LOW COST TRIPS AROUND BRUSSELS: TERVUREN AND AFRICA MUSEUM

The truth is we are still jobless. Oh, how I miss being jobful, you've no idea! For now, however, we dedicate our days to a frantic job hunt, contacting every and any place which is vaguely connected to our professional experience. This means we spend a large portion of our time in front of our computers, locked up in our tiny little "I will survive" room. Life's tough but we'd expected this. Our goal: to find jobs and stay sane in the process. What do you need to stay sane? Little pleasures. Since there is only a limited amount of waffles you can eat without getting sick, we needed an alternative. This is how we came up with the Low Cost Trips around Brussels programme. Implemented two weeks ago, it has been working perfectly well until this day. Our three destinations so far: Midi market, which I've already told you about, Binche Carnival, which I will tell you about soon, and Tervuren. Which I will tell you about today.

Destination: the suburb of Tervuren, the Park of Tervuren and the Royal Africa Museum of Tervuren.
Transport: tram 44, destination Tervuren, from Montgomery station.
Equipement: picnic and comfy shoes.
Cost: transport around Brussels (but we have a monthly ticket) + museum admission: 4 euro/person.

We needed to get away. And, to be completely honest, even though we like Brussels more and more, we still feel exteremely nostalgic about Africa. We thus made up our minds to visit the famous Africa Museum. The fact that it is surrounded by a beautiful, enourmous park was a bonus. We'd felt like hiking for a while now, so walking in the woods seemed like an excellent idea. Bus 54, bus 27, tram 44 and there we were - in Tervuren, which, as the monolingual bus timetable informed us, is in Flanders, actually.

Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale was ordered to be built at the beginning of the XXth century by king Leopold II. It goes without saying that the building itself is truly magnificent, and if I knew anything about architecture, I'm sure I would give you a lengthy explanation as to its structure and style. Unfortunately, you will have to content yourselves with my layman's statement that it's extremely pretty to look at.

Originally, the idea behind the museum, fashioned by the king (and, accidentally, the sole owner of Congo between 1885 and 1908, when the country was taken over by the Belgian government), was to show the good people of Belgium what a fun colony the king possessed in distant Africa. It presented handcraft, fauna and flora, together with pictures of proud Belgians standing next to chained Congolese. Times have changed, however, slavery was abolished, the Europeans lost (at least formally) their influence in Africa, and the museum became a well-reputed haven to Central African artefacts.

Most of the exhibits were assembled during the colonial period... and you can tell. The fauna rooms are full of stuffed animals, testimony to the glory of illimited hunting in Africa. The anthropology section, full of masks and the like (mostly from Congo, but two or three from Gabon, too!) would be much more interesting if the explanations, clearly coming from the seventies, were more detailed or - in some cases - simply present. On the other hand, we were happy to learn that a lot of space was dedicated to the colonial times. The story is told in a frank, truthful way, without trying to skip the shameful details. A big plus.

To sum up: the museum is not perfect but it is definitely worth a visit. It is huge, diverse, and offers many activities apart from the permanent exhibition inspected by yours truly (temporary exhibitions are more expensive, though).

One final note: don't forget to bring a picnic! The museum grounds are definitely worth a stroll. The park is enormous, with formal gardens, a bit wilder woods, several lakes, small paths and wide alleys... We wandered around for at least a couple of hours but you can easily spend a whole day just getting lost in the Tervuren park.

So here it is: my first tourist recommendation in Brussels. I can't help myself, it has to do with Africa. Next in the series: the Binche Carnival, check back in a few days!

Oh, and I've just been contacted for a job interview.