Hitting the Tintin Trail in Brussels

The cover of one of the most popular Tintin books.

When my son, Grael, was a child, I used to read “The Adventures of Tintin“ books to him nearly every night.

For those of you who don’t know about Tintin, he was a brilliantly drawn cartoon character created by the Belgian artist Hergé, a boy reporter who,  along with his faithful dog Snowy and hard-drinking, foul-mouthed sidekick Captain Haddock, solved mysteries in exotic locales around the globe.

Besides outsmarting and outfighting dastardly villains, he had to overcome the interference of  two bumbling detectives, Thompson and Thomson, who looked exactly alike and were equally incompetent, and deal with eccentric figures like hearing-impaired Professor Calculus and operatic diva Bianca Castafiore.

Tintin was always getting into and then escaping from life-threatening situations, and the colorful  illustrations, reflecting a world that pre-dated mass tourism, made… Continue reading →