Today we toured the Rijks Museum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The first stop was the Rijks Museum. There, we saw various masterpieces including The Night’s Watch by Rembrandt. At the Van Gogh Museum, we took an audio tour to learn about the artwork and life of Vincent Van Gogh.

One of the features paintings at the Rijks Museum is Last Judgement by Lucas van Leyden. This is one of the few works in the museum that deals with the Catholic part of Christianity than the Protestant side. This Altarpiece shows the last judgment, in which the dead rise from their graves and Jesus decides who goes to Heaven or to Hell. The Holy Trinity is represented with Jesus sitting on a rainbow, God on top, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove inbetween them. Rembrandt greatly admired this painting and might have been inspired by it. I think it is cool to see different paintings about the samw religious theme. To see how people think similarly and different and to give visual to a story or event.

Yesterday, I was able to sleep in to around 9:30. I didn’t wake up until 9:50, 5 minutes before we all had to leave. The group met Christine and had a Q&A session. It was cool to learn some social information about Ghent. Here, around half of a person’s salary goes to social security. They also had a lot of immigrants from Turkey in the 1970s. They have a multilingual education system, so most people know more than one language. After the Q&A session, Christine showed us some good shops in Ghent. I bought some more chocolate and a t-shirt. After the small tour, we all went to get waffles for lunch. Instead of syrup, we got melted chocolate for the waffles. The best part of my day was dinner. Nine of us went out to a restaurant nearby. I had a steak served with french fries. They also gave me some mushroom sauce for the steak. This was my favorite meal yet.

Yesterday we toured the city of Ghent. At the beginning of the day, we saw the Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the Mystic Lamb. For lunch, I had the beef stew. The part of the meal I really enjoyed was the white asparagus soup appetizer. After we all had our paid for lunch, we later toured a museum that described the history of Ghent. Then went to another museum that had the bottom part of the Ghent Altarpiece (since it was being restored).

It was amazing to see the Ghent Altarpiece. We read about this piece of artwork in the Monuments Men book. There is discussion on who the center figure is sitting on the throne in the top of the piece. It could be God or Jesus. I also enjoyed looking at various artworks in the last museum, especially artworks dealing with ancient mythology and religious themes.

We had another quick tour of the city. After thr tour, we had the rest of the day off. We were able to shop, and it was nice to have time to sleep and enjoy the city. I especially loved discovering the differences in burgers servdd here compared to the US.

Hello. My name is Austin Lowry. I am currently a Chemistry Major at Appalachian State University. My current plan for life after college is to go to dental school. Some places I have already traveled to includes New York City, Disneyworld, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Hawaii, Arizona, Las Vegas, Disneyland, the Alamo, Yellowstone National Park, and a few other states. The majority of the places I have visited was during a program called Teens Westward Bound. Despite all my traveling, I have never been outside of the country before. This is one of the reasons I’m super excited to travel to Belgium and the Netherlands. I can’t wait to experience the different culture.

While I was in the class Art, Politics, and Power, I researched the painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent by Pieter Bruegel. On the trip, I hope to visit and see some of the works by Bruegel the Elder or by his son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger. The Ghent Altarpiece is another piece of art I look forward to seeing. This is one of the many pieces of artwork we talked about during class and read about in the book, The Monuments Men. I also hope to try a variety of food and bring back some chocolate and maybe a t-shirt.