Dear all, this weekend we had a terrific weather in Brussels, well beautiful blue skies at least. The weather was a bit chilly but if seeing the sky means breezy weather I am going to take it. My friend Kirsten from the Netherlands came for a visit for the weekend and we hit the town. Kirsten has visited Brussels before so we did not go to the Manneken Pis and she did not touch the lucky statue, Everaert 't Serclaes, in the Grand Place but I did take her to a local restaurant hangout of the interns, we strolled downtown, and managed to make our way to the Comic Museum . Now before you laugh let me explain, I was a die hard Archie fan in elementary school and I definitely have a soft spot for Wolverine on X-Men so to me a comic museum sounds like a pretty interesting place. It turns out that Belgium was and to some degree continues to be a comic Mecca. Any chance you have ever heard of Les Schtroumpfs? What about the Smurfs? I thought so. Even you have a connection to the Belgian comic world. If the Smurfs were not part of your cultural landscape as a child maybe Tintinand his dog Snowy were more your style well I hate to break it to you but they are Belgian too.

Living in Brussels I did the obvious tourist things when I moved here and then I fell into routine and go to the same restaurants, bars, and occasionally venture downtown. I decided that since Kirsten was coming I should get a tourist map to see what was on there that I had never experienced. The Comic Museum or The Belgian Comic Strip Center if you want to get technical was on the list and it sounded like some fun so we gave it a try. The museum “brings together everything related to the comic strip, from its prestigious beginnings to its most recent developments”. It was pretty interesting but does not have very much information in English so my eyes started to glass over after about a half an hour. There is a section at the end of the museum in French, Flemish, and English that I really enjoyed. It features interviews from current prominent Belgian and French comic book artists and explores the boundaries between adult and children’s comics.

For dinner my roommate Bridget, Kirsten, and I decided to try something off of the tourist map before going to the movies. Kirsten heads of to Tanzania in less than a month so I suggested we check out a part of town with a high proportion of African immigrants. The street the map recommended for its rich culinary variety was less than active when we went looking for dinner around 7:30. We meandered around and found Tam Tam Restaurant where we were the only Caucasian people, the menu was in French, and nobody spoke any English. Luckily for us Kirsten is a whiz at languages and translated the menu for us and ordered our dinners. It turned out that nothing on the menu was actually available including SakaSaka. I have no idea what SakaSaka is but I wanted to order just because I love saying it. Say it three times fast and you will completely understand where I am coming from. It took some work to make it understood that nothing on the menu was available. The server started using hand gestures that to Bridget resembled someone stretching out pasta. I started cracking up on the spot which in no way helped Kirsten decipher this woman’s African-French dialect. The server promised that the kitchen would cook us up some traditional African food and that we would like it. I know nothing about African food but I do know that in a practically empty restaurant it should not take 1 hour and 45 minutes for dinner to appear on our table. We talked and I periodically entertained us by pretending to “stretch pasta”. I will admit that my dinner, whatever it was, was terrific. My theory is that the chickens are kept live in the backyard and they only use as much as they “need”. We were 15 minutes late for the movie but we had a truly cultural experience and the movie will be long forgotten before any of us forget the good restaurant Tam Tam.

It is wonderful to discover new things about the place you take for granted as home. I recommend stopping by a tourist office wherever you live and look at your city with fresh eyes. You might not end up with SakaSaka but you might do something just as “cultural”. Here are the photos.