Jenikya's Blog

I was in Brussels earlier this month and visited Brussels Autoworld car museum. I went to visit on the day of the Love Bug Parade of 2024, which celebrates the popular Volkswagen car. I discovered many Volkswagen Beetle cars, some new Volkswagen models, and Volkswagen vans. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the cars and car club as I have always loved Volkswagens and I also participated in some events of another car club, Mini. The cars all started to arrive before noon and parked in front of the museum. I enjoyed watching the cars drive in and park up and the atmosphere of the cars. The event took place on Valentine's Day weekend, so it was called "Love Bug" in nod to the shape of the Volkswagen Beetle.

I loved that some of the cars were dressed up in theme. My favourite was the green Volkswagen Beetle pictured above, but I also had a soft spot for the rusty ones and the ones that looked like they were left forgotten for awhile.

With the exception of January, the year has so far flown by. I have still been in my busy project at work and not able to really enjoy much outside of work. I feel that it is very important to have a work-life balance and to enjoy life without being forced to work all of the time, and I need to make more time for myself. The weather has not turned great so far, but I am looking for some good times ahead. I took some photographs of some beautiful spring daffodils and tulips, which I enjoy at this time of year. Spring has only just arrived, and I am sure that it will go by just as quickly.

Happy spring and I hope you get to enjoy it.

Earlier this month, I visited Gooey Waffle in Uxbridge to indulge in some waffles. They sell waffles and ice cream, and visitors can customize their own waffle creation with different toppings and different flavours of ice cream. I had the berries waffle with pistachio sauce and two types of pistachio ice cream. I had the standard pistachio and the pistachio and saffron ice cream. It was topped with chocolate sauce and mixed blueberries and strawberries and a Bounty bar (coconut and chocolate). I was impressed with the quality and taste of the waffle.

Visitors can choose from a range of fruits, chocolates, and other toppings and so many different flavours of ice cream.

Street artist WRDSMITH is known for creating paste-ups with a stencil of a vintage typewriter along with a paste-up of text on a "page". The text can be witty or an observation, and they have been pasted across London for several years now. The artist, from Ohio, lives in California. I first noticed his work in early 2016, and he's visited London several times since then and leaves behind some art to locate. Below is a selection of works that I've seen but not yet posted. 

Previous posts about Wrdsmith on this blog can be seen here:

'Never be Afraid to Reinvtent Yourself' by Wrdsmith
Recent Street Art by Wrdsmith 2022
Street Art: WORDSMITH & C3
Recent Wrdsmith (Wordsmith) Street Art

I visited Brussels in February, and I had had two tours of the Brussels Town Hall, located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site square. There are two types of tour available, and both are different although a couple of the same rooms are toured twice, but both tours feature different rooms. The Panaromic Tour allows visitors to view the square from the balcony from a large room, which can be booked for weddings and also allows visitors to climb stairs to view the square from the top. The tours are conducted in different languages. Tour of the Brussels City Hall is by guided tours only.

The town hall was built in the early 1400s and is gothic in style. Extra wings were added to the hall later. The city hall was actually located here until more moderns times when a new building was erected. I did the panaromic tour first, and we explored a couple rooms.

One of the rooms was the Wedding Room. Here we stood on the balcony.

I got some close-up photographs of the statues.

I admired the view of the square from the balcony.

Afterwards, we headed into the Gothic Room. There are photographs of the guilds on the wall.

From here, we started to climb stairs.

Until we reached the top where we admired the view over the square.

I booked the standard tour for later on in the evening, and this toured the rooms including th wedding room and gothic room again.

We had a look at the first main room - the States of Brabant Room. We were told the history of the hall and the governance of Brussels and historical aspects. 

A lot of the rooms were filled with tapestries. Below is the Maxmillian Room.

We also went to a room filled with paintings of Brussels, but they are not recognisable as Brussels today. The paintings were commissioned by an artist before major works were carried out to demolish parts of the city and to bury the river and harbour under new streets of Brussels. 

We toured more rooms with tapestries.

Overall, I found both tours enjoyable. Both tours were different, so I think it depends on if you are more interested in getting a nice view over the square with some history or you want to see more of the rooms and learn more history about the building, governance, and the use of the rooms. 

Annatomix has been spray painting walls since 2012, and her work has appeared across London. Her style is geometrical shapes which create animals mainly, and foxes feature a lot in her work. I discovered the following bird mural off of Brick Lane and Pedley Street.

More work by Annatomix on this blog can be seen below:

• Street Art from Leicester's Bring the Paint Festivals in 2017 and 2019
• Bristol Upfest 2018
• Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park Environmental Street Art
• Street Art Tour of Birmingham
• Street Art Round-up: Winter 2015-2016
• Bristol Upfest 2015

When I visited Brussels in February, I spent a couple of hours in The Design Museum, which was included in the cost of the visit to the great exhibition structure Atomium (see my post about the Atomium here) and is a few hundred yards away from it. The Design Museum has a huge exhibition on plastics and different types of plastic. It features on different designs of furniture, homewears, and objects made of plastic, which was a popular material in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition discussed the different types of plastic (something which I never really considered) and how it is made. It also discussed sustainability and the environment. There was a large element of plastic used in modern design to contrast with the traditional, and I spent some time looking through the exhibition. 

There was also a large area for reserves of plastic items and to keep the plastic in good condition.

How many different designs of chairs can you make in plastic?

Plastic isn't my choice of material for furnishings or anything, but this material has changed the world when it became mass-produced and is used in so many products.

Dan Kitchener (Dank) is a London-based street artist who often paints walls in east London. Commercial Road in one spot that he has been painting a lot recently, and there is another spot on Brick Lane that often includes a mural by him. The artist is known for painting night scenes and usually features Japanese city streets and sometimes female figures.

The first mural of 2024 is "Tokyo Alleys", which was painted at the beginning of March.

The following work was completed in autumn of 2023 on Brick Lane.

The other two were painted on Brick Lane and Commercial Street again sometime last summer.

For more work by Dan Kitchener (DANK) featured in this blog, please read the following links:

Dank Kitchener 'Arcade' Street Art on Commercial Street
Dan Kitchener "Tokyo Dreams" Murals in Evelina Road, Penge
Round-up of Dan Kitchener Street Art in East London and Camden
Dan Kitchener Paints "London Colours" at NYX Hotel Holborn, Southampton Row
Dan Kitchener Addition to "East London Geisha" on Commercial Road
Dan Kitchener Paints "Midnight Drive" on Hanbury Street
Street art by Dan Kitchener in Summer 2020
Dan Kitchen Returns to Clifton Street with "Tokyo Graffiti" Mural
Latest Street Art by Dan Kitchener
Dan Kitchener Paints 'Ghost Cities' on Pedley Street
Dank Paints 'Ghost Cities - Bristol' for Upfest 2018
Dan Kitchener Paints "Meeting of Styles"
'Future Tokyo and Tokyo Ghosts'
Dank "London Rush"
Dan Kitchener's Street Art on Sclater Street and More
Street Art: Dan Kitchener
"Downtown" Mural by Dan Kitchener
Goswell Road

When I was in Brussels last month, I came across these bronze sculptures of "Le Cat" character that stars in a comic series. The sculptures were located in Parc de Brussels in the centre of the city and confined to one area to view. They depict the character in different roles or in different settings, such as a doctor, golfer, eating ice cream, lifting weights, and so on. The bronze sculptures are based upon illustrations from the comic. There are eighteen in total to see, and there is also an app available to download about them, which was advertised. The app tells about the sculptures and how the scuptures were made.

I was not familiar with the comic series "Le Cat" before I visited Brussels. The comic seems to be cultured obervations about life and society.

While I was in Brussels last month, one of the attractions I visited was the Brussels City Museum, which includes a diverse collection of information important to the city of Brussels from Manneken Pis to a fire to city planning to porcelain. The museum is situated in The King's House in the square, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The building is beautiful, and there are several floors with different exhibitions. 

The first room had some early history about the architcture and the previous buildings that occupied the site, including some stonework and carvings. The Prophets are pictured below, and there was also a very old gargoyle and one of the earliest carvings.

The next area included porcelain made in Brussels. Brussels was also known to create altars for churches and tapestries were another famous export (if not the most famous export of the city). I liked the porcelain in the shape of vegetables.

On one of the upper floors, there was a discussion about the city planning and a model of the old city. The city used to have a river through it and docks, but the docks were unclean and smelled bad. The river was covered. There were paintings depicting Brussels with the riverside and parts of the town that no longer exist. A painter was commissiond to paint the streets of Brussels before demolition of areas. 

One of the exhibitions at the top of the museum is the weather vane that used to grace the top of the town hall. It depicts Saint Michael, who is regarded as the important saint of Brussels. It dates to the middle of the 1400s. This same room housed information about the fire and seize of Brussels.

A final room at the top was dedicated to Manneken Pis. The original Manneken Pis statue is located here, and a few of his outfits and tributes from other countries are shown. He's so famous that he has a book in China. Entrance to the Manneken Pis Garderobe museum is free of cost with a visit to the Brussels City Museum. For informtion about that museum, see: Manneken Pis.

I enjoyed my afternoon visit to the Brussels City Museum, and it is a good museum to learn about the history of the city.