I purposefully left a few things for my last day in Brussels.
There was the big museum in Grand Place. Closed on Mondays.
There was this meatball place near Fritland. Closed on October 1st and 2nd.
I stumbled upon what might have been my photo mecca – “Moof” or the Museum of Original Figurines that apparently features giant sculptures of various cartoon and comic characters. Closed on Mondays.
I found this all out not through pre-trip research, mais no. I found this out through the tried and true method of shoe leather. I walked to each place only to discover my folly in person.
So I thought I’d take this day to sort through a laundry list of things I MEANT to include in a few posts but failed to do so. And I thought I’d also take the day to do my actual laundry.
There’s a laundromat right next to my hotel but I thought their prices a bit steep. I had spotted another one not too far up the road and went to check out its tariffs. Turns out they were even more expensive. But they did have the better name. The first rule of wash club? Overcharge.
Instead, I wound up at Magic Wash this morning. Cheaper, closer, but still pricey. I’m also pretty sure I shrunk a couple of my shirts. But the weird, surreal moment for me came when I used their washer and realized it was the same make and model (albeit modified to run off of tokens) as we had at Oak View back in the day. Nothing like bringing back old memories as things spin round and round.
I know, I know. Super boring so far. Hang in there, dear reader (singular… as I’m pretty sure there’s at most one person reading this…). There’s a fun photo coming up. Promise.
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Anyway, here are two details I meant to include in the Magritte Museum post.
Magritte would often hold naming parties on Sundays for his works. He’d have his friends over, present the works, and they’d name the pieces. Usually the names were non sequitors. And sometime different pieces would have the same name, or the same piece would have multiple names. There’s a surreal aspect to that too. There was a commentator late in the audioguide that psychoanalyzed this, despite Magritte hating such approaches to his work. He had been quoted (and this is a bastardization so not an actual quote… a quote tribute if you will) as saying that he saw something in his head, he painted it, and that was the painting. There was no meaning or analysis – it was what it was. But this commentator said that was part and parcel of his not-naming his own pieces, that he left the inner meaning and work to others, that he was not looking to self-analyze. I’m sure I’m butchering the meaning and intent not only of the commentator but Magritte as well but it was something I found interesting.
The other story revolved around Magritte’s constantly being asked about his Treachery of Imagery pipe piece. At one point the audioguide had a clip of Magritte explaining why he didn’t understand the outrage or confusion from people. Again, bastardization of the quote, but he said something to the effect of, “It’s not a pipe. It’s an IMAGE of a pipe. But it’s not a pipe. If I told you to fill my pipe, you couldn’t stuff tobacco into it because it’s an image. Had I said ‘This is a pipe’ I’d have been lying.”
In some weird way it triggered a memory of my youth. On a much smaller scale, I had my own surreal art moment. In middle school we had an art class and the first assignment was to decorate our “portfolio” folders with an abstract rendering of our name. Kids were drawing letters melting a la Dali or in a 60s kaleidoscopic haze. Lots of talented folks in there, doing some amazing work to be sure. Me? I took a black magic marker and just wrote in block letters “KEVIN.” It was the most vanilla font imaginable, a Helvetica-ian nothing, very similar to the word printed on my running shirt from this race. The teacher, a good guy whose name has vanished into the haze of memory, called me over and asked me what I was doing. I told him that if everybody was doing these crazy abstract things with their names, the melting letters and the kaleidoscope, THAT became the new normal. Therefore the only way to be abstract was to be normal.
He gave me an “A” for logic; I can’t recall what he gave the art. It WAS well printed.
Editor’s Note: To be clear, I suck as an artist and am not making ANY comparison between my “art” and Magritte’s. I just liked his logical argument against people’s reactions to his work.
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The marathon announcer said there were 1000 people running the 42km course and close to 8000 doing the half. There were over 65 countries represented.
I don’t know the final tallies and figures as I can’t find the official results, at least not in English. But the Brussels Marathon app did offer running tracking and I was able to screengrab my details:
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Last night I stumbled upon a waffle place (Waffles and Churros) that was running a special promotion (which might be their ALWAYS promotion but no matter). A waffle and ice cream for 2 euros. It was… money well spent.
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After failing at the aforementioned museums, I thought I’d try for one last green screen selfie at the Parliamentarium as I knew it was open 7 days a week. But of course on Mondays it doesn’t open until 1 PM. So … I had some time to kill…
Remember the peeing dog statue? And the animal band statue? Those were the works of Belgian artist Tom Frantzen. He also did a statue honoring “Agent 15.” He’s a bumbling police officer and the sculpture is apparently a scene straight out of the adventures of Herge’s Quick and Flupke series (yeah, yeah… I should’ve gone to the Comic Strip Museum, I know… I’m a Philistine. Worse I’m a LAZY Philistine who didn’t want to read). Agent 15’s foot is grabbed by a sewer dwelling ne’er do well (or maybe he’s a do-well… I’m not sure who we’re supposed to be rooting for in the series) and Agent 15 is forever captured in mid-fall.
I joined him.
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Oh, outside of the Moof building was this photo opp I think we all can agree is kinda rare.
A Smurf Statue. But not just any Smurf statue. I’d gone nose to nose with a Smurf just yesterday. No, this was an ALBINO Smurf statue! Or maybe it’s just a white stone statue. No, no. I’m going with it as something as rare as a white tiger – the Albino Smurf of legend.
And as long as we’re smurfing, here are what I think might be the most disturbing Smurf figures of all time. And that’s saying something. One has to assume Peyo and his team enjoyed more than a few mushrooms themselves in inventing their land of little blue creatures. But one you start giving them lobster claws and such, well, it’s a whole ‘nother level.
I know they’re supposed to be the signs of the Zodiac but seriously – this is the stuff of nightmares.
Which is the most disturbing? I honestly can’t say.
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Last little bit here – my second attempt (and third and fourth) at Parliamentarium selfies. One is a redux of the assembly pic. I thought a Rogue One shirt befitting an organization built on… hope?
There were a number of background options, including a press corps one. I found this odd as to me there were only two ways to pose with this one – you’re either a shooter or a shot, right? If you’re a shooter, you need to be holding your camera and snapping the pic.
If you’re being shot, well, you’d have to pose like this, right?
Who can say? Perhaps this photo is like the EU itself, a flawed, well intentioned thing?