My trip to Brussels
- Bronze statue of Tintin
A few weeks ago I took the opportunity to go to Belgium and while there I visited several places that were related to Tintin. The first was the Belege De La Bande Dessinee or Belgian Comic Strip Centre. This is a museum dedicated to all comic strips from Belgium. In the atrium of the building is a 6ft (2m) bronze sculpture of Tintin with Snowy. Also in the atrium is a 7ft (2.1m) model of the moon rocket.
After paying for my ticket (250Bf or US$5.50) I started to climb the stairs to the second floor where the exhibits are but before reaching the top, I noticed the first "exhibit". The stairs had a chipped tread like the one the Captain tripped on in The Castafiore Emerald. Under the tread they had a frame from The Castafiore Emerald showing the chipped tread.
On the second floor I saw the next set of Tintin statues. This time it was Captain Haddock, Tintin, and Professor Calculus on the moon. I also noticed that all the signs were in French and Dutch only. While I know these are the languages of Belgium, I would think that an English section would be helpful to most visitors.
Only a small section of the exhibits dealt directly with Tintin and they were interesting. There was a section showing all the doubles that Hergé wrote in the stories (i.e. The Thompsons, the Bird Brothers, the Alembick brothers, etc). Another section showed a gift that Hergé made for Neil Armstrong showing Tintin's moon rocket in the background with everyone welcoming Mr. Armstrong in the foreground with Apollo 11, to the Moon.
- Tintin and co
My next visit was to the Stockel/Stokkel Metro Station where there is a 240m mural of all the characters in the stories. I was quite amused how the characters from on story were next to another set of characters in another story (the Captain in a snowball from Tintin in Tibet right next to Tintin driving a car in Tintin in Congo).
Additional photographs from this trip can be viewed at http://www.andrewpatton.com/tintin.html
Photographs and text © Andrew Patton. Used by permission.