It was raining cats and dogs in Bruges when we went out on Christmas Eve morning. We wandered around the main market square for a bit, then started to look for a nice, dry museum to visit. But I did manage to get a few good pictures. Again, the wonderful roofs so typical of these cities.
We found the Bruges Historical Museum. This guy is a herald doing his best to draw visitors in. He is in period costume, has a lovely voice--and is not alive. He's a really wonderful animatronic. No hitch in his voice or movements, realistic skin, so lifelike. Fun to see!
But, we decided to go to another museum--the History of Beer Museum! We had to climb four flights of stairs to get there. This sign helped...
This is St. Arnold, one of the many patron saints of beer.
This is Ninkasi, goddess of beer, dating back to at least 1800BCE. The beer museum left out which country Ninkasi was from. The beer museum left out a lot of bits of information. But it did say that her name means "The lady who fills the mouth". There was a religious aspect to brewing beer in many cultures, which makes me think of Ben Franklin's opinion that "beer is proof that God loves us."
And this is a Peruvian figure of a woman who makes beer. Apparently beer was the province of the noble women, not only in this culture but in others. My favorite beer saint is St. Elfelda. She was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who suddenly learned that King Aethelred (don't you just love those names?) and his entire retinue were coming for a visit. In those days (and later), kings saved some money by staying for extended periods with the nobles of the kingdom. Elfelda was worried that she wouldn't have enough beer, so she prayed and was blessed with an endless supply. My kinda saint! Her saint's day is October 22, a good excuse for another holiday, eh?
With Belgian beers, duvvel indicates a dark beer, usually, and triple indicates lager. But really the terms indicate more or fewer ingredients used to make the beer. Once again, the beer museum was short of a lot of detail, so that's about all I learned.
At the end of the tour, we could each taste 3 beers. We chose several, from sour (REALLY sour, ack) to caramel brown to dark. They were all Belgian beers, from different breweries, but quite a few were brewed by monks. Monasteries were the repositories of agricultural and other knowledge. When they couldn't remain self-sustaining through farming, they turned to brewing beer and the monasteries survived
This was, amazingly enough, my favorite beer. Made from cherries and it tasted like cherries, Kierk in Flemish. Never thought I'd like such a beer, but I did, and bought three bottles of it in the shop. Lovely color, isn't it?
Belgians use specific glasses for specific beers, hence the different shapes of the glasses in this picture. The bars have to stock a LOT of glasses. One of the guide books we read said that if a bar is out of the correct glass, the customer will be informed so that they can choose another beer if they wish.
The rain had stopped by the time we finished at the beer museum, so we wandered around town a bit. Bruges is known as "The Venice of the North". There are canals throughout the city, hence lots of lovely bridges. And I loved the reflections of the buildings in the water.
Gets dark pretty fast there.
Earlier in the day, we had asked at an info shop where we might attend a Christmas Eve service. There was a church that was pretty close, so we walked over there. The church was really, really cold, but the minister/priest (we're not sure what the service was--Episcopalian?) was very warm and welcoming. The service was in Flemish, but the Lord's Prayer, called the Credo in the program, sounds the same in all the languages I've heard it in. Same cadences, same pauses, same rises and falls in pitch. I've heard it in French, German and now Flemish, besides English, and even without a printed program and no matter what it's called, it is obvious when the congregation gets to that part of the service. I find that so interesting, different languages are nevertheless very similar in some ways.
It was a charming, friendly service, partially because the priest got the kids (kinder) involved at every turn. They were kept much too busy to get bored--a far cry from the services I attended as a child. Probalby kept them warm, too! The weirdest part of the service was the drummer, though. He sat on a box drum and played along with the Christmas carols. I can't say that he enhanced them--I'd never thought of Silent Night as a waltz, but "Dancing with the Stars" could have choreographed something to this version: BOOM duh duh BOOM cha cha, BOOM duh duh BOOM cha cha. And the drummer was either ahead or behind the beat on every song! Every. Single. One. I started twitching about half way through, though I do know his heart was in the right place. The twitching made me slightly less cold, anyway.
We stayed for the whole service, and sang the Christmas carols, which were printed in the program--some of them in English! The service ended with "Go Tell It on the Mountain", in English. In fact, most of the carols we've heard in stores and through speakers on the street are in English. And all the bars we've been in, all through the country, have been playing American music--old stuff. Dean Martin singing "That's Amore" (some customers sang along with that one), "Fly Me to the Moon", other classics and standards from the 50's on up. And Marvin Gaye, "Heard It on the Grapevine"! Music I haven't heard in forever, great old stuff.
After the service, we found a place to have dinner, a rather forgettable place, then wandered some more and took pictures. This is the 2nd tallest church spire in Belgium, at the Church of Our Lady. It used to be a landmark for incoming ships. Now it's simply beautiful in the lights of Christmas Eve.
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