So it's a grey, cold, drizzly Sunday; I'm sitting here watching the sky spit fitfully while sipping Mariage Freres tea (quite possibly the best tea on the Continent) and listening to the Bach Mass in B minor, a holdover from similar rainy Sundays in Dublin four years and many ages ago. Brussels is finally living up to its reputation as a rainy, dreary city; the past two days have been chilly and wet, the sort of weather that eventually soaks your trench coat and sends you inside in search of hot drinks or just a warm fire.
This weather is perfect for museum-going, however, which is exactly what I've been doing. I signed my internship contract with the Africa museum Friday, which basically means that I can access Henry Morton Stanley's papers, most of the colonial archive, the permanent collection, and the library. This is extremely exciting; I am itching to get my hands on some old maps, problematic diaries, and intriguing photos. I also rode Leo out to the museum, which was equally exciting; I got up to 90 km/hr (around 55-60 mph), which is actually pretty fast when you're not enclosed in a car, I learned. Leo has unfortunately come down with something, however, so he's going to the doctor tomorrow. Cross your fingers for his speedy recovery. (For those of you who missed it, Leo is my scooter. Just realized that might be confusing :)
Saturday (yesterday) I went to the Magritte museum with a fellow grantee studying Belgian symbolist literature. I loved everything about this museum; from the big echoey elevator to the disorienting floor plan to the artful way it wove together Magritte's paintings, sketches, letters, biography, quotations, and photos of him dressing up as an extraterrestrial (complete with tinfoil hat. The man had a sense of humor.) Magritte's famous works, such as "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and "The Son of Man," aren't in the museum. As a veteran of many many trips to the Louvre, I actually liked that the famous stuff wasn't in the museum; it kept the hordes of tourists at bay and meant that I and everyone else had time to focus on the rest of the paintings, many of which are just as good/interesting/frustratingly enigmatic as Magritte's more famous stuff. This also meant that curators were more chill than in Musee d'Orsay or the Louvre; you could get up close to the paintings and see that the seemingly-smooth surface of Magritte's creepy works is actually made of thick paint. It became really easy to envision Magritte (who looked more like a handsome banker than a skinny painter) daubing paint onto his pipe-faced, bowler-hatted men in suits, which made his paintings somehow more human and more approachable. Finding the human side of these paintings is good, since I would have otherwise spend two hours getting progressively more and more creeped out by his girls eating magpies and sliced billiard balls. Another good, human thing was the price: two euros for hours of artsy entertainment (and warm shelter from the incessant drizzle). Being a less-than-twenty-six-year-old student in Europe is the best.
Today, I went to mass at Notre-Dame au Sablon, one of the old Gothic cathedrals in the city center. Gothic cathedrals, especially ones in Belgium, have had a hard time of it; their soaring spires and rich decorations have made them targets for raids since they were constructed in the Middle Ages. This continued up until modern times; Brussels was largely decimated during World War I and II, and most of the cathedrals lost their priceless stained glass windows to bomb blasts. Most cathedrals here now have pretty but plain replacement windows. Notre-Dame au Sablon is one of the only exceptions to that rule. I'm not sure if the stained glass is original (kind of doubt it), but if it's a replacement it's stunning; beautiful (if anachronistic) portraits of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, most saints, and some random Brussels burgomeister meisterburghers (portly, but terribly pious). There is also nothing like a chanted mass in a medieval cathedral; no matter how much I struggle with the politics and precepts of the Catholic Church (I'm Protestant), I'll never be able to deny the visceral, spine-tingling beauty of voice and organ echoing off stone. There's something about the fact that people have been singing the same way in the same place for centuries that is really beautiful and humbling.
Afterwards, I wandered out of mass and into the brocante at Petit Sablon, an open-air antique market full of red-and-green-striped tents where elderly Flemish and Walloon merchants sell Depression glass, silver teapots, gemstones, woodcuts, crucifixes, comic books (of course), and real-croc-skin purses. There's something for everyone, and something that will creep everyone out. For me, it was the "Achat du Congo" booth, which teemed with knockoff sculptures, masks, cowrie-shell purses, kinte cloth, and (oh, yes, Brussels) cream colored helmets, complete with netting. The lady running the booth was very pleasant, had spent many years in Congo, and clearly saw nothing ironic in her very retro wares. I chalked up the booth to her age and walked on, only to be confronted by the most beautiful chocolate shops ever. The displays were decadent; delicate high heels in dark chocolate, wedding cakes made of different colors of macaroons; a willow tree whose delicate, curling branches were made of dark, light, and white chocolate. And then there was the last window, Planete Chocolat, where the display featured huge cacao beans made of chocolate, large earthen pots made of bitter chocolate, masks made of white chocolate painted different colors, statues of various heights and chocolate composition, and a whole scene featuring dark chocolate figurines in various states of undress gesturing wildly at a pot of chocolate. A tiny chocolate sign in the corner read "Le chocolat au Congo." So, basically, unless these figures were made approximately fifty years ago, marketing based on the good ol' colonial past isn't just something that outdated colonial subjects do. That said, how many times has Atlanta used good ol' racially dubious Gone With the Wind to try to jumpstart its tourism industry? Is Brooks Brothers obliged to stop gushing about the exotic refinement of the Indian and Egyptian cotton it uses to sew its legendary shirts? Should everyone re-upholster their British colonial palm-tree-and-monkey chairs? (Actually, yes; from what I hear, that fabric is out of style, and sitting on monkeys is really just creepy). Do we whitewash our past? Ignore it? Re-upholster it? Do we lay it out for everyone to see? Do we capitalize on it? Is that ethically wrong, or just in poor taste?
(Potential answers on this to come.)
For now, I am done with my tea and moving on to neuhaus pralines (which, despite their lack of authentic Congo-themed marketing, are as perfectly Belgian as you can get). The drizzle has calmed down and the sun is trying really really hard to come out. Yay surprising, unpredictable Belgium.
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