Detritus of the Brain from Our Visit to Europe

1

The Smurfs! Oh my goodness, I forgot the Smurfs.

In the 1958 the Atomium was finished and opened in Brussels. But something else debted that year as well, and they were also a Belgian creation, "Der Shtrumpfs," which was later Anglicized as "The Smurfs."

I had no idea before going that the Smurfs were a Belgian thing, like mayo on fries, huge-dimpled waffles, and angry French/Dutch.

2

I meant to find and share the following slide. I took the picture with Corrie's phone and sent it to mine, lovingly referring to it as "Nerd stuff:"

It was from the conclusion of our Japanese speaker's talk, where he discussed how feldspar, a mineral that makes the occasional crystal, can split light beams and cause a doubling effect, which was a thematic element of Pynchon's Against the Day. In this diagram is the conclusion of his thesis, about how Pynchon arrived at the name of "Umeki Tsurigane" for a character in AtD, how it came from Madame Butterfly and the combo of the 1954 novel and subsequent 1957 film of Michener's Sayonara.

The whole thing captures well the depth of the Pynchon party every two years.

3

I knew I had this picture somewhere:

This is from Aachen, and is the collection of attached buildings that survived the allied bombing during WWII and originally date back to before 1000 CE.

Here a postwar pic:

4

I tried to take this crazy reflective picture off an orange glassed sculpture in Brussels. It didn't work out so well, but here we are:

I reserve the right to keep adding anecdotes, because I feel like I still had at least one more story left. I just can't remember.