Geeks everywhere are thinking "Duh. Everyone knows it's Comic-Com."
I'm sure some of our Comic-Con ventures are covered under the Geek label in Chickenblog. The funny thing is we feel like we were already there this year. But the food was too good, so we must have been in Bruxelles! My first post about Bruxelles alluded to the comic theme and the good food, to Tin-Tin and the Grand Plaçe, and then I promised a visit to... Atomium!
Somewhere in the comments was a nice remark about our 'many pictures' and how we 'must have lots of photo albums.' We have many up until about 2001, and then came digital and I have practically stopped printing. And once I started blogging I gave up photo albums. Chickenblog is our family photo album. It would be nice to rectify this. I know it would be nice to have real books with prints that we could leaf through and enjoy. We don't even have family pictures in frames... very bad. Shame.
Well, no point dwelling. And until I remember how to make prints or learn how to take a memory stick to the printshop, then I will at least try to keep Chickenblog as up to date as possible.
Comic-Con has crowds.
Bruxelles has crowds.
Comic-Con has art and people to admire the art.
Bruxelles has art and people to admire the art.
Comic-Con has forums for self expression, for demonstrating your interests, talents, points of view.
Bruxelles has forums for self expression, for demonstrating interests, talents, points of view.
Comic-Con has people that dress in character.
Bruxelles has people that dress in character.
Comic-Con has vendors.
Bruxelles has vendors.
Comic-Con has
Bruxelles has waffles, chocolate, sweet strawberries, frites, beer, hearty and fresh sandwiches that are stuffed with delicious veggies, Speculoos, Nutella, onion soup, mussels...
Comic-Con has been around since the 1970's.
Bruxelles has been around since before the 10th Century.
We love Comic-Con enough to return year after year.
Bruxelles has us smitten too.
On our way out of town we were lamenting how little time we had to spend in Belgium. I had read about this place called "Atomium." Dallas had mentioned it too... a place we might enjoy seeing. But we felt the need to race off to our next reservation, so we assumed we'd have to miss it. But as we settled in to the highway and had our course charted, we saw the shiny mecca on the horizon, rising like a gleaming geek siren above the trees. Once again we made our GPS go bonkers when we steered away from the charted course and tried to find our way to Atomium.
Go to the webpage to get a handle on what Atomium is all about. This 1958 World's Fair attraction, a big, shiny representation of a ferrium crystal, was well worth the price of admission. We loved the sights. We loved the engineering. We loved the design. We loved the shine. We loved the retro back to the future vibe. If we could have worn jetpacks and slept in pods we would not be here right now...
We would be pondering the joy of comics and science converging.
We would still be playing with the endless wonder of digital photography and big things.
We would be riding up and down the elevator to the top atom.
Then we would be looking down.
Down is where we saw the city and the woods and the tiny cars.
Hey, there's our car!
And there's Mini-Europe!
I want to go to there.
No. Wait. I want to go to there!
That looks awesome.
We were surprised how much of the Ferrium Crystal was accessible. With stairs, the main elevator and escalators we were traveling all over Atomium.
Wouldn't it be cool if they could achieve zero gravity in here?
Don't let their expressions mislead you. Those are the reverent faces of geeks in awe of science and technology. Okay, and Maria is a little sad her ice cream is all gone.
You can't get this at Comic-Con, but we're going anyway.