The Museums

We visited several museums over the next two days. First, a museum of musical instruments. They had an innovative setup where one wears wireless headphones, and walks around. When one approaches an instrument, the sound the instrument makes plays in the headphones.

Neither Lisa nor I know much about music, but it was interesting nonetheless. The varied and often bizarre selection of instruments was rather entertaining.

[Lisa Editorial] One of my favorite parts of the museum was on the bottom floor. When you first went in you thought it was the more modern items like amplifiers and then you saw player pianos, but when you went to the back, you found that they also had an area where you could learn how instruments made music. There was a place where you could find out how the length and thickness of the string would affect the pitch of a guitar string. Then they had a piano that had a clear case so that you when you pressed a key, you could see how it mechanically worked. It was absolutely fascinating. Below is a picture that shows another neat 'toy'.

We also visited an art museum. There were displays of both modern and ancient art. The artistic beauty and value of most ancient pieces and some modern pieces was notable, though some of the modern art seemed rather random and bizarre to us.

We visited a chocolate museum as well. Belgium is, of course, famous for making high quality chocolate, and they had various displays of different devices that have been used throughout history to make chocolate.

[Another Lisa Editorial] The chocolate museum was fun. I actually think the smell was the best part - probably even better than the small tastings we had. They had some interesting things that were 'made' of chocolate. They had a dress that had been made of chocolate and several displays that were out to dispel the common concerns people had about chocolate being bad for you. For instance, chocolate isn't bad for your teeth as long as you brush them frequently :) Attached is a solid chocolate statue. They also had some chocolate busts! I find busts a tad creepy anyway - busts of chocolate - eww!

Lastly, at the bottom of the blog you'll see a picture of the Godiva we found in the center of town. I found it interesting because there are so many wonderful chocolate shops - and Godiva is wonderful too - but uhh the other ones were more wonderful :)

We had seen a comic museum, so we decided to visit that as well. It was somewhat interesting, though seemed to be about a specific artist named Jacques Martin, rather than being a general comic museum. Apparently Martin was an associate of Herge, the author of Tintin. Herge actually published a magazine, called Tintin, which featured various comic strips, including Martin's. Martin wrote several comic strips which had never been translated to English and so we had never heard of them before.

We did purchase Asterix in Belgium. I had read this before, but after visiting Belgium understood much more of the subtle humor. The competitiveness of French-speaking Belgians to Frenchmen. The Mannekin Pis, the kind of food they eat (I found it especially amusing that they serve a huge feast and call it a 'snack', which is just like what is really done in Belgium!)

This rounded out the "fun" part of our trip. Next would be the conference.