Belgium Revisited

Before we headed over to London, we returned to Belgium for our final two days on the continent.  I'll cut to the chase: we liked it!  Antwerp and Brussels redeemed Belgium for us.  Both have lovely old-town areas, seemed clean and friendly, and were interesting.  

But one thing that continues to perplex us is this notion that graphic symbols are a universal language.  It's rampant across Europe!  On our hotel room door in Antwerp we saw the signs above.  "No smoking" I get it--that's obvious.  Even the poppy on the room number we understood, representing Flanders.  But that top sign left us stumped.  "Large Gatherings Will Feel Claustrophobic In This Room"?  "Families of Four Should Be Persecuted"?  "Please Be On the Lookout for Heads Without a Body"?  And ours was the only room with that sign on it.

 Here we have a veritable cornucopia of ambiguous signage.  "There's A Red Button Down There" topped by "iPads Exit Through This Door."  They actually would've been easier to read if they were just in Flemish.

The house of Peter Paul Rubens, a block from our hotel.

And the signature of Peter Paul Rubens (it Italian) inside the house.  It's a nice museum now.  Not too many paintings, fun things to look at...

...like the wall coverings of embossed leather with gold leaf.  It must've paid well to be a famous painter back then.  Fancier than wallpaper. 

Even the cobblestone pathways have interesting patterns in Antwerp.

A pretty lake in the city park.  We went there both mornings for the girls to play on the very kid-friendly (jungle-themed) playground, while we watched the morning mist rise off the lawns and lakes.

 More bizarre signage.  It's meant to be a hand, but why make it look like a swooping bird?

 See?  All we needed to feel welcome in Belgium was a big "Welcome" sign.  C is sitting in the C, and E is laying on the E.  This is just outside the Atomium, Belgium's 1958 answer to the Eiffel Tower.

Looking up into the Atomium (which I read was just polished a year or two ago) gives you an idea of how groovy it really is, in a "Jetsons" retro kind of way.  (Hate to be the guy with a rag and a bottle of Old English who had that cleaning job!)

Most of our students gathered under the Atomium for a group photo climbing all over the "Welcomes" sign.  Just behind us was a cute little yellow booth that sold Belgian waffles.  We had to try one, but "quelle horreur," they were out of chocolate.  So we had a plain, unadorned, "nude" Belgian waffle, which is tantamount to blasphemy.  But it was the best we could do at the time.  

And on to downtown Brussels where, for reasons not obvious even to a musicologist, there is a statue of Bela Bartok near the main square.

Part of the main square, looking super-Flemish.

After visiting the Magritte Museum, which was odd in more ways than just the subject matter, we were desperate for a lunch that didn't involve a baguette sandwich and a pastry.  So we found a burger joint that advertised itself as having the "Best Burgers in Brussels."  The gingham tablecloths were a good start, but the profusion of "Tintin" comics on the walls should have clued us in to the fact that this wasn't just a burger joint.  It was a pretentious, overpriced burger joint.  That, and the fact that it was across the road from Emporio Armani and Cartier, should've set our "rip-off" alarm bells ringing.  (Although those alarm bells haven't been working very well since we got off the plane at Heathrow a month ago.)  It's not the size of the bill that the girls are alarmed at, but it could well have been.  $100 later, we left the restaurant after H and I had a burger that may have been better than your average fast-food joint, but not much.  And the girls didn't even eat theirs.  Just as well it was our last day on the continent.  We went out with a bang!

When in Brussels it is de rigeur to visit the Mannequin Pis.  Google it if you don't know what it is.  He's typically "dressed" most days now in some kind of ceremonial costume.  Today it was the robes of the "Grand Order of South Dunkerque Fisherman" or something like that.  I'm not kidding.  Since we'd just spent the GDP of a small African nation on lunch, we resisted the temptation to indulge in Mannequin Pis trinkets, but Hadley bought for her office a plastic Smurf figure (also a Belgian invention, and a nostalgic indulgence harking back to her childhood) that was similarly overpriced, just to keep our streak alive.

And finally, as we said goodbye to hotel rooms for at least a month or two, a view of the window in the bathroom at our hotel.  None of us had ever seen a round bathroom window in a hotel before.  And this one even opened!  E was convinced it was washing machine, until we opened it and let her look out onto the street.  Won't get your clothes clean that way, sweetie!