Rivers & Roads

Yesterday I decided to take a little day trip to Brussels! I had gone for a day before with Simon when I visited him in December, but because of the dreadful "camera falling in the canal" incident there is no evidence. Simon's father had suggested a wonderful art exhibition at Bozar, which is a very nice art center in Brussels, on  Michaël Borremans. I was not familiar with Borremans work before seeing the exhibition, but the exhibition really blew me away. He is a Belgian artist who now lives and works in Ghent. His paintings are incredibly beautiful and yet haunting and almost frightening at the same time. Through his technique you can see his influences come from painters such as Degas and Manet but his subjects are of another realm. He creates these scenes where the background give no indication of a real location and never is the subject looking at the viewer. The eyes are always down cast or looking past you, making it hard to know if this is a true individual or just an object. In his later works he starts to work more with film and photography as well. If anyone gets a chance to see his work, I believe the exhibition is going to Tel Aviv and Dallas next, I would highly recommend it. 

After Bozar I walked around the city for a while and found the Botanique. It also had a nice exhibition going on inside about immigration but it was all in French so it was a little hard for me to grasp. But there are really beautiful gardens outside, a nice place to sit and read or get out of the city for a minute. Brussels is definitely a  much larger city than Ghent, it feels more hectic and there are many more tall office buildings. But it is still a really beautiful city, lots of great old architecture and many wonderful parks around the city which is really nice. Also it is only about a 30 minutes train ride away from Gent so it is a perfect place to go for a little get away. Enjoy the pictures! Also below I have attached a link to the new Gent in Motion video! I sent out the trailer for this video before I came to Gent and they have recently come out with this new version so please watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXW-NfSvPhA 

Hello all! Well here I am in my second week of living in Gent with a few more adventures under my belt. As my title hints, I went to a yoga class yesterday! I have been going on some runs around the neighborhood but I decided to try something different.  I didn't really know what to expect from a class in Belgium seeing as I am coming from taking yoga in Boulder where it is pretty much a religion for most people. But the studio was very nice and the teacher was friendly even though the whole class was in dutch. Luckily with Yoga you can just sort of look at the person next to you and copy what they are doing, but there definitely a few small things she was trying to explain that went right over my head.  I went to a beginners class and it was pretty slow passed and relaxed so I might try a harder class next time but it was definitely fun trying Yoga in a different language. 

I also went to a very nice museum this week. SMAK (the contemporary art museum in Gent) is probably the most popular museum in this city, even though as I said in a previous post there are over 20 museums to go to. I happened to go on a special day because very recently the founder of the museum Jan Hoet died and they were having a public remembrance for him outside of the museum with free food, drinks, speeches, and free entry. There was also a very nice exhibition on Richard Jackson, who I was not very familiar with before going but really enjoyed his work. 

This weekend is packed with lots of fun activities. First of all on Friday's the big square that is about a block from out apartment has a really nice outdoor market where you can buy clothes, books, wallets, and great fresh seafood, bread, and lots of yummy things. Also just around the corner is a cute little flea market with just about everything you can imagine. I had a very nice time strolling through both this morning! Then tonight Simon and I are going to a birthday costume party for two of his friends where we will be dressing up as old people (I the man and he the woman of course). Then tomorrow morning we will take the train out to the Sea where is parents have an apartment. We haven't decided if we will stay one or two nights but either way it should be a very nice relaxing little getaway. Here are some photos from everything I just described above: