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1998 BRUGGE, Belgium- Disney, eat your Goofy heart out.
If ever there were a theme park beyond anything in Walt's wake, it's this leftover from the Middle Ages, the old-town neighborhood of Brugge, that somehow has slipped unbruised through two enveloping world wars, and happily proclaims, "Here's 15th century in your face, kind visitor."
Sure, somebody built it, like any tourist Mouseketeer trap. But this happened so long ago that the ducks in the surrounding river and criss-crossing canals claim no kinship to Donald. Having had hundreds of years to age and mature, this medieval melange of Gothic, Baroque, and various lowlands styles, a treasurehouse of art and craft, has benefited from great preservation consciousness and a human procession intent on making a pleasant place to inhabit. The Flemish, whose Belgian precinct this is, figure they got it right in the dim and distant first place. Why update or call in the developers?
Someone might feel that way about Disneyland in a couple of centuries - maybe - but here's the difference. Brugge vibrantly lives and is lived in by genuine people, occupants for generations. Yes, many do prosper off the wayfarers' francs, but the burghers are so polite and friendly that I wonder why I've given Belgium a miss for so long. Despite the movie, "If It's Tuesday It Must be Belgium," this small country is worthy of much more than a drive-by shorting.
The walled old town is largely limited to foot traffic. Entered by a drawbridge at Kruispoort, it is a stroller's dream, a flashback to times when you might have gawked at the carriages bearing such kings as Charles the Bald and Charles the Bold, the latter presumably enjoying better hair days.
Carriages yet abound, pulled by smartly-groomed horses, driven by men (and a few women) in captain's hats, skimmers, and derbies but for hire by anybody. The civic-minded horses do their bit for local hygiene and cleanliness by wearing outhouse devices.
Available, too, are open motor launches, prowling the canals that are tunnels of love for ancient architecture. Some of the structures, painted in vivid shades such as peach, cherry, cream, and lemon, are stunning brick houses with steps rising to a triangular point on either side of third- and fourth-story facades. Graceful stone bridges, the elder bearded with ivy and dating to 1390, could make you bald if you're too bold to duck at the pilot's command. Lilac windowpanes, much older than those on Boston's Beacon Hill, have come from another canal town, Venice.
Walking along narrow cobbled streets, through broad squares edged with spires and towers of majestically decorated municipal buildings and churches, snooping in thriving outdoor marketplaces, you feel blood pressure plunging to a very peaceful level, in tune with softly chiming carillons.
Tiny angelic marble faces - called "diamonds" - gaze at you from their timeless hangouts on walls and storefronts. Swans huddle and honk in a sequestered park beside the canal. In the leafy courtyard of a 13th-century convent called the Beguinage, aged, highly-risen poplars - possibly coverted by scores of years of winter winds - bow to the east prayerfully. Within the chapel the voices of Benedictine nuns give new sweetness to Gregorian chants.
In a time before most people could read, shopkeepers hung pennants outside their doors depicting the nature of the business. A shoemaker. A lacemaker. Such pennants still fly amusingly, some with a modern touch. Its avid tongue out and ready for action, a lion decorates the Haagen-Dazs emporium.
Yes, plenty of recognizable brands of sneakers, apparel, electronic equipment are to be found. Charlie Rockett's Tex-Mex restaurant is around the corner from our hotel. You can't avoid these things even in the Middle Ages. But, conforming to the decor, they don't spoil the atmosphere. And at least the plumbing is 20th century. Nobody dumps garbage or sewage on unlucky passersby from an upstairs window as customary when the town was young.
Nevertheless, Brugge's staples remain those of the country itself: lace and chocolate in all imaginable shapes and forms plus high-test beer.
"Two or three of our beers and you might be walking on all fours," chuckles a hardy, quick-stepping guide, Gustav Ulster, who has lived here almost three-quarters of this century, and likes also being part of a much earlier century. "It is very good beer" (indeed!) "but I advise you to stop after one. Savor it."
"Let's get straws and split one," says my friend, Aurelio. "We can get to the bottom of it."
But Gustav says that's not quite the spirit, while pointing to a landmark dedicated to the holy spirit: the bell tower of the Church of Our Lady that soars like an arrow 400 feet above the town.
Getting to the top of it, he says, "took 18 generations of masons and bricklayers in the 13th and 14th centuries. Imagine all those men who worked their lifetimes and never saw their work completed. That spire crowns one of the highest brick buildings in Europe.
"Inside you must see Michelangelo's sculpture of the Madonna and Child."
Pure serenity in marble.
"I think it is our proudest possession, but many think it is the Holy Blood." Every Friday at the Basilica of the Holy Blood, a transparent receptacle is displayed containing small coagulated splotches said to be drops of Christ's blood. Supposedly the treasure was collected in the Holy Land during the Second Crusade in the 12th century by Thierry d'Alsace, count of Flanders, and bestowed on Brugge. A sanguine story.
Sanguine steak and lamb chops took the raw, damp edge off the previous evening at a small but extraordinary wine bar called Heer Haewyn. Flames leaping at a hearth meant warmth, at the least, as we peered through the drizzle-spattered window, seeking shelter and dinner.
"Any food?" I said hopefully.
"A few things from the grill," answered Leen ver Kempinck from behind the bar. "Frans will take care of your dinner. Please sit near the fire. I'm called Mrs. Fetchwine around here."
Ah, such things. With exquisite timing and feeling for the meat, and the baking potatoes, Frans van den Heede tended the wood-burning fire, cooked, and waited on the room as he's done for two decades. Simple, and simply marvelous.
Dinner at the Hotel Walburg a night later is a different proposition. Unexpected elegance at a virtually undiscovered prize. Just opened, the Walburg, a severely handsome whitewashed stone building of three stories, is really a Brugge juvenile, a mere 137 years of age. It has had several lives, though - mansion of an affluent family, hospital, rooming house, finally busted-down derelict.
However, the death certificate wasn't final. An ambitious young couple, Gaston and Bieke Vandewiele-Nuytten, felt its ruined pulse, sensed a flicker of life, and put the derelict into rehab. With loving care, admirable taste, a bundle of borrowed money, and remarkable patience with contractors over a period of three years, they brought their dear Walburg back to health, and, they hope, self-supporting respect as a hotel with 13 beautifully-appointed, high-ceilinged rooms and a back garden.
With ornate moldings, Grecian statuary, the grand staircase and balustrades restored, and thick carpeting roaming up and down, Walburg exudes both freshness and experience as a comeback kid.
"It will be a struggle for a long time," says Gaston, "but we are willing. She runs the hotel, I operate the kitchen." That means he's the chef, an excellent one.
As the only guests this weekend, we feel installed in a scene from "Last Year at Marienbad," the film about a bygone exclusive European resort. Alone in the chandeliered diningroom, beneath a bouquet-clutching plaster maid in her alcove, and amid tables laid out in gorgeous linens, silver and candles, we undergo a command performance by Gaston, a long-order cook with a short guest list.
Classical music plays as each course is delivered by Derk, the waiter who looks like Forrest Gump in a tux. Scallops, shrimp, salmon, asparagus, rack of lamb pass in review, A to Z: artichokes to zabaglione.
In their palaces, Charles the Bald and Charles the Bold never had it so good.
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