Day: September 14, 2014

Day 77: Friday 12th September

Today we travelled by train to Brussels, the capital city of Belgium.

We left Charleville- Meziere at 8am and the first place we had to change trains was in Metz-ville in France followed by another train change in Luxemburg which is the capital city of the tiny country of Luxembourg. It was then a short journey of 2 hours to Brussels. The high speed trains in Europe have lots of really great features on board. Every seat has a power outlet so you can recharge devices like iPads and phones and several trains have either a restaurant car or serve food and drinks at your seat.

Day 78: Saturday 13th September
The first place we visited in Brussels was Peruchet Puppet Museum. This museum contains the largest private collection of puppets from around the world and Miss Hannaford was really interested in the collection as it gave her an idea of how much space she will need if she keeps collecting puppets. The Peruchet collection is over 4000 puppets and some of the puppets are over 200 years old! Dimtiri, the owner of Peruchet even signed a copy of his book about the Peruchet collection to Miss Hannaford. Unfortunately, there were no puppets in the Peruchet collection that look like me. Most of the puppets are marionettes.

Here is a video about Peruchet Puppet Museum- even though Dimitri is speaking in French- you can see some of the puppets we saw and how they are displayed in the Museum.

After the puppet museum, we caught the Tram back to the centre of Brussels as Miss Hannaford had heard that there was a giant Smurf statue outside a quirky museum called MOOF! Did you know that the Smurfs originally came from Belgium? They were created by comic book artist Peyo (pen name of Pierre Culliford) in 1958.

Other famous comic book series from Belgium that we know include Asterix written by by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo and Tintin by Hergé!

The museum MOOF! actually stands for the Museum of Original Figurines and is a museum devoted to figurines of all sizes of Smurfs, Asterix and Tintin! It is really interesting to see how all three comic book characters have similar designs and features. Miss Hannaford noted how the shows of Asterix characters are similar in style to the shoes of Smurfs!

Also on display were original animation cells from Tintin showing how foreground elements and characters were painted separately from the backgrounds when creating an animation!

It was a really quirky way to end our visit in Brussels! Tomorrow we travel to our last city on this tour- Prague!

– Lucy

Day 76: Thursday 11th September
Today, Miss Hannaford and I visited a very important centre of Puppetry- the Institut Internationale de la Marionette which in English is the International Institute of Puppetry. It is in this building that Miss Hannaford’s Puppetry teacher Marie- Martine Ferrari learnt to make foam Muppets in 1987 from Jim Henson who actually invented Muppets and Kermit the Frog.

Since Miss Hannaford is a member of UNIMA- the international association of puppetry, she was allowed to access the huge Library of puppet videos and books and she found several videos that showed her puppet teacher rehearsing several performances as part of the workshop held by Jim Henson.

Here are some of the videos from that workshop that have Miss Hannaford’s teacher hidden among the other performers

After spending a few hours watching all the videos in the puppetry archive, Miss Hannaford and I were given a special treat- the opportunity to have our photo taken in the same place as Miss Hannaford’s teacher, Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson had their photo taken. It really meant a great deal to Miss Hannaford to have her photo taken there.

While we were at the Puppetry Insitute, we got to see the Great Puppeteer clock ‘perform’ twice. Once an hour, starting at 10am, the Great Puppeteer puts on a short marionette puppet show. Each hour is a different performance and during the hour, the head moves slightly to show the Great Puppeteer is watching what is happening in the square below. The story is based on a local Ardennes legend – The Four sons of Aymon – in a series of 12 scenes.
Here is a video Miss Hannaford made about the Great Puppeteer clock

Being the centre of puppetry in the whole world, Charleville Meziere even has lots of sculptures in the local park of different kinds of puppets. All of the sculptures are human sized or larger!

It has been a wonderful visit and tomorrow we head off to our next country!
– Lucy