Day 10 - May 25

Distance: 17.3 miles (27.8 km)

Today was a great day, probably the best yet. 

We got up to go to mass at the cathedral at 11, but naturally didn't get up quite in time to make it there, so we stopped at a much closer, smaller church - St. Michael's - the same name as our home church in Albion, Nebraska!  I was very impressed with the whole thing.  The choir, made up entirely of 60+ year olds (same as the congregation mostly) was really good.  They sang old traditional Dutch hymns in perfect harmony and were accompanied by a very good organist.  The priest was a young, dynamic speaker who's sermon held my attention even though I couldn't understand it because it was in Dutch.  Surprisingly though, I was able to understand about 10% of the words he spoke and about 60% of the words on our hymn/liturgy read-along sheet.  This is probably because Dutch is kind of a mix of German and English - but mostly German.  Both English and Dutch are descendants of Low German dialects, which was the counterpart to High German, of which Modern German is a descendant.  Anyway, I understood just enough to sing along, maybe with terrible pronunciation, but I don't think anyone noticed.

If you're ever in Brugge, rent bikes.  It was probably our best decision of the trip so far.  My legs were getting quite tired of walking, and I needed them to be fresh for the long run I was planning in the afternoon.  Before my run, we first biked to the edge of the old city walls (which now are gone, but the canal circling them and the city gates are still there).  I began my run along the perfectly straight canal with tree lined bike paths on either side, running to the picture-perfect village of Damme.  Curtis biked ahead, visiting a bunch of other villages in the area too.  When I got to Damme, I climbed up into the old windmill and ascended the long spiral staircase to the top of the church belfry, where I had panoramic views of the perfectly flat but incredibly picturesque north Belgian countryside.  From Damme, I continued on to Oosterkerk, an even smaller village with another old windmill and church.  When I went up to the windmill in Oosterkerk, an old man came around from the other side and said something in Dutch.  I asked if he spoke English, and he replied, "Do you have your biceps?" as he pointed to his upper arms.  Confused for a brief second, I then saw he was starting to turn a crank and wanted me to help.  So I said, "of course!" and I gave the mightiest push I could muster on the board used to switch the direction of the windmill while he turned the crank.  After a minute, the windmill was facing the direction he wanted it to face.  He then said thanks, I said goodbye, and I was off running again.  That's the first and likely the only time I will ever help turn a Belgian windmill in the middle of a run.

After getting back to Bruges, I was pretty tired and my legs were starting to ache.  There was a bit of a pain above my left heel that hurt when I walked.  I realized that, even though I havent' been running more than I usually do, I've been walking and standing infinitely more!  We probably average 4-5 miles a day walking, and by the end of this day, I had also biked about 6 miles.  To be honest, I may have to cheat and start factoring some of this in to my daily mileage total, or my legs will fall off.  I'm thinking of counting half-distance for walking and 1/4 for biking.  Anyway, I actually ran just over 15 miles today, but we'll call it just over 17.

Bruges street

Windmill at Damme

Inner workings of the windmill

View of horse from inside the windmill

Canal between Damme and Bruges

Damme town hall

Damme church

View of Damme from belfry

Between Damme and Oosterkerk

Windmill at Oosterkerk

Oosterkerk

Day 9 - May 24

Distance: 7.4 miles (11.9 km)

We woke up after about 3 hours of uncomfortable sleep when the train station opened at 6am.  On top of that, we still had no place to stay.  We set out walking the streets of the city, and the ubelievable perfectness of Brugge's city center distracted us from our misfortunes.  Everywhere you looked, there were canals, 16th century red-brick houses, and huge gothic churches.  We eventually went to a hostel on the other side of town - still fully booked, but they allowed us to hang out in their bar and use their free wifi to find lodging arrangements elsewhere.  We finally found a hotel on the edge of the city for about $45 a night per person - outside our range but we had no other options.  Needless to say, we learned our lesson: always book ahead, especially on weekends.  We took a tram to the hotel and were checked in by the incredibly kind and gracious lady who runs the place.

We had done an outrageous  amount of walking by the end of the day (and the day before and the day before and... you get the idea).  I used Google Earth to measure the distance we walked through the streets of Brugge and it came out to at least 7 miles for the day - most of it with backpacks.  So obviously I took my run super-slow and easy.  I left from our hotel, which was literally on the edge of the city (an old farmstead with cows and horses was just over a fence about 50 feet from our room) and I ran to a forest across the road. 

Running on the muddy forest paths (it was sprinkling off and on) provided much relief from the stresses of the previous night and morning.  There were trails splitting off in every direction, and taking random turns, I ran for about a mile without seeing  signs of civilization.  Suddenly, though, I came upon a paved path through the trees with a  few bikers on it, and followed it a short distance before happening upon a castle - yes, a castle - seemingly randomly plopped in the middle of the forest.  There were signs with the name of it, but I can't remember what it was.  I'm guessing it was built by some eccentric rich guy in the 19th Century in the spirit of Romantism, which idealized  the legends and architecture of the Middle Ages, fairy tale-ifying it.
On top of happening upon a castle mid-run, I also came across an ancient Bruggian ritual-like sport, where an exclusive club of drunk old men shoot arrows straight up in the air at a pole with bells or ribbons or something on it.  It was hilariously bizarre.

All in all, a great run ending a very long and tiring day.

Church of Our Lady

Weird shoot-an-arrow-straight-up-at-a-pole club thing

Random castle in the woods

Day 8 - May 23

Distance: 8.3 miles (13.4 km)

Off to Belgium!  We took a bus to Antwerp (Eurolines this time.  They didn't have Student Agency).  I was expecting a lot from Antwerp.  Everything I've read says Antwerp is better than Brussels - more to do, more to see, not so bureaucratic and boring, blah blah blah.  Antwerp was surprisingly unspectacular.  Aside from the cathedral and the area around the town square with its ornate 16th century guild houses, the city failed to impress me (granted, we were only there for an afternoon). It's a bit dirtier, more traffic-clogged, and more architecturally bland than I imagined.  When we stepped through the doors of the city's most impressive and famous sight - it's cathedral - we were welcomed by a huge portrait of a smiling and waving Pope Francis next to a sign that read: "Entrance, 6 Euros." Oh, the irony. Since we'll be seeing plenty of cathedrals on this trip, we decided it wasn't worth it.

After checking out the town square and taking advantage of Starbucks's free wifi and free bathrooms, we walked to a laundromat to wash all our thoroughly stenchified clothes.  Curtis was nice enough to sit and watch the laundry while I ran.

I started my run along the River Scheldt.  You may have noticed that when I run in cities, I tend to take note of the architecture and urban design of the place I'm running in.  That's how I came to know Amsterdam as an urban planner's dream city, and that's also how I've come to see Antwerp as an urban planning nightmare... but a nightmare with tons of potential to turn into a pleasant dream.  The city center's chaotic web of streets was probably designed for carriages, bikes, and cable cars, but now is mostly choked up with automobiles.  I actually just learned (after the fact) that Antwerp has the second worst traffic in the developed world (after Brussels) - even worse than Los Angeles.  Also, unlike Dusseldorf, which chose to bury it's riverfront highway underground in the 1990s and top it with pedestrian plazas and trees,  Antwerp's wide riverfront is mostly consumed by a consistently traffic-jammed  road and large covered parking lots (but with a really cool castle thrown in the mix, a castle that one day ought to be surrounded by a big, green, riverfront park).  Luckily they do have a bike/pedestrian path along the riverfront, but I wanted to run on the other, greener side of the river, only I didn't see any bridges.  I thought, how can a city exist on both sides of the river without any links between the two sides?  Then I remembered that they're only linked with tunnels.  The River Scheldt is very wide and I suppose it's more economical and practical (with all the river traffic) to build tunnels instead of bridges.  I found the entrance to the pedestrian tunnel and had the bizarre mid-run experience of riding an escalator hundreds of feet down into the earth.  It was really strange running through the seemingly endless (though actually .25 to .5ish mile-long, I would guess) subterranean, white-walled tube in the ground, meeting bikers, rollerbladers, walkers, and even moped riders on my way to the escalator that would take me up on the other side.  The other side of the river had great views of the city and was far from the hustle and bustle of the city.

After returning to the laundromat and changing, we walked to the train station and took the train to Brugge (or Bruges).  Brugge is the capital of the Belgian province of West Flanders and was, at one time in the Middle Ages, the most important commercial city in Europe.  It's just a small Belgian city now, but it's former glory is evident everywhere.  Visiting Brugge is like going back to the 16th century, but with lots of tourists walking around.  It's extremely clean, and filled with miles of streets and canals lined with medieval-looking houses and shops.

After arriving in Brugge, we found a bar with free wifi, looked up hostels, and found one pretty close to us.  When we got there, though, they told us they were completely full.  Looking online, we found that all the hostels in Brugge were full.  We called one just to make sure, but to no avail.  We then looked up hotels and couldn't find any even close to our budget range.  So after lots of walking around, trying to figure out what to do - even looking for sheltered areas that we could potentially sleep in, we settled on the train station, which luckily was still open.  It definitely wasn't a fun night.  We got woken up by a security guard who told us we had to get out unless we had a ticket.  It was raining and cold outside, and we sure as heck didn't want to have to sleep out there, so I told him we were going to Gent the next morning but hadn't bought our tickets yet.  He told us we had to buy them now and walked us to the ticket machine.  We went through the process of buying the tickets, but when it came time to pay, we didn't have enough change and the machine wouldn't accept our credit cards.  The guard was nice enough to tell us we could stay and just buy our tickets in the morning.  Thank goodness!  I settled back down onto the cold, hard station floor, thankful that I wasn't on a colder, harder, wet sidewalk.  A not-so-good ending to a not-so-great day, but at least we had a roof over our heads, and it was free!

Antwerp Central Station

World War Memorial

Not an awkward statue

This guy gets a fancy monument for some reason

In the pedestrian tunnel under  the Scheldt

Escalator into the earth

View of Antwerp skyline

Random castle on the riverfront

Castle on the riverfront

Cathedral

Medieval guild houses

Antwerp Cathedral

Day 7 - May 22

Distance: 8.5 miles (13.7 km)

After sleeping in, we went to Dam Square to meet Erica from the cheese shop and basically just walked around the city center a while checking out random shops, tasting some Stroopwafel, hazelnut merangue, and a very good beer at a brewery.  I went back to the hostel in the late afternoon to begin my run.  I started along the harbor and turned onto the outer canal ring, taking a detour through Vondelpark.  I was getting so tired of stopping and starting to dodge bikes that I just took off when I got to the park.  The park is very long and big enough that it's not crowded even when there are tons of people in it.  I sped up to a 5:30-per-mile pace, which is usually a first-long-run-of-the-year-and-Nick-Knudson-and-Jerod-Shoneman-are-setting-the-pace- kind-of-thing (only my fellow UNK cross country runners know what I'm talking about there).  I had to slow back down when I got back on the streets, but I still felt terrific as I kept pace with the people on their bikes riding beside me. 

Anyway, on a side note, you should look at Curtis's blog: curtisluettel.blogspot.com.  He goes into a lot more detail than me and doesn't just talk about mundane things like running, eating, and sleeping.