Binche and the Carnival

A fortnight later and the tune in my head is still there; less insistent, less forceful, not as loud, but still beating away like a pulse.

You don't forget the Binche carnival easily.

The parade on Sunday seems ordinary enough; groups of revellers in costume, with their brass bands. There are devils, ghosts, musketeers, peasants, little Chinese mandarins, huge contingents of Smurfs (this is Belgium); there is Michael Jackson, there is Che Guevara - no, there are at least a dozen Ches - but sadly no Elvis.

But it's not choreographed; one contingent is mainly Che Guevaras, but also contains a couple of phantoms and some peasants, and a couple of guys in strange Tommy Cooperesque outfits with fezzes and stripey waistcoats. Every one carries something in his right hand; a placard, a tray with champagne bottle and glasses, a billhook, a basket of strawberries, a huge plastic foam rifle. From time to time, marchers drop out and wander into one of the local bars, or share a bottle of beer and a fag with a friend in the crowd, or stop to exchange kisses on the cheek with their acquaintances. It's all a bit shambolic, and that's the case for everything that goes on during Carnival; timings are approximate, and any procession is likely to include numerous beer or champagne stops.

They don't really dance, either. They shuffle, and turn round and round within their company, and punctuate the music by lifting whatever they hold in their right hands; but that's all. Not the shimmying samba of Rio or the rhythmic verve of calypso or soca.

Yet there seems to be one rule that isn't transgressed; they only play one tune. There are 26, some people say 27, tunes allowed in the entire carnival, and tonight somehow they're only playing one. When I went to bed, it was playing in my head, and it carried on doing so for the next fortnight.

Fast forward to the ramassage, in the early hours of Shrove Tuesday morning. It's still dark; Binche's houses loom dark in the orange lamp-light. From a long way away we hear the shrill, plaintive tone of a clarinet playing a snatch of melody. Somewhere else, a bass drum starts; bom, bom, bom, bom, interminable, like a death march.

Down below the great walls, a first detachment of Gilles lumbers, their white-covered heads stark, their drummer pushing them forwards. Their inexorable march, the clack of their wooden clogs on the granite setts of the road, the fierce sharp rattle and snap of a snare drum from one of the side streets; it is all faintly sinister.

They stop at a house, dancing on the spot. The door opens. Time for champagne. (It's five o'clock in the morning.) Glasses are handed out. We wait. Some time later, they set out again. Now there are six Gilles, instead of five; like giants or ogres, wearing those huge clogs, their torsos stuffed with straw, their suits covered with symbols - crowns, and lions, and stripes and flags, all in the Belgian colours of black, yellow, red.

Glimpses of interiors every time a door opens make us feel as if we're in a gallery of Vermeers, but with starker lighting - a contrast to the dim streets. One house seems right out of the nineteenth century with its caged canary, a crucifix and a two years out of date calendar on the wall; another is a modern artist's house, full of bright stained glass and polished wood. By the time the procession reaches the main street it's nearly seven-thirty, and the Gilles are massing outside the bars, and inside the bars, holding glasses of champagne in their hands. The Gilles drinks champagne, and eats only oysters and salmon; this is the last of the fat days, before the rigours of Lent.

One little boy Gille is accompanied by an even smaller boy with a snare drum, and his mother - a procession of one. (How could you not smile?) A Gille goes everywhere with a drummer. That's one of the rules. In the crowd, two Gilles decide to visit their friends in the next bar - confusion, as they try to find a drummer, and then the shattering fusillade of noise as they set out, bludgeoning their way across the packed pavement outside.

Up by the station, the Gilles are gathering in their hundreds. And at last, on go the masks, the symbol of Binche, with their sightless green spectacles and curly painted moustaches; and the Gilles are terrifying, battalions of them all marching on the Town Hall. In the afternoon, the terrible Gilles show their softer side; the masks are laid aside in favour of tall ostrich-feather hats, and the bundles of twigs they carry in the morning are replaced by baskets of oranges, which they throw into the crowd.

Standing on a wall to get a better view, I'm next to a red devil. Aged about eight, I think. She catches fifty oranges; I catch none.

And this is only the second parade - there's another to come, by lamplight, that evening. In the narrow streets, the Gilles dance to the red light of flares. The carnival started in the early hours, and it doesn't finish till the fireworks are over, at nearly eleven; and even later, as we head for our car, we can hear the brass bands still playing.

I can still hear that tune. I don't think it will ever go away. It will fade, it will become less insistent; but it will always be a part of me, and my feet will somehow always know that rhythm.

Sorry, Belgium

I'm really, really sorry. The ridiculous, posturing Nigel Farage used his status as an MEP last week to launch a tirade of abuse at the EU President, Mr van Rompuy - and at Belgium generally.

I just hope Belgians (whether Fleming or Walloon - but that's a distinction Mr Farage probably doesn't grasp) realise that this view of Belgium is not commonly shared in England.

Coming from Norwich, which in the 15th century was part of a cosmopolitan northern European trading network and in the 16th century accepted a large number of immigrants from the Spanish Netherlands, I feel Belgium is in some ways part of my own culture - the paths of Holland, Belgium and Norfolk have always been linked.

And if Belgium is a 'non-country' because it was for years colonised byv the Spanish, that presumably means India is a non-country - and so is the United States. Heck, the States belonged to three separate owners - France, Britain and Spain - how much more of a non-country can you get?

So: what did the Belgians ever do for us?

• Frites. The humble chip, in Belgian hands, becomes a gastronomic delight, with a choice of mayonnaise or up to twenty different sauces. For a full meal, just add mussels - moules frites is one of the great classic dishes of the world.


• Beer. While it's possible to spend your time in Belgium drinking Stella or Jupiler, head for the good beer houses to explore the artisanal traditions of lambic, oud bruin, and saison beers. I particularly like my lambics - beers like Rodenbach Grand Cru and Duchesse de Bourgogne have a sweet-and-sour character and strong flavour that makes them rival a really good pint of porter in my affections.


• Chocolate. Now I have to tread carefully here because of my French partner who will no doubt tell me that the best chocolate in the world is French. But the Belgians really don't do chocolate badly.


• Speculoos. Snappy crackly little ginger biscuits with your coffee.


• Tintin, the boy reporter. I can imagine the world without Tintin - but I can't imagine it without Captain Haddock or Madame Castafiore, or Snowy the little dog (Milou, in French). Hergé's Tintin has afforded generations of children, and adults, immense delight. Belgium is still one of those nations where le BD - bande dessinée, comic, graphic novel - is treated seriously; it has a comics museum, even. And if you haven't discovered the amazingly strange comics, fantastic architectures and perverse worldview of Schuiten & Peeters, you must - Piranesi's prisons updated to the 21st century.


• Simenon's Maigret, a brooding, intuitive detective who knocks the faux-Belge Poirot into a cocked hat. Excellent, moody books. As for the crimes, they're a bit darker than you find in Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers .


• Marvellous art nouveau architecture - Brussels is one of the best places in the world to see it. You can mix great Belgian beer with art noov if you visit the Mort Subite brasserie - drink your faro and see yourself reflected into infinity in the huge mirrors.


• Rubens - a great baroque artist, perhaps the greatest working north of the Alps. Mr Farage really ought to be told that Britain owes this great Belgian painter a debt of thanks for creating the paintings of the Banqueting House in Whitehall - not far from the Houses of Parliament. (Van Dyck, another Belgian, pretty much created the seventeenth-century English portrait school - as well as the preferred royal iconography of Charles I.)


• Gothic Belgium - you will never see a greater Gothic city than Bruges, with its chivalric culture, its canals, its great churches, its paintings, the quiet alleyways where ivy and wisteria grow, the busy market square, the little fish market under tall trees. If Belgium had only given us Bruges, and nothing else, it would still be memorable.


• Mr van Rompuy. A politician who writes haiku; and in the proper Japanese tradition, writes them all the time (the ones on his website are this year's; so far, a good handful).  My Flemish isn't good enough to say how good they are, but what I have managed to read, I liked. Maybe what Mr Farage needs is to go off and sit in a Zen garden for a while, and learn to write haiku instead of making speeches.

So thank you, Belgium. An odd country, for sure, but not a 'non-country' by any means.

Frying tonight!

Amusing news from Belgium. The chip has now got its own museum - the Frietmuseum on Vlamingstraat, in Bruges.

I like the sound of its proprietor, Eddy Van Belle. In the teeth of an obsession, he opened a museum of Lamps called Lumina Domestica. He's also opened a Chocolate museum (Choco-story, Wijnzakstraat 2).

The chip is definitely not in the same league as chocolate or beer as far as Belgium's gifts to the world are concerned. Not in my book, anyway. But it's a huge part of the country's food heritage. Anywhere you go in Belgium, you'll find a frituur (friterie if you're in Wallonia) - a little shack or tiny shop selling these crisp small fries.

Apparently, the Flemings began cooking chips in the eighteenth century. They used to fry small fish, a bit like whitebait (one of my favourite English recipes) - but when severe frosts meant they couldn't break the ice on the rivers, they fried potatoes instead. The habit stuck.

The Belgian chip is double fried, and that accounts for its crispiness. And it's meant to be fried in beef fat, not oil. (Not really suitable for vegetarians, then.)

Now I can guarantee that 98 percent of people adore Belgian friets. But you never can tell what sauce people will like them with - and there's a big national divide here too.

Brits eat their chips with either tomato sauce or Daddie's or HP (brown) sauce. Or with salt and vinegar.

Belgians typically believe chips are best accompanied by mayonnaise.

But there are other choices. One frituur I visited in Ghent had twelve different sauces, including one with bits of red pepper and chili.

But I will still make my first trip in Bruges the Brugs Beertje. Where you can get one of Belgium's other great products - a huge selection of excellent beers - but, perhaps surprisingly, no chips at all. I'll just have the croque monsieur instead - and intriguingly, in a Flemish speaking bar, that particular snack is still named in French.

Truly, Belgium is a land of surprises - linguistic and culinary.

Another good bike scheme

The Velib seems to have taken off in Paris, and bike schemes are now proliferating.

Most of them are targeted at pedestrians or commuters (with bikes at railway stations, for instance). But the Belgian city of Mechelen has taken green street cred to drivers, siting a bike park at the main underground car park of the city. Bike hire is included in the price of the parking ticket.

I love Mechelen - it's a huge, sprawling medieval city, with narrow, twisting streets. Ideal for biking - and a pain in the backside if you have a car. So I hope this initiative takes off.

Late night opening - more

News that from now till 20 December 2007, Brussels will be opening all its museums late on Thursday nights. ('Late' means 10 pm, by the way.)

And even better, the Nocturnes plan offers reduced entry fees too - together with extras such as curators offering guided tours, story-tellers offering a different view of some exhibits, and behind-the-scenes tours at some museums.

My particular interest would be the very fine musical instrument museum. But the comic strip museum and the museum of gueuze (lovely tart Belgian beer, fermented spontaneously with wild yeasts) would also be high on my list. 50 different museums are in the scheme so there should be something for everyone.

And for transport fans, the Brussels Tram Museum is running several of its old buses between the  different museums.

The sound of the Low Countries

One of the things I've come to appreciate as I've travelled around the Netherlands and Belgium is the sound of bells. Carillons are everywhere.

In Antwerp, the cathedral carillon plays 'La Follia' every hour. That's a tune I know from the Renaissance, being a musician, so I felt welcome in Antwerp right from the start (before the nice guy in the tourist office marked my map with the three best serious beer bars in the city - De Waagstuk, Oud Arsenaal, and Kulminator).

And in fact I've got a closer connection with the carillon than that. One of my favourite composers for the recorder is van Eyck - a blind musician who published 'the flute's pleasure garden' or Der Fluytenlusthof in the 1640s. But recorder playing was only his second trade; he was a carilloneur, too - and, what I didn't know, probably started the famous bellfounding Hemony brothers on the right route to producing properly tuned bells, something that had proved difficult to achieve up till then.

So I was happy to find this exceptional recording on Youtube. Credit to Mr van Eyck (any relation?) for this fantastically exciting piece, played on the carillon of Mechelen cathedral.

Another brewery to visit

Rather different from other breweries is Belgium's Cantillon.

This brewery, based in Brussels 15 minutes' walk from the Grand'Place and ten minutes walk from the Midi station,  specialises in lambic beers, using natural yeast  for spontaneous fermentation. Its acid and even sulphurous Gueuze and other beers have a distinctive character and invite either wild love - or bitter hatred.

The brewery is open 9-5 every weekday and 10-5 on Saturday. The entrance price of EUR 3.50 includes a glass of Gueuze, which is pretty good value.

I don't like Rubens but...

I've never liked Rubens.

His fleshy, ruddy nudes and well fed cherubs don't do much for me. I find them a bit overdone, and there's a feeling of grotesquerie in some of his painting that suggests the Breughel/Bosch streak in Flemish painting never died out.

So I wasn't expecting much from a trip to Antwerp and Mechelen.  However, I was in for a surprise.

First of all, the 'Miraculous draught of fishes' in Our Lady's Church over the Dijle in Mechelen. It's amazing - the matte surface, the vibrant, bright colour, reminded me of 1930s works rather than the high Baroque. The treatment of the apostles' bodies and drapery could almost come from the socialist realism tradition. It's a striking painting - almost the antithesis of everything I thought Rubens was about - and the fact that the evening sun was falling full on it brought the colours out in all their liveliness.

I found another Rubens painting I liked in the Rockox House in Antwerp. Nicholaas Rockox was Rubens' friend and patron and so you'd expect to find a couple of Rubens paintings here. And so no surprise to find a Rubens crucifixion hanging on the wall.

What's surprising is that it was so small. I thought Rubens was about big things - most of his best known paintings are huge, super-life-size canvases. But here, the whole scene of the crucifixion is reduced to a canvas not much bigger than an A4 piece of paper, and you can actually see Rubens' brushwork, swirls and flows of paint. Sometimes it's diaphanous, thinned right down; elsewhere there are blobs of thick impasto. It's all alive, bright, a moment caught on the fly.

My last Rubens shocked me. It's in the Plantin Museum in Antwerp. I'm interested in the craft of letterpress printing so this was a compulsory stop for me; Plantin was the greatest printer of his age in the Low Countries,  and Rubens even contributed frontispieces for the Plantin/Moretus press's books.

The 'Dying Seneca' here is related to a number of paintings which include a large history painting in the Prado, and the 'Four philosophers' painting in the same room of the Plantijn Museum. But this painting is striking in a way that the others aren't. Here, we see simply a portrait of the dying man; no event, no disciples, no philosopical reference frame, just a man dying. His eyes stare yet they're already becoming blind with death; there's a starkness in the delineation of the naked flesh that implies pain and struggle, and yet the painting as a whole is also strangely peaceful. And around Seneca's figure there is nothing but darkness; the darkness he will soon enter.

I haven't been so struck by a painting since I saw one of the Rembrandt self-portraits 'in the flesh'.

Weird borders

There's something fascinating about the concept of a frontier. There's grass both sides. There's tarmac both sides. But one side is France. The other's Italy. What's going on here?

And borders can be very funny things. Sometimes they can be very logical; the Mason-Dixon line for instance. And sometimes they can be anything but.

For instance there's Baarle Hertog, in Belgium. No, in Holland. No, it's in Belgium.

This site explains. It all goes back to the early middle ages, when part of Baarle was claimed by the Duke of Brabant, and the rest by the Lord of Breda.  The market place isDutch - the church is Belgian. You can play hopscotch jumping between countries.

And it gives citizens unique opportunities. The entire village is made up of tiny enclaves belonging to the Netherlands or to Belgium. If your house frontage borders both, just moving your front door would enable you to move country! That's a brilliant tax dodge.

I seem to remember a lovely story about a prize fighting contest back in the days when boxing was illegal in England. The fighters chose a place where three county boundaries came together; if the police turned up from one county, they could simply jump into another. Of course the police had no jurisdiction in that county and would just have to sit and watch the fight go on.

Sadly, I can't find chapter and verse. But it's a nice tale.

Coming up on www.podtours.co.uk

I've just finished writing and editing a number of new Podtours.

You should shortly be able to download mp3 audio tours of the following sites:

• Ghent, Belgium


• Ely - city and cathedral


• Peterborough cathedral


• Bourges, France


• Laon cathedral, France

Meanwhile there are a few more stacked up and nearly ready to go - two tours of Bruges, and tours of Mont Saint Michel, Saint-Denis basilica in Paris, Reims cathedral, and Lincoln.

I'd be very interested in hearing from people about what destinations they'd really like an audio tour for. And I'm also going to be thinking about doing tours of some of the big museums - but rather than trying to do 'the British Museum in a day', take a special subject, whether that's music through the ages, the Etruscans, or the idea of the Orient.  Or say in the Louvre, you could follow different paths depending on whether you're interested in women artists, different interpretations of religious art, or images of landscape and travel.