Museum Plantin-Moretus / Wondrous Animals on Paper (Antwerp, 22-7-2007)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

The review from our first visit in 2006: http://batz.multiply.com/reviews/item/51
* the museum is still great and you need to visit it at least once!

The museum site:
http://museum.antwerpen.be/plantin_moretus/index_eng.html

The site about the special exhibit: http://www.odierbaarantwerpen.be/programma.php?cat=expo
* many nice old books with animals and as a bonus some great natural wonders like shells and stuffed animals.

And it was a free visit! http://www.amuseevous.be/site/content/avmusea_detail.asp?mID=28&sub=deeln
Yay for amuseevous!

Asian Arts (Museum)

Brussels, Chinese Pavilion-Japanese Tower-Japanese Museum

Fire in the Sky

11-7-2007, Mechelen

Museums of the Far East (Brussels, 14-7-2007)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

If you are in Brussels visiting the Atomium, like many tourists do, you are quite likely to see a Japanese tower sticking out from the trees quite near to it. This is one of the buildings of the "Museums of the Far East" and it's definitely worth a visit (or two!).

This museum is part of the museums for art and history (KMKG-MRAH) in Brussels. The other museums are great already but this one is really really special!
There is the Japanese tower which holds many Asian treasures and looks amazing on the inside. Sadly you cannot climb the whole tower but the outside is beautiful enough. There's a nice Bhuddistic garden around the tower too.

And then there is the Chinese pavilion which has so many sculptures and carvings on the outside you'll probably walk around it a few times before entering. The inside holds Chinese treasures and a very Baroque-Exotic-Art Nouveau inside. Even the bathrooms are worth a look!

And then there's another building holding a museum for Japanese art. The ceiling of this building is very nice, especially if you think this building was supposed to be a stable for carriages!
All the objects inside are perfect. There's not room for many but they are all beautiful. And anyway: there's so much to see outside and inside the buildings itself already!

And now you wonder what are these Asian structures doing here in Brussels anyway?? Well, king Leopold II saw buildings like these at a World Fair in Paris and liked them so much he wanted some himself . So he had them built (around 1900-10) on part of his domain in Brussels. Parts of the building even came from Japan and China to make them look as original as possible!
Now the buildings are owned by the Belgian state and since a few years we can visit them again.

If you want to know more about the history of the buildings you should definitely visit them because there's a lot more interesting information to find in the museum itself ;-)

Museum-site (Dutch and French only) here
Another free visit with werchter-amuseevous!
http://www.amuseevous.be/site/content/avmusea_detail.asp?mID=23&sub=deeln
Pictures: Asian Arts

Castle Gaasbeek (near Brussels, 8-7-2007)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

If you're ever in Belgium and you want to see a castle I'd recommend checking out this particular castle. Not only the surroundings are great but the castle itself is quite amazing!

Originally this was a medieval castle but the last owner, the marquise Arconati Visconti, had it renovated in the late nineteenth century. Now it's a very nice mix of neo-gothic and neo-renaissance styles. But the greatest thing is that the inside of he castle is totally furnished. Every room has great paintings, furniture, oak doors with marvellous carvings, beautiful tiles and many many other treasures. You can walk around in all the rooms for many hours and not get bored!

And that's just the castle! There's also a very large garden with many old trees, a big pond, other old buildings, an orchard and of course a restaurant where you can taste some great Belgian food (try the Belgian cherry beer called "Kriek" which is a specialty of the region!).

So if you want to have a great day outside, filled with nature, culture, architecture and other delicacies check out these sites:

- http://www.kasteelvangaasbeek.be/
- http://www.amuseevous.be/site/content/avmusea_detail.asp?mID=3&sub=deeln
(free visit with werchter-amuseevous!!)

RockWerchter 2007 (28-6 un till 1-7)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

Yes it's that time of the year again! Time to spend your days outside in the sun, the shade of trees, the mud, the rain, the green grass (which is getting less green every day) of Werchter!


Day One (thursday the 28th of june)

17:00-17:40 Billy Talent
A nice enough Canadian punk-rockband which best song either irritates you immensely or makes you strangely happy (I'm in the last category btw).

18:05-18:55 Zornik
Belgian band with a great new album, very good live, enjoyable Muse-like songs.

19:35-20:35 Air
Totally relaxing!

21:00-22:00 Marilyn Manson
So much better than the last time! I enjoyed the show, the songs, the atmosphere... and even the new songs worked well live.

22:35-23:50 Björk
Amazing as always! Great show, funny costumes and dancing, fantastic voice, great musicians as "band", brilliant songs and sounds.

22:45-0:00 Beastie Boys
Mark went to see them and he said they were great. I only saw two songs which were ok but the sound sucked!

0:30-2:00 Muse
Still one of the greatest live bands ever and the songs of their latest album are great too! And the classics are...well, classics right?

Day Two (friday the 29th of june)

16:25-17:25 Kaiser Chiefs
Their music makes me want to sit in a real English pub and have a cold pint of beer, some juicy pie and watch some football on the telly ;-)

18:00-19:00 Bloc Party
Completely different but still brilliantly British. This band has such a great sound!

19:35-20:35 Queens of the Stone Age
Their music rocks and they keep getting better live.

21:10-22:20 Arctic Monkeys
Cute little monkey-boys making quite good music. They'll keep getting better I think.

23:00-0:30 Pearl Jam
Loads of nostalgia but the songs just don't have the same impact any more. Great performance though.

Day Three (saturday the 30th of june)

15:05-16:05 Amy Winehouse
Even drunk she has a fantastic voice and her band sounded great (and sober ;-p). Very special lady!

16:40-17:40 Snow Patrol
Great band, great performance even-though it seems they keep losing luggage at our airport every-time they play in Belgium.

18:15-19:15 The Killers
Definitely the best thing to ever come out of Las Vegas! Quite an experience!

19:30-20:45 Arno
A great Belgian performer, perfect company for our dinner ;-)

19:55-21:10 Peter Gabriel
Real decent music, great songwriter, great performer and he can even dance ;-)

21:20-22:35 The Good, the Bad and the Queen
I'm not wild about it but it would probably have sounded a hell of a lot better with good sound and quiet people!

23:10-0:25 LCD Soundsystem
Wow! Now this IS something to get wild about! Very danceable and fun electronic-rock-noise-music mix.

Day Four (sunday the 1st of july)

15:25-16:25 Maxïmo Park
Nice enough but not very exciting.

15:45-16:45 The Kooks
Nice, very English (heavy accent!), rock-music. Enjoyable ;-)

17:20-18:20 Interpol
Absolutely brilliant! Such beautiful songs and so perfectly performed! Wow!

18:20-19:10 Frank Black
Un-comparable! No-one can scream and moan like Frank Black. And a good performance too ;-)

Eurovisions-The new Europeans by 12 Magnum photographers (KMSKB, 17-6-2007)

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

A great way to meet the countries that have recently joined the European Union! For all of you who don't know which countries we are talking about: Bulgaria, Malta, Czech Republic, Latvia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Estonia and Hungary.
If you are still confused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union ;-)

Anyway: 12 photographers each visited one of these countries and tried to grasp in images what they thought was the identity of that country. It's very nice to see all the pictures from all these different places which are very alike or very unlike our own European country.
I think that all the photographers succeeded very well in capturing at least part of the countries essence. The results are very enjoyable anyway!

Visit the site http://www.expo-eurovisions.be/ for more information and pictures.
The exhibit still runs un till the first of July. With the ticket for this exhibit you can of-course visit the rest of the museum too!

The picture is from Slovenia and was taken by Martin Parr.