a day ago
What links a sexy devil, UFOs and a tsar's drunken night out?
In a secluded hollow in Brussels Park a monument marks the spot where the Russian tsar Peter the Great was drunkenly sick after attending a particularly boozy banquet in April 1717.
The strange memorial is featured in a new travel guide, Bizarre Belgium, gathering together 50 of Belgium's strangest places — and making a good case for the country to be considered among Europe's most idiosyncratic.
'Belgium is an eccentric country because of its history and weird situation, with the different languages and peoples. So, I think we try to make it fun and this is why we have a surrealist tradition,' Kamiel De Bruyne, one of the guide's authors, said.
Belgium is a country regarded by many historians as an artificial creation by Europe's great powers after the defeat of Napoleon, which often seems to be on the brink of falling apart. It is an uneasy marriage between the Dutch-speaking Flemish and francophone Walloons, governed by a famously dysfunctional state, with various dark chapters in its less than 200-year history.
• The best of Belgium: where to stay and what to do
Karen François, De Bruyne's girlfriend and co-author, said Belgians think their nation 'very normal', adding: 'We wouldn't say 'weird little Belgium' ourselves.'
The couple, both aged 33, are uncovering the remains of a fountain basin in Brussels Park, formerly known as the Royal Park, dating back to the 18th century and covered by hedge trimming dumped by park keepers. It bears an inscription in cod Latin: 'Petrus Alexiowitz Czar Moscoviae magnus dux margini hujus fontis insidens illius aquam nobilitavit libato vino hora post meridian tertiadie XVI April's anno 1717'.
Translated, Kamiel said, the inscription relates that the tsar, 'seated at the edge of the fountain, enriched its waters with the wine he has consumed, at 3pm on April 16, 1717'.
Drunk after a lavish banquet, Peter the Great was sick and, legend has it, fell asleep there until the next morning. Several feet away is a bust of the Russian autocrat and emperor raised in the 19th century by an aristocratic countryman to mark the visit. 'It is a tribute to a royal puke,' said De Bruyne. 'Instead of politely forgetting the whole thing, someone in Brussels decided to immortalise it.'
Located in a less-than-inviting corner of the park, right opposite and below the present royal palace, reflecting the lower street level of the 18th century, the statue was once infamous as a trysting spot between government officials and prostitutes, according to François.
De Bruyne said that of other landmarks in the travel guide he had a particular soft spot for western Europe's only monument or memorial to UFOs by a roadside in Flanders. 'It is absolutely my favourite,' he said.
It recalls a traffic jam, a traditional sight on Belgium's national day of July 21, as everyone headed to the coast in 1955. Marin Vandercruyssen, an 18-year-old soldier, was riding pillion on his father's motorbike when they saw a crowd of more than 20 people pointing up in the air.
He followed their gaze and saw five gigantic silver circular flying saucers. They were at least 100 metres in diameter, according to Vandercruyssen and other witnesses. After ten minutes the UFOs supposedly disappeared but changed Vandercruyssen's life for ever. 'He was convinced the alien would come back,' De Bruyne said. 'His dream was to be taken to their planet and that is why he wanted to put the marker there, so they could find him. It even includes a picture of him from 1955 so they can recognise him.'
Vandercruyssen died in 2020 — 'no aliens ever turned up', De Bruyne added. 'It is very sad, beautiful and Belgian.'
The top pick for François is the 'sexy Satan' of Liège. The 19th-century statue of Lucifer in the city's cathedral depicts the fallen angel as a brooding and muscular young man. The first version of the work, L'ange du mal (Angel of evil) by Joseph Geefs in 1842, was considered to be too seductive and was removed. It is now in a Brussels museum. The second, 1848's Le génie du mal, (The genius of evil) by Joseph's brother William, was still controversial, even though it had more clothes, and was allowed to stay.
'Very typical Belgium: we make something. Oh, no, it's too much. Too hot. Sexy Satan. We will remove it. Now we'll make an even better one. Super sexy Satan,' she said, recounting how the 'sunlight streams through the stained glass windows right on to his six-pack and muscular thighs'.
No guide to Belgium can be complete without Leopold II, the great, great, great-uncle of the present king, Philippe. Now seen as a monster, he ran the Congo as his personal colonial fiefdom between 1885 and 1908 when at least ten million Congolese people, more than half the population, either died or were killed.
The book includes a British-built pedal tricycle, now in a military museum, which Leopold used to visit one of his mistresses, Blanche Delacroix.
The guide also features a now boarded-up royal station. Built in a neo-classical style, the station was purpose-built to receive high-ranking guests and, rumour has it, to ensure Leopold received the first edition of The Times by express train every day.
'I think you should come and visit Belgium and do all the typical tourist places and visit Bruges, which is great and amazing and beautiful,' De Bruyne said. 'But if you come to Belgium a second time, bring this book to go to these weird and peculiar places that otherwise you would miss.'
