A Masterpiece Called Belgium [antikvár]

THE GLITTERING NATION OF BELGIUM And why it is often bewildering It never fails to amaze. To stun you, as if with a physical impact. You round the corner of a perfectly ordinary street—in Ghent, in Brussels, in Tournai and Bruges, in Antwerp, in Möns, in even a tiny village like Damme—and suddenly there rushes towards you a mammoth, medieval square. Soaring belfry towers of the 1200s, flying red-and-yeilow heraldic flags. Giant Gothic Cathedrals surging with vertical line into the sky above. Turreted town hails adorned with streaming pennants. Intricately sculpted cloth halls and guild houses of the 1300s, the 1400s. Again and again and again, on every visit, in an experience that never grows stale, you react with physical thrill to the most radiantly beautiful City Squares in all the world—in Belgium. In a country where sunshine is seen less often than the greyish light of the North Sea, the predominant impression is nevertheless one of Color. It is Color that best recalls a Belgian vacation: the bright, vibrant reds and greens of Flemish masterworks of the late Middle Ages, the Memlings and Van Eycks, the Breugels and Rubens, found in no fewer than 16 major museums; the warm, orange-yellow glow glimpsed through the casement windows of more restaurants per capita than anywhere else on earth, their interiors brightened by dancing firelight from open hearths, their entrances stacked with displays of red lobsters and black mussels, of exotic fi-uits and burgundy-colored wines; the festive rose-and-lavender stripes of canvas bath huts in serried rows along the 70-kilometer beach of the Belgian coast; the muted cream-colored lights of elegant casinos; the yellow arcs of light cast over the nation's entire highway system at night. 5