The Atomium

The next day was our last full day in Brussels, and we slept in, because it was so quiet outside. On waking, we looked out of the window and realised why it was quiet – at least five inches of snow had fallen overnight. Nothing was moving, and it wasn’t surprising, because I’ve never seen such deep snow in a city. The trams had seized up – the rails were jammed with snow and the points seemed to be frozen.

 We tried one hotel breakfast, and then started walking a few yards to a very nice café, where the food is better and it’s a third of the price, and the staff were  sweeping  gallons of water, from the customers’ feet and clothes, out of the door with a giant squeegee.

Luckily the metro seemed pretty much unaffected, so we stuck to the plan and went out to the Atomium. It was built for a World Fair in 1958, but it still looks very modern and was great fun to visit, although there’s not much in it. Apparently the views from the top are great, but really all we could see today was snow. I think the whole area would be fun in summer, especially if you had children in tow. There’s an attraction called Mini Europe, which seemed good silly fun, but not with snow falling heavily.

Inside one of the "tubes".

The best thing in the Atomium was contemporary film of it being constructed. While the building itself still looks modern, the difference in working methods from 1958 to 2013 was massive. The workers wore berets rather than hard hats, and clogs rather than safety boots; they climbed around on the outside without safety ropes; everything was by hand, so nuts were tightened with enormous spanners and brute force; and bits were forced together by hand, so that Phil could hardly bear to watch in case someone had a hand taken off.  It’s odd to have it brought home so forcefully how different life is from when we were young.

After a coffee and a warm we got the metro back. We visited the Cathedral, which is a good Gothic building, but somewhat spoiled by large clumsy statues of the apostles. It has a terrific Art Deco organ, though. 

The Cathedral Organ

 Then we went to the museum of comic strips (Bandes Dessine). Like the musical instruments, it was in a wonderful Art Nouveau store, well worth seeing in itself, but the museum itself was rather parochial. I’m sure if you were Belgian, it was wonderful. But I’ve never been that keen on Tintin, or Lucky Luke, and there were loads of others which I am sure were gloriously nostalgic if you were a Belgian of our age, but we’d never heard of them. Even  Asterix didn’t get a mention, though the books were on sale in the shop. There was no mention at all of Marvel, and though that might have been a copyright issue, you would have expected Neil Gaiman, Manga and Raymond Briggs, to mention a few.

So not entirely a success, and I don’t want to take anything home. We did see some wonderful Art Deco government buildings, though.

Greek restaurant tonight – it was OK but the proprietor was properly dodgy – he was showing off his body in a tight tee shirt, and had pictures of nude women in Lesbian clinches round the place. It was quite busy, otherwise we might have made an excuse and left.

The return journey.

All Eurostar  trains were cancelled yesterday, so we were a bit concerned but set off for the Gare Du Midi, and the train before ours had been cancelled, but ours was OK. It was slow, so we didn’t have time for lunch at St Pancras as planned but at least we caught the Nottingham train OK. 

The only issue was an American family seated near us – the mother (I assume she was the mother, but perhaps she was dad’s girlfriend, which would make her behaviour more understandable) put on headphones, and paid the children not a blind bit of notice for the whole trip. Dad kept doing that very American parent thing of making threats which he failed to follow up. “Right I’ll give you five minutes! That’s four! That’s three!, That’s two! That’s one! OK, I’ll give you five more minutes!”

The only thing they seemed to have brought for the children to do was one Ipad between them. Well, you just know  what’s going to happen.  In the end Phil said loudly, “Why don’t they split them up?” and the father took the hint (although hint probably isn’t the right word) and moved seats, and peace reigned at last.