By Andrew Patton
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.
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).
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