LKR: Bruge and Damme - The home land

Wow! Bruges! Fun to return! And I feel very fortunate and thankful for the connection Jeff had! Jan (pronounced ‘yawn’ – or John in Flemish) - the father of a woman Jeff works with in London - lives in Bruges. Jan is a retired economist and former ambassador to Pakistan, who occasionally works for the local tourism office (I think?!) leading walking tours in Bruges. Jan led us all on a very wonderful and informative walking tour of Bruges and helped me appreciate, once again, how great it is to meet local residents who are willing to share their knowledge of a place with which they are intimately familiar.

Later in the afternoon CJ and I rode 6km to Damme – the motherland as I’ve been calling it. My maiden name, Van Damme, literally means “from Damme” and I learned from Jan that Damme, or dam, refers not just to a dam but more specifically to a separation of sea and salt water, as Damme used to be more of a port town. Belgium is slowly rising, and now the sea is much further away than it once was. Still, a canal built to transport goods from Damme to Bruges exists, and is accompanied by one of the most well known bike paths in Belgium. The small town of Damme was fortified in a star-shape during the Eighty Years’ War, and though the wall no longer remains, trees have been planted in its place so one can still see the outline of the star from the tower of the Church of Our Lady. I thought I’d also mention, mostly for Darren Wood’s sake, that in 1997, Damme was “promoted to Book-town, just as Hay-on-Wye.”