Atomium Power, Baby!
The Atomium is this very cool symbol for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. It is a 168x blow up of a cell from an iron cyrstal. I took the metro all the way out to Heysel park for the opportunity to visit this strange historic icon. The 58 fair was the first major world expo after the war. It was quite a show for six months bringing millions into Belgium.
Check out the clouds in the image above. These are undoubtedly Margritte clouds in his own homeland. Kind of a thrill. Now if the sky would only change into the shape of a dove.
The audio tour I took was especially apologetic for the skyscrapers. "Manhattan" development from the seventies was described as a Brussels misstep, a development that cost the city many historical buildings. I believe this part of town is also known as the Rogier. I ended up at the edge of it at one point. I'm sure it has been used as a setting for movies.
This has got to be the coolest elevator I have ever been on. Many science fiction film sets would benefit from this tunnel.
Three of them do not have enough support so can not be occupied. But maybe there is somebody or something in there anyway? One could expand a tale of the Phantom of the Automium,
They have a program where kids can sometime spend the night on the Automium. I would have loved that at about fourth or fifth grade. Could you imagine how much fun one could have on the elevators?
The various globes in the Automium are filled with nifty displays relating to the 58 fair. I dug these space age ash trays.
,/hr>
The other attraction left from the World's Fair was a kind of brewer's village that now serves as a kind of a food court of restaurants, many that feature buckets of mussels at reasonable prices. It turned out to be a good thing to do after being in an atom for an hour or so.
No comments:
Post a Comment