Art, Brugge, and the Germans vs. the Greeks

We woke up Sunday morning and walked to the Art Museum with our gracious city coordinators and hosts.  They arranged for us to have a private guided tour of the ancient Flemish Art Collection.   Though I've been to many art museums before, I've never done it with a guide.  I now regret that, and wonder about all the things I've missed just looking at interesting paintings without knowing the story behind them.

Afterwards, most of us rushed to catch a train to the city of Brugge.  This is a very old city that feels like it popped right out of a story book. 

We stopped for lunch in a pub on a cobblestone street, where I enjoyed the vessel my coffee came in nearly as much as I enjoyed the view!

We had just enough time to take the train, get off, eat lunch, walk around for 30 minutes and rush back to Brussels to get ready for our dinner with a German  journalist.

It was worth the trip!

Back in Brussels, we dressed for dinner and headed to meet up with a variety of EU officials, journalists, and other MMFs from Europe.  Nikolas Busse writes for a German Newspaper (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), and gave us the most frank and easy to understand overview of the Euro crisis I've ever heard.  Of course, his views were heavily shaped by his German perspective which led to interesting discussions at the dinner table.  His remarks and the points made by our other guests started to give us a clear picture of the challenges currently faced by the Greeks--- they are not just economic.  More on this later...