Benelux 2015: I've seen something in Belgium too!

Each time I visit my dad in Belgium, we end up spending more time traveling to other countries than within Belgium itself. Perhaps it's caused by my love for crossing the borders (even if they're already non-existent in EU) and visiting different countries. :) Moreover, I've already visited the vast majority of Belgium's tourist destinations. Another thing is that I may be confusing them all in my head due to my dad's habit of visiting several places within one day, which I've already mentioned a few days ago. :) As a result, I don't really get excited about going anywhere in Belgium anymore, but I have a good news: next time I'll be traveling to this country with a friend, who has never been to Western Europe! I know she'll be excited - actually she already is! - and that will let me get a fresh glimpse of Belgium as well! :) Because, in fact, Belgium is a beautiful country full of precious historic and cultural heritage. I shouldn't value it less just because I've been there for so many times.

And it's still possible to find places in Belgium, which would be new for me. For example, one Sunday afternoon my dad decided we should go to Lier. It's only about 50 km away from Brussels, but he also hadn't been there before.

St. Gummarus church in Lier

I'd say that Lier is a typical old Flemish town - rather small, but full of historic sights. The first object to draw our attention as soon as we arrived in the town was the huge St. Gummarus church. Looking at it, I started wondering, whether there've ever been enough people in Lier to fill it totally? Especially that there are quite a few other churches in the town. But I suppose that in the Middle Ages nobody would calculate, whether such an enormous church was necessary. The bigger church you've built - the bigger your love for God and your chances for salvation, that's how it probably worked. Thanks to it, nowadays we can see such impressive churches in most of Western European countries. Eastern Europeans weren't just rich enough and therefore had to build slightly smaller ones. ;)

The town hall and Belfry in Lier

Belgium is a great country for those, who are into visiting the objects from UNESCO World Heritage List. You can find them in nearly each old Belgian town. For instance, Lier has two of them: the Belfry and the Beguinage. The belfries served as watchtowers and alarm bell towers. There are 33 of them in Belgium (and some more in France) inscribed on the UNESCO list, so it takes time to see them all. :) Most of them are connected to a bigger building, such as a town hall (like in Lier) or church, but there are also some standalone ones.

The Béguinage in Lier

As for the Béguinages, they're small neighbourhoods of small houses, which served as communities for religious women, who were either single or widows and wanted to serve God without becoming nuns. Living in such a community guaranteed them quite a high level of personal indepenence, which was hard to achieve for women in those times. The Lier Béguinage was founded in 1th century, but most of houses come from 17th and 18th century. And there are 13 Flemish Béguinages on the UNESCO list, so yes, there's much to see in Belgium!

The Cathedral in Antwerp

Our another Belgian trip was to Antwerp - the country's second biggest city. I had been there before, but that was a long time ago, so I couldn't remember much. Speaking of big churches, the Antwerp Cathedral of Our Lady is so huge that it's even hard to take a photo of it! Only one of its towers has ever been completed (and is a UNESCO site as a Belfry - the other one in Antwerp is the town hall), but it's over 100 m high! I don't think I'd ever like to climb it - 52 m in Zwolle were more than enough! :)

Me and Het Steen

There's also a castle in Antwerp (and I love castles!) called Het Steen, which means "The Stone" in Dutch. It's quite a logical name for a castle, don't you think so? :) The castle was built to control the banks of Scheldt river, later served as a prison and nowadays it's some kind of a cultural centre. To be honest, I'd still like to come back to Antwerpen to visit the Jewish quarter, which I've never seen. Well, I think I'll have such a chance in a few months. ;)

My dad lives just next to Brussels, but we barely ever go sightseeing there. I'd lie if I said that I've seen everything in Belgium's capital - for instance I've never been to the famous Atomium. But my love for capital cities is so great that it's best to mantain it as a long-distance relationship! ;) This time we only went to the centre of Brussels for a couple of hours and have visited the German bookshop. There were two soldiers standing just next to it, but I guess in fact they were protecting some government building. The Belgian government had to take such measures because of the high risk of terrorist attacks, which you've probably heard of... I've even received some messages from my friends asking whether I was fine while I was in Belgium, but I should be honest with you: after spending a year listening to the news about the war in my country, my brain started filtering them and ignoring most of them. It doesn't mean that I don't care about what's going on in West Europe - I think the situation is really threatening and I'm not even sure whether it's possible to find any solution at this point. I just didn't want it to spoil my mood - for the same reason I rarely read Ukrainian news. 

German books :)

But back to the German bookshop, it's a really lovely place! Its owner comes from Germany, but has been living in Belgium and running the shop together with his wife since 1981. First I got scared when he started talking to me and asking what I was interested in, because "I can't speak German!!!", but after a while I realized that I could understand him perfectly well and I was even able to answer his question. :) We've had some interesting discussion about politics and the situation in Ukraine and he's helped me to choose books that might be interesting for me. One is about the global process of migrations from rural areas to the cities and the other one is about the economical and political transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. I've started reading the first one and I can understand it fairly well, although I think I should read with a dictionary if I want to improve my vocabulary in German. I'm also very thankful to my dad, who believes in me more than I do myself and who managed to encourage me to read in German. :) 

Last but not least, I've sent some letters from Belgium:

For Katalin in Slovakia

One to Katalin in Slovakia, written in 3 languages. Well, mostly in English, but I've used some poor Hungarian and even poorer Slovak. ;) She has already received it!

For Natasha in England

An intro letter for Natasha in England, who wanted to become my penpal after reading my interview on Penpal of The Week blog. I hope she's also received it by now. :) Yeah, I had to use boring white envelopes, because the ones I've taken from Ukraine weren't big enough for the postcards that I wanted to send. There was also an intro letter for Kim in Belgium (sent from Belgium!), who also found me through that interview, but I didn't manage to take a photo of it before the post office clerk took it away. ;) 

Tomorrow I'll finally be able to write about all the crazy things that have happened to me this week! For example, did you know that I've been to Poland today? :D But that's the least interesting one of all my news. :)