D. S. Friberg Blog

April, Part 5: Friberg/Lester

The departure of the Borgens on Friday, April 23rd, coincided almost exactly with the arrival of my mom and her sister Joan for a one week visit. Mom and Aunt Joan touched down at 9:30 a.m. that day, and the Borgens took off at 10:30 a.m.  We couldn’t be at the airport because I had a rehearsal, so Mom and Joan bravely found their own way to Ghent and checked in at Charme Hotel Hancelot, one of Ghent’s best bed and breakfasts. After my rehearsal, I met up with them there and we went to the Floralien. 

Saturday we toured Ghent, and then Sunday I had two concerts as part of the Conservatory’s Open Door Day: an afternoon concert with the clarinet choir, and an evening concerto concert with the Conservatory orchestra. On the orchestra concert, my friends Danre and Gawein and I gave the world premier of the first movement of a triple clarinet concerto, Triple Threat, by American composer Michael Kibbe.  I’m sure there are other triple clarinet concertos out there, but I’ve never heard of one.  Stylistically, it reminded me of Bernstein’s On the Waterfront or William Schuman’s Chester. Soloing with the orchestra was a complete blast, and definitely a highlight of this year in Belgium.

After two nights at Hancelot, Mom and Joan relocated to Alpha Bed and Breakfast for the remainder of their stay in Ghent in order to be closer to our apartment and keep expenses down.  They are both big flower lovers, so Monday we rented a van and made our second visit to Keukenhof in the Netherlands. This time around, the tulips and trees were in full bloom, as were the large commercial flower farms around Keukenhof.  It was spectacular! 

We climbed up into an authentic Dutch windmill at Keukenhof, within which there were diagrams of windmills’ various mechanical uses. Since we had a little extra time at the end of the day, we thought it would be fun to see more windmills elsewhere. I asked a sales lady at the souvenir shop if there was a good place nearby, and she recommended her own town, Kaag, which turned out to be on a small island. Getting there required taking the car on a small ferry, but only for a very short trip. The channel couldn’t have been more than 50 meters across, and the ferry just goes back and forth 24 hours a day. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but superficially it seems like they should build a bridge. The roads on the island were just one lane wide for two-way traffic, so we had to yield a number of times, almost getting stuck with our long van at one dead-end.  We only saw a few more windmills off in the distance, but it was a fun little detour.

Tuesday afternoon I took Mom and Joan to Bruges (Brugge).  I had expected to play tour guide there, but surprisingly almost everything we saw was new to me.  We didn’t have much time, but we did go through De Wijngaard Begijnhof, the Memling in Sint-Jan museum, and the upper chapel of the Basilica of the Holy Blood.  In Europe, churches built for holy relics are a dime a dozen, but the Basilica of the Holy Blood has a particularly striking story associated with its relic, which is a stone vial containing a piece of cloth said to be stained with the blood of Jesus Christ. According to tradition, the cloth was preserved by Joseph of Arimathea when he cleaned Jesus’s body after the crucifixion. It made its way to Bruges with Thierry of Alsace following the Second Crusade, and the Basilica was modified and enhanced to house it. For a number of centuries, the blood on the cloth was known to periodically liquify, but that manifestation eventually stopped. I am not being sacrilegious or facetious when I say this: I really think it would be interesting to run a DNA test on the blood. At the very least, it might suggest the true origins of the blood, and at most it could produce the DNA of Jesus. 

After sightseeing, we had a Belgian dinner and took an impromptu ride on a Ferris wheel before taking the train back to Ghent. While Bruges is full of authentic and wonderful buildings from medieval times, I ran across this interesting article about the Gothic Revival in Bruges from our favorite newspaper, Flanders Today.

Wednesday (04/28/10) I played historical clarinet in an Eric Hoeprich masterclass at the Conservatory. Hoeprich is the world’s leading expert on historical clarinet, and the author of a recently published compendium on the clarinet. I really enjoyed meeting him, learning a bit about him, and hearing some of his ideas about period performance. 

Thursday morning we took the Thalys to Paris, where we did two days of sightseeing. Mom and Joan had never been in Paris before, so we hit the main spots. It was still fun for Katie and me, since you end up noticing and doing new things every time. We saw new artwork at the Louvre, I tried one of the self-cleaning public toilets for the first time, and Wes got to go back to his favorite Paris park with the train. Our hotel was in a neighborhood we had never been in, and of course we ate at a several new cafes and bakeries. 

If you’ve been to Paris, you have probably encountered the guys who swarm Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower illegally selling little metal Eiffel Tower key chains.  I’ve been offered as many as ten key chains for a Euro. Usually, I just try not to make eye contact, but Wes noticed them in Montmartre and said, “Eiffel Towers!” A guy was selling them three for a Euro, so I said, “How about one for 50 cents?” He replied, “Okay, two for 50 cents.”  I don’t think I’ve ever had a seller bargain to sell more stuff for less money.  Anyway, Wes was very proud of his new, gold key chains, and called them “very special.” He carried them continuously until we got home to Ghent, showing them to everyone he met.  Besides buying the key chains in Montmartre, I also somehow agreed to let a street artist do Wes’s portrait for 10 Euro.  I asked to see a sample, and he said it would be great, like a Van Gogh or Picasso.  10 Euro seemed like a bargain compared to the 80 Euro he originally asked for, and a super bargain compared to the 1 million Euro he claimed the sketch would be worth someday. He was pretty funny and intelligent, so I agreed. Needless to say, the portrait was terrible, and three minutes after I paid I  saw him having a coffee at the cafe. 

After another too-short stay in Paris, we took the Thalys back to Brussels, had a nice farewell dinner in the Grand Place, stayed overnight in a hotel near the European Parliament building, and then bid adieu to our guests. 

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