Leuven, Belgium

Our friend Benedict Brown, whom we met while in grad school at Princeton, is now doing a post-doc at Katholieka Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium. He was kind enough to let us stay with him for two nights and to show us around Leuven and Brussels.

From Benedict's apartment, we walked into the center of Leuven. Leuven is a university town and has a very nice city center with a neat city hall and church surrounded by cafes. A few of our favorite photos are below:

A church that we drove by

Another church that we drove by

The Leuven city hall is covered with flags and carvings.

Phil and Benedict

St. Peter's Church
The Belgian churches were celebrating the 450th anniversary of the Arch Diocese.

Inside of St. Peter's Church

A very ornately carved pulpit inside St. Peter's

The Universiteits Bibliotheek (university library)
Renovations of the library were supported by American schools and universities. We found columns around the outside of the library to commemorate Princeton and UPenn's donations.

A statue of a cockroach on a pole
Maybe Benedict can tell us the story behind this statue.

Castle Arenberg
The engineering campus of the university is built around this castle.
The castle was built shortly after 1500 by William of Croy, advisor to Emporer Charles V. Following the marriage of Anne of Croy to Charles of Arenberg, ownership of the castle was transfered to the Arenberg family.

Castle grounds

In the evening, we went to a restaurant and ordered Belgian waffles with ice cream and chocolate sauce. They were a little crispier than Belgian waffles that you get in the U.S., but they were quite good.