Brussels - Land of Tin Tin

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Brussels, capital of Tin Tin, and unfortunately also the name of one of God's most putrid vegetable creations. This was my last day in Belgium, and enroute to the airport, I had about 6 hours to spare in the capital. Here's my problem with European cities - typically the list of attractions include church, town square, palace, church, town square, palace, museum, church and church. Relatively BORING!! But Brussels had one extra up its sleeve. The museum of comics!!

Belgium is the home of Tin Tin - that beloved bald comic book sleuth with the little tuft of hair that I'm sure everybody has wondered about. And the Belgians, influenced by the French, are also crazy about comics, so much so that they've set up a museum to honor all those greats. That includes Asterix and the Smurfs (called the Strumphs in french - in fact the museum is on Rue de la Strumph - smurf street). The museum is supposedly hosted in a rocket-shaped building - the same as the rocket that took Tin Tin to the moon - but to me it just looked like a big orange building.

Anyway, the comic museum was relatively interesting, particularly the little gift shop containing very intricate (but very expensive) figurines of all the characters. There was even this cool little Asterix and Obelix chess set - the Gauls versus the Romans - very cool! I picked up a copy of the very first Tin Tin adventure - Tin Tin in the Congo, that I had never ever seen anywhere else before. The actual museum consisted of lots of rooms telling you about how comics are made, before opening up to a second floor that had a truckload of comics pasted on the walls for reading pleasure. Alas, many of them were in French - thankfully my high-school french was still somewhere in the back of my head, so I managed to stumble through the various comics for an hour or so.

I also made a compulsory stop at a bakery to pick up a bunch of eclairs and other sweet delights. I love eclairs!! Enroute, I also managed to stumble across a chinese tour group who were having fun trying to capture the famous Toyota 'oh what a feeling' jump on camera while standing in front of a church steeple. I'm really not sure what the Toyota jump had to do with the church, but they seemed to be taking pain-staking care to get the picture just right.

I hopped on the train late morning to head to the airport, grabbing my one last eclair before heading back to my eclairless home.

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Photos

Life-sized Tin Tin
Life-sized recreation of Tin Tin Explorers of the Moon

Astreix Chess Board
Very tempted to buy it - but then realized I don't really play chess, and more importantly, I wasn't willing to pay 250 euros for it.

French Comics
One of the many French comics available for reading in the comic museum

Smurf Street
Yup, that was the actual name of the street the comic museum was on

Interesting cultural statement
Rather insightful I thought

Crazy Toyota-imitating chinese guy
As explained, these were they guys trying to imitate the Toyota jump. Once one guy did it, all his other friends decided they had to try to. But the original guy was definitely the best - both in enthusiasm as well jumping height.

My farewell eclair
As required, all Thambiratnam blogs must include the mandatory food photo.