Beer
I took the Eurostar from London Waterloo to "Gare Midi". When I got to Brussels, I could not figure out which way to go on the tram to get to the hotel. The tram is like a subway in that is runs underground in central Brussels and above ground elsewhere. I kept looking at the signs to make sense of the directions. I walked up and down different platforms getting no where. When I did chose a tram, it was going the wrong way. The funny thing is the hotel is walking distance from the train station; I did not have a sense of distance in Brussels at the time.
The weather was wet and grey for most of my stay; I thought this is about the same as London. One needed to have an umbrella at the ready at all times.
After checking into the hotel, I went for a quick bite to eat and I pleased myself being able to speak enough French to order food and communicate. Being from Canada, I had years of remedial French buried deep in my brain and given a chance it would come out.
I went along the venue for the festival. I got say hi to Sharon; she was very busy running things so we did not get much chance to talk over the festival but still it was good to see her; it has been a few years since we last met up; we had meet years ago on a trip to Italy when I went to Lounge music festival. And as I expected, there was people from Italy at the festival like Alessandro Casella. Alessandro is someone I got to know through Montefiori Cocktail.
It was quite a line up of bands over the next 2 nights; they were from as far as away Melbourne and the Bay Area San Francisco and from all over Europe.
There was also women dressed up as vampire go go dancers. Sharon was one of them. On Saturday, there was a "burlesque show" after the live bands but that really does not describe it; it was a birthday party that goes a bit mad.
I spent a good part of the time at the festival chatting with Sharon's friend Alex and J.P. J.P. lives in Paris and was visiting for the weekend like me.
I did not want to spend all weekend being nocturnal and I wanted to get some culture. On Saturday, I went to the Cantillon brewery that still makes beer using natural fermentation. Did you know beer made this way takes 3 years to ferment? The type of beer is called lambic. It is very good and quite sour. I bought a few bottles to drink naturally. Wikipedia link I was very pleased to have gone on a brewery tour. I was asked one of the people at the Cantillon brewery if business was a challenge today? He replied that actually business is better now then it was a few years ago. They sell their product all over the world; there is more demand nowadays for such products.
I later went for a very late lunch for the classic Belgian meal of "moules es frites" at Leons of Brussels and it did not disappoint. web-site
I then went to the "comic book art museum". It is situated in a lovely art nouveau building. The museum has a section dedicated to Tin Tin; I think I have read all the Tin Tin books that have been published; I used to even try reading them in French. In the last few years, I have been a fan of some other French speaking artists. They are Lewis Trondheim and Dupuy and Berberian. Many of the works of these artists are available in English. Lewis Trondheim's work has been published by Fantagraphics and nbm publishing. Dupuy and Berberian's excellent series Monsier Jean has been published by Drawn and Quarterly in the some of D & Q anthologies; there is apparently a Monsieur graphic novel coming out in English in the summer of 2006. And here is a succinct article about Dupuy and Berberian.
On Sunday, I managed to get up a decent hour having gotten to bed around 2 or 3 AM. Yesterday, I only managed to eat once! Today, I planned to eat properly. I had a light breakfast at the hotel and then made my way to the Royal Museum of fine arts. By now, I knew how to get around central Brussels fairly well using the tram and subway. I saw a very detailed exhibit about Siegried Bing. It was quite informative. Siegried Bing was a collector of oriental art and he was instrumental in the Art Nouveau movement . I saw examples of Japanese crafts such as ceramics and illustrations. The was also examples of works be English craftsman like William Morris and patterned fabrics made by Liberty. As well as stained glass by Tiffany. One of the interesting things at the exhibit was a documentary about Siegfried Bing was being screened continuously. It was really quite something that at this time, the scale of the movement involved people from all over the world. This was done well before email and the fax machine. I came out of the exhibit with deeper an awareness of the time. It seems that many art critics in Paris truly loathed what Bing had done in Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau was about everyday objects like chairs and tables. You could go the shop and deck out your 19th century apartment completely in the Art Nouveau style.
In the permanent collection at the museum, two painting really struck me. Cows crossing the Leie by Emile Claus; this small image does not do justice to actually seeing the painting in real life and in full scale; the painting is 200 x 305 cm.
And the other painting was another large painting of a group of storks gathered on a sea shore. I should have made a note of the artist's name. I scoured the "art shop" looking for a post card of it before I left the museum.
And finally, the sun came out on Sunday and the rain had stopped. After the museum, I strolled up to the Grand Place.
One of the last things I did on Sunday was go to a pub and have a glass of Strawberry beer. I could not make up my mind what to have for dinner so I chose a Vietnamese restaurant not to far from the hotel.
C'est fini