Belgium

After the creation of the European Union, Brussels served as the seat of the European Council and European Parliament. For the de facto European capital, it seems to be a rather humble and charming town with elegant museums and a gorgeous city square.

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

Many know Belgium for its amazing array of beers. Monasteries of the region of Flanders specialized in brewing their own recipe of beer for distribution to the populace. The ongoing production of traditional recipes over 800 years has resulted in the preservation of unique yeasts that create the particular, often sour, character of each beer. (Alcohol and the other flavors of the beer are created as yeast digest sugars in the fermenting process.)

The churches and cathedrals will remind you of Gothic style cathedrals from other countries across Europe.

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

For those who fancy cities with canals, there is a treasure trove of towns in Belgium that tie their history to the canal and sea trade across the Hansa league in Northern Europe. Legend has it that the towns of Bruges and Ghent thrived during the Hansa period. Then the canals started to fill with silt. Once the canals were unreliable for reaching the sea, the towns were relatively abandoned in favor of Antwerp, and therefore these medieval cities survived without significant modification for hundreds of years until they were revivified by tourism.

Bruges has a small inn and tavern alleged to be the first stock market in world. Merchant shippers would plan trading voyages to bring goods to Belgium for trade. The idea of the “Bourse” (Coming from the Inn’s owner, Robert van der Buerse) was that a merchant could afford a greater extravagance of expedition, including larger crew’s salaries, provisions and boats if other investors were able to take a share of the profits of the anticipated venture’s yield in exchange for up-front cash at the beginning of the voyage. The leverage of this “venture capital” would allow more merchants to undertake bolder shipments knowing they’d federated the risk beyond their own personal fortunes. Those with such funding at their disposal fared better than others. The cash payouts to the investors helped Bruges to become one of Europe’s most prestigious cities of the medieval era.

10023381716_90b1d7f1a9_k — The Location of the Inn of Robert van der Buerse, the first stock market

The town center of Bruges is a quaint cobble-stoned circular road in front of the towering cathedral tower. Restaurants and guild houses ring the outer circumference where you can enjoy a meal or a beer watching the bustle of the horse-drawn carriages. Guild houses with elaborately decorated rooftops often have ornamentation identifying their guild suspended from the front of the building.

Tourists can ascend the bell tower to see the intricate workings of the carillon controlling the massive bells. (Scroll down for a video of the carillon playing Bach’s 140th Cantata “Wachet Auf”)

As you would with Amsterdam or Venice, it’s advised to take a canal tour of the city to see how the merchants might have experienced it centuries ago. The canals become quite a beautiful spectacle after sundown as the lights reflect along the canals that span the city and the swans have their run of the town.

Progressing further toward the coast, by rail or by boat, you come to another quaint canal-side town of Ghent. Here a massive castle called Gravensteen towers over the town center.

After Bruges and Ghent lost prominence the harbor of Antwerp rose instead becoming the central port of the region. Antwerp feels like a much larger city than even Brussels. It has a remarkable anthropology museum that is a bit of a stroll down the Scheldt river from town. The center of Antwerp is a massive cathedral surrounded by small shops and square. The architecture of the city squares of Antwerp and Brussels are of equal grandeur.

Also deserving of mention is one of my favorite painters, Hieronymus Bosch, who lived in this region of Europe before it became Belgium. His fantastical paintings are narratives of mortals living in a bizarre cartoon-like alternative world with peculiar beasts, machines and plants. Many of the museums I visited across the country had some of his works and the works of other artists inspired by him.

You can explore some of his paintings on a video tour with me: