Damn - you're right, Bargy, old boy (suppose you would be, being Francais and all that!) Anvers is known as Antwerp here - I was thinking it was another place though can't for the life of me think what place that was right now.... :o

Reminds me - ask anyone to name 10 famous Belgians and few get past two - and then even one of them turns out to be a fictional character.

Any takers...?

I can get past 2 because of art history classes ( Jan van Eyck, *cough*van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens), but no where near 10. The inventor of the saxophone, Something Sax, was flemmish too though, wasn't he? (off to google)

belgians are like the canadians of europe......they don't really count, and no one cares.

You think about Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie) ? or perhaps Tintin in comics

It was just a joke :) Famous Belgian are mostly famous for French people :
Best French singers : Jacques Brel and Jean-Philippe Smet, well known as Johnny Halliday, rock singer (David Halliday's father if US people know him)

Merckx Eddy (cyclist), Georges Simenon (writer, "Maigret"), Justine Hennin, Kim Clijsters (Tennis), a lot of famous singers, actors, comics "designers ?" in French language...

I was going to forget "the cherry on the cake" : Jean-Claude Van Damme !!!

You're right, I thought they were Dutch or German (Adolf Sax) :o
We really need to build Europe !

Famous Belgian people
.

Having that list doesn't really help. I don't think "famous in Belgium" counts.

Wasn't "Belgium" a really horrid curse word in HHTG?

HHTG ??? I don't understand

"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

London programme details covering May 2006 visit available here

The only famous Belgian I know is Django Reinhardt and he doesn't appear on that list.

Belgians are famously ignorant of him.

So is nearly everyone else. I dig his chops, though. Sweet. Shame the recording equipment was primitive. I sometimes weep over the about of music that we've lost because of our inability to capture it.

I know Reinhardt, but I thought he was French. Here's a philosophical and unanswerable question: would he have played as well or had such a distinctive sound if he'd had all his fingers?

I also like Grappelli who played with him a bit. Trivia: Grapelli played on one of the songs on Paul Simon's first solo album.

He was born in Belgium, but he was a Gypsy. He doesn't have a nationality, beyond being a Rom, as I understand it.

News and photos of the London event :

http://www.flickr.com/groups/30876692@N00/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/features/sultans_elephant/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/...diovideo.shtml
http://www.nantes.fr/ext/royal_de_luxe_2005/index.asp

The small Giantess and the Elephant of Royal of Luxe continue their voyage in 2006!

After Nantes, Amiens and London, the history of the sultan of the Indies on his "elephant to travel in time" will be told in Antwerten at the beginning of July, Calais at the end of September, Le Havre at the end of October.

You can meet Cyclefrance in :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/england/F27...&phrase=London

Bye