Clearly it is the presence of the Giant Blue Brain which looks down upon this fair city.

Thank you to my gracious hosts for an exhilarating visit to Belgium’s charming capitol, and to The Mighty Brain to which I now pledge my everlasting obedience.

The place I ate lunch at yesterday here in Brussels had a gorgeous display of alcohol bottles rising 14 feet on cherry wood shelves. The bottles were lit from above and below and within each shelf. I spent the entire lunch staring at them.

I always loved the traditions of different bottle shapes and label styles. Whisky, vodka, brandy, scotch… There’s nothing stopping them from putting Jim Beam in Apple Juice bottles—it would be the exact same drink—but they never will. When I pass them in the supermarket aisles, I feel like I’m in a museum, or even a church. I imagine how much more I’d appreciate them if my body had developed a chemical dependency on their effects; how the experience of drinking would flash through my head at the mere sight of each one.

I’ve always suspected that I’d really like drinking if I ever got started. So I never have.

The restaurant accidentally charged me 13,000 dollars for lunch, instead of 13 dollars. They fixed the mistake, but last night I had to call long distance to my bank in the U.S. to get a hold on my card lifted after they thought it had been stolen. I’m taking it as a warning.

Fun fact: Scott also loves the smell of cigarettes and the charming clatter of roulette wheels.

Off to Brussels for the Book Fair.

I was in Turnhout for a comics festival in late 2007 and I noticed something odd. It was moist, cool, and windy, and when I caught my own reflection in a shop window, my hair was blowing back into a small tuft directly over my forehead—exactly like Tintin. I mentioned this to cartoonist/genius Kevin Huizenga at dinner that night and he confirmed that he’d noticed his hair doing the same thing whenever he was in Belgium and had even written about it. Was Hergé a realist? 

Updates might be spotty for a few days. Returning home Monday.