overlook Brugge. It was absolutely gorgeous and definitely worth the workout. The view was perfect the day we went up because the sky wasn’t too cloudy and it was great for pictures. The Belfry tower is important because it is a 13th century medieval bell tower built in center of Brugge and is one of the symbols for the city. The tower was mainly used for a lookout and housed city treasures as well as archives. Some of these were seen on different levels of the tower which we were able to stop and look around at in a few different rooms. All I kept thinking as we were going up the stairs was that I couldn’t imagine how people did it back in the day with all of there heavy clothing on or if they had to run up and down there when being attacked. Must have been exhausting..

After the belfry we were released to have the rest of the day for free. Many of us went to take naps, get dinner, went shopping, and some even went to visit other museums for those who were not “museumed out” yet ;) Then many of us went to bed to prepare for the next morning's bike ride to the small town of Damme. We also had plans to go to The Procession of the Holy Blood later that afternoon. To see this you can go to youtube and look it up to get an idea of what it is like. Clella and Sylvette were able to get us practically front row seats to it!

Sorry it took so long to get our blog out on Brugge, hope you all are doing well and know we love and miss you all very much (as I am speaking for everyone to their families cause I know we all miss our lovely family and friends). Hope you enjoyed the update on Brugge as well as learned a little piece of what we are experiencing here on this blessed trip. ☺

-Jodi