Armistice

This plaque is just off the Grand Place in Mons. It reads:

Mons was recaptured by the Canadian Corps on 11th November 1918: After fifty months of German occupation, freedom was restored to the city: Here was fired the last shot of the Great War.

One hundred years ago this morning.

Inside the belfry

The clockworks and the bells. 

In The Nine Tailors, one of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, a man is murdered by being locked up in a church tower while the bells are being rung -- the noise kills him.

I was glad these bells were silent.

Les toits de Mons

Views from the belfry in Mons. The tower, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was built in the 17th century and is only 87 meters tall, but  when these are the views you don't have to be that high up.

More Grand Place

That's the City Hall on the left. The jumbled wood canopy on the right is an art installation.

Another Grand Place

This is in Mons, a charming town southwest of Brussels where I spent the night with a friend before going to Ghent.

Urban poetry

And we're back in Belgium.

This particular restaurant was in Mons, but I saw them in Ghent as well. Alas, I did not get a chance to sample their offerings, but the name made me laugh out loud. It's the perfect example of globalization: a restaurant chain with an Irish-sounding name selling what it claims is the original French version of a Mexican dish.

Update: And, I neglected to add, with a slogan Original French Tacos that's in English.

Urban poetry

Brussels, away from the touristy Centre Ville.

The poster on the old church reads Life escapes us, but art gives it back.

Saturday reflections

Street repair in Brussels.

I've been watching way too much television over the past several weeks, and it has been in equal parts revealing and excruciating. A few months ago I had never seen a single Lifetime movie, and now I have seen several. For a while they had the only storylines I could follow apart from half-hour sitcoms I'd already seen multiple times. (It was especially easy because they all seem to have variations on the same plot -- evil person pretends to be someone/something they're not and targets nice family.)

And this, I'm embarrassed to admit, was after I was back home with a universe of television channels to pick from. In the hospital in New York I didn't watch much TV, but I heard a lot of it from the next bed, mostly Judge Judy and daytime talk shows. In Brussels it was a lot of second tier BBC and Arrow dubbed in French.

I've yet to make it more than two episodes into any of the dozens of new series I could be watching, but that was also often the case before I got sick. I'm open to recommendations.

Early morning, Brussels

This is my room at the 9Hotel in Brussels, where I spent two nights to break up the long trek home from Rwanda.

I loved this light.

Urban poetry

If one of the top tourist attractions in your beautiful city is inexplicably a small statue of a young boy peeing, you might as well have some fun with it.

Here is the Manneken Pis feeling sportif. He's dressed in one of his hundreds of costumes several times a week according to a published schedule.

From inside the Town Hall

This view of the tower was taken from the interior courtyard.

La Maison du Roi

In Dutch, this building is called the Broodhuis, or Bread House, referring to the first building on the site in the 12th century. The French name King's House seems more appropriate to the extremely Gothic ruffles and flourishes of this 1873 renovation.

More of the Grand Place

Some of the guild halls (or maybe gilt halls would be more appropriate) along the west side of the square. (I posted a similar picture to the one on the left last November, but this one is much better.)

A really Grand Place

Someday I'll go to the Grand Place in Brussels with a wide-angle lens. But I did have better light and a better lens than last November.

This is the Town Hall, built in the 15th century. It's actually the only remaining medieval building in the square; the other buildings were damaged or destroyed by the French in 1695 and restored.

Saturday reflections

The Grand Place in Brussels. When I arrived in Belgium I spent one night in Brussels before heading on to Mons and Ghent, and two more nights on my way back from Africa. I didn't take many pictures, especially during the second stay when I was having trouble remaining upright, but I did go back to the Grand Place with a better lens and was rewarded with better light.

Urban poetry

I've never heard of Emile Claus, but I loved this statue near the Botanical Gardens in Ghent. He couldn't possibly look more Belgian unless they replaced his hat with a waffle.

Random things I saw in Ghent

An alley in the city center, bikes and flowers along one of the canals, lily pads in the Botanical Gardens (with a bonus out of focus frog) and a scaffolding in St Bavos in black and white.

Willows

A few last pictures from Ghent: the enormous willow trees along Lievekaai, and a nearby street.

Welcome to the working week

I know, I know, I'm not working. And I wouldn't be working even if I still had a job because I'm not well enough. Most of the doctors -- and there have been many -- that I have seen in the past several weeks have been wonderful. But some have been dismissive -- I can't tell you how many times I've been told that the fact that I got sick in Africa was “probably just a coincidence” and has nothing to do with what I'm experiencing now, no matter how many times I say that I was in excellent health before I went to Africa.

Now I have some proof. My primary care doctor got sick himself while I was gone, and closed his practice, so he wasn't available to consult on any of what's been going on. But I got my records from his office last week, and confirmed that at my annual checkup in May my heart rate was 76. The year before it was 70. So perhaps the fact that since Africa it rarely gets above 60 and spends an uncomfortable -- in every way -- amount of time in the 40's means that something did indeed happen when I got sick in Rwanda and that whatever it was has affected my heart.

One doctor actually recommended that I see a psychiatrist because I'm probably just anxious about retirement. I am quite experienced with anxiety, and there has been a lot of it recently, but I am not in denial when I say that retiring from my job is not even in the top ten list of things that are currently making me anxious. Boneheaded comments like that are.

The picture is from the Fine Arts museum in Ghent, where they are restoring the Van Eyck altarpiece from St Bavos Cathedral, one panel at a time. You can watch the restorers at work, then walk over to the cathedral and see the finished work.

About those displays

I really liked the way they identified the various pieces with numbered layouts (this is what I wish the Kirkland Museum did.)

But oh the way everything is jumbled together on a platform running the length of one wall! It's just a mess.