Toxic Resto

I have added a link (over there on the right) to my friend Dudley Salterton's new blog - http://toxiresto.blog.co.uk/. Well, OK, Dudley Salterton isn't really his name, but I guess libel laws force all of us to tell little white lies once in a while.

The aim of the blog is to act as a kind of anti-resto.be (http://www.resto.be is the site that lists all the restaurants in Brussels, indeed all of Belgium, but to Dudley's annoyance only allows you to give them a 'good' or 'great' score). His point is that many actually deserve a 'bad', or 'awful' score, so he has set up Toxic Resto to name and shame them. As he says, the blog is 'A real guide to the worst of Belgian restaurants!'

So, if you've had a bad restaurant experience in Brussels, share it. And if you are thinking about going out, check out Toxic Resto first.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

While I was in Pecs I also read The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. What a disappointment! What a load of rubbish, frankly. I had been led to believe that he was a brilliant writer, and the cover blurb tells you that this book "is a transforming novel", and that Coelho has "the power to inspire nations and to change people's lives". What a load of tripe! The book was shallow, predictable, and frankly silly. However, what it seems to do (and maybe his other books too?) is to push a kind of silly spiritualism that borders on pseudo-religion. And maybe that is why some people think he is brilliant - maybe they are believers in the silly modern pseudo-religion of 'spiritualism'. Well, I'm not, and this is my blog, so my message is clear - don't bother with this short, shallow, and uninteresting pseudo-religious load of rubbish.

And will I look for more books by Coelho? No, I won't.

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

I finished The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy while I was in Pecs. It is a brilliant book, and well worth its (1997) Booker Prize. When I started it I was afraid that it would be heavy going, but it wasn't. Despite the unfamiliarity of the names (in, I presume, Malayalam) they quickly became familiar, and the prose was beautiful and fluent. She captured and portrayed the mind of the children, who are the central characters, brilliantly.

Although ultimately a sad book, it didn't leave me with a bitter taste, because of the simplicity of the narration, and the depth of the story. If the measure of a book's worth is whether you would recommend it to a friend, then this book scores highly. For me, another measure is whether I will look for other books by the author. I will.

Pecs, Hungary

One of the disadvantages of a Brussels bureaucrat's life is that you sometimes have to leave the comforts of the Capital of Europe and go and visit the rest of Europe. Actually, I'm joking of course - it is one of the pleasures of our lives!

Last Sunday I headed off to Pecs in southern Hungary, to attend a meeting of ceramic producing cities. Pecs is the home of the Zsolnay Porcelain Manufactury, a high-end porcelain maker, and a partner in the network.

Pecs itself is an attractive small city, a UNESCO world heritage site, a historic place, and in 2010 European Capital of Culture. Ceramics are everywhere in the city, not just in and around the factory. The roofs of some buildings are made of porcelain tiles, there are porcelain sculptures and monuments, and a lovely museum. I'll load pictures here when I download them off the camera.

One evening in Pecs we were taken to a very wierd avant-garde theatre production by a Bosnian theatre company from Tuzla. Indescribable is the onle description I can give! We in the west think that we are the cultural trend-setters, but I'm afraid that the east (or the centre, at least) is a stranger place than we think. I'll add more on it when I (re-)find the URL of the theatre company.

Brussels Ekiden

Last Saturday I participated in the Brussels Ekiden. What is an Ekiden? Well, wikipedia describe it as a a marathon relay, and say that it originated in Japan. Basically, a team of six runners run the full 42 km marathon distance, but divided into sections of 5, 10, 5, 10, 5 and & km. I ran the second 10 km section for my team.

We were disqualified.

I don't really know why, except that some of our runners times were wierd, to say the least. I suspect the timing system (automatic recording of runners starting and finishing via a chip that they attach to their shoes) messed up. One of us was shown as doing 5 km in 10 minutes! That is better than Olympic standard. So, rather than admitting they screwed up, they disqualified us. Still, I got my nice shiny medal, and a day out in sunny Brussels.

Where is this?

Is it Tokyo? Is it Beijing? Is it some obscure monastery in the Japanese mountains?

No, it is Brussels. The Japanese Tower, and the Chinese Pavilion in Laken, to be precise. Both are real eye-openers - beautiful examples of pseudo-oriental buildings, merging genuine Chinese and Japanese building techniques, carvings and decorations with early twentieth-century Belgian Art Deco. The result is sometimes wierd, such as the interior of the Chinese Pavilion, where the grand (European) interior style has has an oriental layer added, or in the stained-glass (actually painted rather than stained) windows of the Japanese Tower.

The sheer opulence of both buildings shows the relatively enormous wealth of the Belgian monarchy at the time, and its ability to splash out on the fashion for 'chinoiserie'. Now, luckily, the buildings are open for all of us, and well worth a visit.