The pleasures of Belgium

And, of course, the world’s best diamonds in Antwerp that has also been very famous for its historic dominance as a port of thriving international trade. An additional interest is the big presence of our own merchants from Surat, Mumbai and even Chennai, rubbing shoulders with the handsome long-bearded Jews in the world’s biggest diamond trading centre spanning just three streets close to the railway station and accounts for over $12 billion exports in a year.

Destination Belgium could be as much the slogan for a budget traveler buggy-riding in Bruges as it is for the wealthy connoisseur of art, history and fashion. The country, particularly the Flanders region, has been witnessing significant increase in the number of travelers from all over the world due to its unique mix of modernity with old traditions.

Perhaps the best place to begin is Brussels, not just because it has the main international airport providing connections to almost everywhere in the world. The capital of Belgium is among the most favoured weekend getaways for neighbours in France and Germany. Most of them drive into the city and hire a scooter or just a bicycle to move around, guzzling beer, savouring the best food at ridiculously low rates and indulging in chocolates. The city is undoubtedly emerging as a must-go for holiday-dreamers being the epicenter of European culture and so is even nicknamed the ‘European Village’.

There are some 90 museums — including one exclusively for musical instruments, over 7,000 pieces, even very rare ones, from every country and community (including our own Veena, Mridangam and Tabla) housed in an ‘art nouveau’ style building also called the ‘Old England Building’ — several parks and romantic walks. There are any number of trendy bars and restaurants and not to be missed is the café at the top of the musical instruments museum that offers a breathtaking view of the city.

And the culture aficionadas can ‘stalk’ umpteen art shows including the annual big festival, Art Brussels, that brings together over 180 galleries and more than 2,000 artists from across the world under one roof. And don’t forget to buy a Brussels Card that gives you free access to the best of museums and the city’s steady stream of hop-on-hop-off buses.

Not many know that the Belgians are just as proud of their comics as their chocolates. The Belgian Comic Strip Walk is a must visit place even if you are not a great fan of the picture tale books for it reveals in great detail, and colour, the elegant progress of the nation as the ‘Kingdom of Comics’; which is why Time magazine had declared Belgium’s comic-strip culture ‘Europe’s richest’.

It’s a long walk down the alleys of the comics, walls painted with large-sized famous characters. A stop at the ‘Comics Café’ becomes inevitable not just to rest the legs and sip some famous Belgian milk chocolate and gape in wonder at the pains the Belgians take in preserving and proclaiming comics as an integral part their tradition, art and culture. While at the café, take a seat to place your order in a well-preserved 17th century chapel now called the ‘Tintin Room’ dedicated to the most famous of them all. The little red-haired detective with dog Snowy and the rest of them in the delightful comic series was created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi, known by the pen name of Herge, whose birth centenary was celebrated in 2007. And the visit to the Belgian Comic Strip Centre, a museum devoted entirely to explaining how the famous strips were created and to nurturing new talent, is a must.

Take the car for a nice drive along a smooth road chiseled through the woods, amid traffic so orderly you would find it embarrassing if not distressing when you return home to the familiar chaos. Little lovely towns like Ieper (pronounce Ypres), Bruges and Ghent are not really small if one takes into account their magnificent monuments of ancient European history and relics of the culture of those days, most of them still well preserved even among the very modern eateries, galleries and student campuses.

Once you reach these towns, the best thing to do would be to walk around or hire a bicycle, stop for a beer here and a taste (or sniffing, tobacco style) of chocolate there, an awesome stroll through the old churches and feast on the Flemish delicacies in restaurants that still resemble old-time places. You are very lucky if you are a meat eater but you will not starve if you are a ‘pure’ veggie — restaurants have a choice of vegetarian menus as well. And whatever your food choices, do not miss the canal cruise with wine and aperitifs, and a jolly good guide, before dining at the Ghent River Hotel.

If the lucky Indian tourist is feeling great at the lovely Flanders tour and wants a bit of bitter stuff for sobering up, he must look for the Indian segment in the large World War I memorials at Ieper. There aren’t any bugles sounding to salute the sepoy, no roses left at the rows and rows of tombstones and nothing to signal the sense of Indian nationalism and pride.

The British built the India Gate in Delhi in 1931 to commemorate the 70,000-odd Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting in World War I but the post-independence rulers did not seem to care much for such memory, perhaps because the Sardars, Rajputs and the Pathans had taken the bullets only to protect British interests.