Belgians like nothing better than a big spectacle. Give them an excuse to parade around in tights while opera blasts from loudspeakers and animated movies are shown on the beautiful architecture, and they will take it. That is the only explanation for the events that we have been witness to since moving to Brussels. Every holiday celebration seems to be accompanied by live opera, costumes and cartoons. Which, to be clear, I am not complaining about. It is just interesting.
The most recent installment in this series of experiences was Ommegang. I won’t try to give the full history of the event. If you are interested, you can read about it here: http://ommegang.be/index2.php?idx=2&lg=en
In brief, the procession commemorates Charles Quint visiting Brussels from Ghent. What is now a 30 minute drive was apparently a big deal in the 16th century.
We went to the Ommegang festival with the American Club of Brussels. They had secured a dining room at Maison du Cygne, which overlooks the Grand Place. (As an interesting side bar. The first time that we went to eat here, a German couple of a certain age were taking provocative photos of the missus in leather and revealing bustier, while everyone ate lunch. C’est tres incroyable!). We had a cash bar plus a three-course dinner and wine. The group was a fairly interesting mix as it typically is when you pull together a combination of people who know one another and with a equal quantity of total strangers.
Through the course of the evening we mixed cocktail hour small talk with visits to the balcony to watch the proceedings. The festival itself lasted about three hours and was, as billed, a spectacle extraordinaire. The highlights of the festival are the stilt walkers. They walk around the Grand Place on some seriously high stilts. With the cobblestones of the Grand Place, She Who Must Be Obeyed has a hard enough time not twisting an ankle in high heels. The idea of walking around on twenty foot tall stilts is nuts.
Like a lot of experiences, this was an interesting one to see and worth the price of admission. Not sure we will do it again, but worth doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment