Hello from Middelburg!
I apologize for the incredibly long wait since my last post. It's been about a month. I've been super busy, especially since a couple weeks ago (March 10-14) was midterms here at UCR. It's basically the stress of finals week at UNK, paired with more time-consuming assignments. And each class has a midterm test. Needless to say, my midterms week was quite intense, but I managed to pass all my tests with three A's and one B+. I must be doing something right, huh?
Anyway, in addition to studying (A LOT) for all my tests, I took a 'field trip' with my Bible in the Arts class during midterm week. We drove to Antwerp, Belgium, to tour the cathedral there. It was gorgeous! I took so many pictures of the cathedral, as well as various parts of the city. The car I rode there in arrived quite a bit earlier than the scheduled meeting time because the driver wanted time to look around the city and do some shopping. So I basically had three hours to roam Antwerp before meeting up with our professor and the rest of my classmates so we could tour the cathedral.
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| Middelburg is very close to Antwerp. The landscape I saw during the drive was very flat, which reminded me of Nebraska. |
Here are some pictures I took in Antwerp:
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| An example of beautiful architecture in Antwerp. |
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| The super-narrow streets still surprise me. Some areas of Middelburg are like this too. |
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| Waffles in Belgium!!! (It was delicious, in case you're wondering...) |
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| The train station in Antwerp |
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| The cathedral we toured, as seen from one of the many 'market squares' in the city. (The statue is of Peter Paul Reubens, who painted some of the altarpieces inside the cathedral.) |
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| A view looking straight up, as I walked through the cathedral. |
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| This is just a small portion of the massive cathedral. My Bible in the Arts professor told us that it's the biggest cathedral in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. |
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| Stained-glass windows lined the walls throughout the cathedral. |
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| One of the many organs inside Antwerp's cathedral. |
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| This is probably the most beautiful crucifix that I found inside the cathedral. |
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| Proof that we were in Antwerp's cathedral (and that I didn't just find all the photos online somewhere). Thomas and I 'pose' with the altar below our favorite crucifix (the one in the picture above). |
It's difficult to describe the atmosphere in Antwerp. Perhaps it was because it was my first time outside of the Netherlands, but for some reason Antwerp just felt bigger than Middelburg. It might actually be bigger; I'm not sure. But it's nothing new for me to think of Middelburg as a small city. There's a lot of it that I haven't seen, which is why for quite a while I thought it was so small. Thomas did some investigating, however. Here's where it gets interesting: Middelburg's population is larger than Kearney's population. Woah! I didn't believe him at first, so I asked my housemates. They confirmed what Thomas had said.
For the record, Kearney's 2012 population was 31,790 (according to http://www.city-data.com/city/Kearney-Nebraska.html). Middelburg's population in 2013 was 47,523 (according to http://www.citypopulation.de/Netherlands-Mun.html).
The week after midterm's was spring break. Thomas, Lindsey and I traveled to both London and Rome. We spent three days in London and four days in Rome. I took 700+ photos total. This post is already quite long, and I know it'll take more than one post to explain everything we did over break.
So be looking for the next post! It'll contain a copious amount of photos from London and Rome! (...after I finish going through all of them and pick my favorites, of course *wink*)
Until next time,
~Laurie
