|
DELIGHTS OF
BELGIUM
by Janice Rossen
Most
of the guide books I have read on the subject relate relevant facts about
Belgium--and in this nationalistic context. The country is split between the
Flemish (Dutch culture) and the Walloons (French), and the two languages are
used in these different sections. The excellence of Belgian beer is invariably
mentioned in all the guides, as an inducement to travel to this part of Europe,
and the food generally has a good report as well. But in nothing that I read
before visiting there could I get a very clear picture of a place that seemed
to be . . . well, sort of Dutch and sort of French, though of course uniquely
Belgian. What
happened first was like nothing so much as a Frank Capra film. Our first
evening in Bruges, we were walking past one of the many restaurants, and
through the window I noticed a man playing a violin. Closer inspection revealed
another man seated at a keyboard, and a bass player as well. They formed one
part of the compass, thumping and strumming and providing the foundation, while
the violinist roamed around to various tables, bending and swaying to whatever
melody he was coaxing from the strings. It was enthralling. They played with
such verve!, smiling and laughing, and even carrying on a conversation between
musical phrases with various diners. I have only seen this sort of thing done
on the silver screen, when Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur were serenaded in a
classy New York restaurant, and everything was in black and white. This
extremely fortunate chance, on our first evening, launched the first of many
glorious meals during our sojourn in Belgium, which featured me ordering everything on the menu that
sounded wonderful and my husband
picking up the bill at the end and remarking how very reasonable it all was.
This dual theme of contentment extended to several aspects of our trip: if you
are relatively Europhile, two people of disparate tastes can be happy pursuing
different interests in pretty much the same spot. I pondered Flemish art, while
he thought about history. He went around galleries with the little museum
headsets that tell you all about the paintings, and I flitted from spot to
spot, just looking. He climbed to the top of the belfry while I went to the
flea market. We
both ate extravagantly. Nearly every
meal in Belgium seems to come 1) with frites
included, and 2) in at least three courses. Our first evening (to return to the
incredible violinist) featured a set course meal with a goat cheese salad
followed by salmon (with frites) and a chocolate sundae. (I'm sure there is a
much fancier name for this, the universal dessert of that part of the world,
but I have forgotten it.) I have seldom seem that large a round of goat cheese
being offered to one diner alone, and the salmon arrived with a bearnaise sauce and an entirely separate
bowl of frites. It would be a mistake
to think of these as French fries,
though that is probably their technical definition. They seem a very superior
way to prepare potatoes. But
I have not even begun to describe the salads which we usually ordered at
lunch-time--this dish comprises a stern test of a nation's true relationship
with food. Complexity and artistry perhaps characterize them the best: a salad
with tuna or smoked salmon, say, (as denoted on the menu) would usually arrive
with hard-boiled eggs, wedges of tomato, four or five different vegetables in
tiny julienne strips, a few beets for colour, and finely-chopped parsley over
the whole. (And, sometimes, an
accompanying bowl of frites, with
mayonnaise.) I must admit, we did drink beer with almost every meal. Duvel is one of the most well-known,
which is sweet, rich, and dark--rather like crimson velvet with gold tassles.
My own favorite was Trappiste Westmalle,
which is dark, dark brown and deliciously foamy. My husband likes wheat beers,
glowing, lyrical, and golden yellow (yet another pleasant divergence in taste). Naturally,
we spent one evening devoted intently to a pot of mussels, which was so enormous
that it could have served the people sitting at the next table, as well. The
mussels arrived in an enormous clear plastic globe, the top half of which was
deftly overturned onto another base in order to hold the empty shells. They
were steamed in white wine and swimming in large chunks of onion. We sat
outside in a small courtyard, watching the other tourists roam past, examining
restaurant menus posted outside, and enjoying the summer evening sunlight. In
midsummer, dusk doesn't come until about 10:00 at night, which draws one
outside to sit at a cafe table and reflect on the events of the day. The
only mild disappointment was a very fancy four-course chef's meal at 't Dreveken, which fell short only
because it attempted to be much more refined than the natural Belgian genius
for cooking seems to be. (The first course, a mound of smoked salmon large
enough for a main dish, was the best, since it was the simplest presentation.)
We also suffered, on this particular occasion, from the American Traveller's Curse--a
calamity which overtakes everyone from time to time (and which I have no doubt
we ourselves inflict on others). It consists of smugly settling down to a table
in a foreign land, and suddenly realizing that the party at the adjoining table
are not only talking English, but are insisting on expounding on their problems
with roofing back in Ohio, or a quarrel which they have had with the tour guide
on their last excursion. It is mortifying in the extreme. Worse
still is having to endure the comments that fellow Americans tend to make while
viewing paintings in a museum. ("Doesn't the Frick have one of
those?") The reason that this is the most harrowing experience to endure
is that it reveals my own snobbishness--while schooling myself to stern silence,
I am longing to say, "No, the one in
the Frick is a Van Eyck." In fact, what all of this
demonstrates is that we are all, as hangers-on at the tail end of a long
tradition of Western civilization, extremely lucky: odd, angular, and just
plain weird as much of Flemish art is, you can look at it with relatively
little specialized knowledge and really see
it. Realism--rather, exquisite detail--is a high value for the late medieval
painters. They are mostly religious subjects, and therefore any given genre is
instantly recognizable. In a Van Eyck painting, you can see the carpet fraying
on its edges, or a minute reflection in a convex mirror. In a Rogier van der
Weyden (I certainly am boasting), every fold on a woman's dress will be
distinctly pleated in orderly rows. Shoes in these group portraits--along with
elaborate headpieces--are a constant source of fascination. Each stone of a
building or wall will be pricked out in precise, minute detail--although these
painters make it look effortless. It is astounding.
The
musicians who serenaded us that first evening never appeared again, though we
looked for them every night. We did, however, come to know our hostess, the
owner of the Rembrandt-Rubens Hotel, and Madame
is a most impressive lady indeed. We learned that she deplores Dutch cuisine
("all very sweet sauces, made
with peanuts," she insisted, shaking her head), and she has what is
probably a medieval wall fresco in her sitting-room. The hotel itself was built
in the 16th century, and you can see St. George killing that dragon in a
stained-glass window, on your way down to breakfast every morning. Bruges
is a magical city, just as all of the guide-books promised. And somehow, it is
the very intangibleness of that grace that renders it so appealing. It doesn't
sound like very much, to say that it is a walled medieval city with some
canals, some ornate brick buildings, and a few canals with swans, ducks and
geese. Still, it is the unassuming naturalness of all of this sophistication
that makes a visitor feel able to see it, to respond, to react with pleasure.
You can sit outside late at night, among the strings of white lights across the
courtyard, and feel a citizen of the centuries. If you like, it can even come
with frites. Janice Rossen has a passion
for medieval cities, provencal cuisine, and Flemish paintings. |
|
TM
"Not
bad," commented my husband, as we were strolling through the palatial 15th
century house of Jan Gruuthuse in Bruges, "to be the top Spanish guy in
the Netherlands." In an age of increasing "global village"
thinking, it startles one to be in a country where the political and military
struggles of several centuries ago appear in the very stones of the buildings.
The Dukes of Flanders, I learned, once owned most of what is now The
Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, and it was they who built dikes to drain
the "flooded land" and make it habitable.
Everyone
who has been to Belgium speaks very knowledgeably about one particular
altarpiece, "The Lamb of God" attributed to Van Eyck, which is in
Ghent. Like most works of art that are spectacular, the only thing one can
really say about it after viewing it is "c'est entendu." But of course; it
is as magnificent as can be imagined. Moreover, (my usual helpless
response to revelations like this), it is big.
Somehow the scale dazzles, especially when coupled with the absolutely rigorous
detail. The Musee des Beaux-Arts Royaux
in Brussels is the same way (that is very
big). And it is perhaps typical of Belgian culture that they resolutely close
between noon and one o'clock. You can see the museum guards eating their lunch
in the--what else?--excellent cafeteria
downstairs. A glass of red wine, a superb salad, a bowl of perfectly cooked
spinach (flavoured with a dash of nutmeg), followed by cappuccino and a small
bar of noir, intensely dark
chocolate, and you are ready to troop back upstairs and contemplate Bruegel and
Bosch again. It is eminently civilized. The great thing is that it is done
without any particular fuss.