Travelsmartplanet

SP The brand sparkling new Museum Ann de Stroom, nicknamed MAS (www.mas.be) , is an eye-catching edifice and the new must-see spot in Antwerp, Belgium. Designed by Dutch architects from the firm Neutelings Riedijk, it is made of grids of rectangular stone and astonishing rippled glass walls. It is free to ride the escalators all the way up and then ascend 2 flights of stairs to view the city from its rooftop panorama. The building is an open house and there is a fee only to access the museum rooms.

The museum is a salute to the city, the river, its trade and shipping, the port, Antwerp and the world. Along the escalators there are display cases by eighty young people. In-house composer Eric Sleichem created sound sculptures for each floor. The musical pieces can be heard in the first area of each level. The best view of Museum Square is from the 5^th floor MAS Boulevard. There you can get an overall view of the 1,600 piece mosaic by Luc Tuymans called “Dead Skull”, which refers to the commemorative plaque for painter Quinten Metsys on the facade of the Onza-Lieve-Vrouwekanthedral (Cathedral of Our Lady).

There must have been great chocolate DNA in their blood because famous Belgian chocolates brands Daskalides and Leonidas were created by family members from Ghent, Belgium.

Leonidas Daskalidès or Leonidas Kestekides (1876 – 1954) was born in Turkey and he was the founder of Leonidas chocolates in Belgium making pralines (chocolate shells with soft fillings) famous.

In 1910, he was a member of the Greek delegation from the US competing at the 1910 World Fair in Brussels. He won a bronze medal for his chocolate confection, and a gold medal for his patisserie. On a return visit in 1913 ( World Fair in Ghent), he met a young woman from Brussels and settled permanently in Belgium. He opened tea-rooms in Brussels, Ghent and Blankenberge, and the business expanded from there.

In 1935, Basile Kestekides, the founder’s nephew succeeded the founder and created a whole range of new chocolates, including the well-known ‘Manon’ of Leonidas. Still to this day the most popular chocolates are the manon, manon café, gianduja, dressé noisette, manon blanc and manon blanc café.

There are 350 Leonidas shops in Belgium and and almost 1500 throughout the world in over 50 countries. Leonidas  is still privately owned by family

In 1931, a Greek couple Daskalidès-Kestikidès opened a confectionary in the centre of Ghent. Home made pralines by Daskalidès become famous and their tearooms and chocolate shops grew.

During the sixties his son Jean advised him to devote himself to the production of luxury pralines for connoisseurs which led them to conquer markets abroad. In 1987, Daskalidès was  awarded in France the prestigious Laurier d’Or de la Qualité from France thanks to the exceptional quality of chocolate, the beautiful shape and the delicious taste

Dr. Jean Daskalides became famous for his chocolates under the names Daskalidès and Leonidas. He was also a gynecologist, film director, jazz musician, hospital director and lecturer at the University of Ghent.

You can buy Daskalides and Leonidas chocolate in Ghent or anywhere in Belgium or nowadays, all over the world.

Tags: Belgium, Brussels, Chocolate, Daskalides, Ghent, Kestikides, Laurier d'Or de la Qualite, Leonidas, praline, tea-room, World Fair

Sweden has the oldest central bank in the world. It is twenty years older than the Bank of England. The bank building is located in Stockholm.

Tags: bank, Bank of England, Stockholm, Sweden

In the 1760’s Catherine the Great opened the first and largest department store, Gostinyi Dvor, in St.Petersburg (A lady after my own heart). Nowadays the words Gostinyi Dvor are considered the historic Russian term for an indoor market or shopping center.

The block long store is on top of Gostiny Dvor (Saint Petersburg Metro), a station on the Nevsko-Vasileostrovskaya line (which went right to the Cosmos Tour hotel).

When Catherine the Great died, there were 15,000 dresses in her chambers. Do you think she bought them there?

Russian nesting dolls are called matryoshka dolls (North Americans have incorrectly adopted the word babushka, but that just means grandmother in Russian). In 1890, the first one to carve a set was Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter in Abramtsevo.

Matryoshka dolls are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The set separates, top from bottom, revealing a smaller figure painted the same way inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on. The number of nested figures is traditionally at least five, but with expert craftsmanship (they are constructed from one block of wood) can sometimes be up to several dozen.

A block of wood is cut in half and then a chunk of wood is carved out of the top and bottom pieces. The chunks are formed into an oval shape and matching pieces are put together and then painted. The smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby lathed from a single piece of wood. The figures inside may be of either gender but are mostly female.

Over the years, the dolls were painted in a traditional colorful style as a woman, dressed in a sarafan, a long and shapeless Russian peasant jumper dress. Nowadays they are painted with any kind of theme from Russian leaders to Walt Disney characters to an observant Jewish family.  The most common amount of nestings is five though his original one had eight.

Tags: babushka, doll, matryoshka, nesting, peasant, Russia, sarafan, wood

By the age of 21, Iosif Dzhugashvili (Stalin) was a revolutionary and proved adept at raising funds through robbery, as well as smuggling guns and explosives. In 1902 he was arrested for the first time and later exiled, beginning a cycle of arrest, exile, escape, revolutionary activity and arrest again which would continue til the 1917 revolution. In 1913 he chose the name Stalin as it meant, ‘man of steel’, and became editor of party newspaper Pravda.

He was a very astute man within bureaucracy so by the late 1920’s he wound up a feared dictator of Russia. He started the process of collective ownership and also the process of not allowing people to speak their minds – they were sent to the Gulag if they did. Conservative estimates of population he had killed is from 10- 20 million people.

Stalin was so feared that when he suffered a stroke in 1953, everyone was afraid to go to him. As usual at night, he had given order not to be disturbed, so they didn’t go in fearing they would be “purged” if he recovered – or  – were accused of killing him. The best doctors who had been treating him were now in prison as he had purged them.

So Stalin was left rolling on the floor in his urine, partially paralyzed, breathing with difficulty and vomiting blood. He lay there for 5 days until he died on March 5th.

Tags: arrest, dictator, exile, Gulag, Iosif Dzhugashvili, purge, revolutionary, Stalin, stroke

The Cosmos dinner in Tallinn rates some stars as it was  scrumptious. It began with what we presumed was borscht (this being the Baltics after all) as it was red and seemed to have bits of cabbage floating, but it was more of a flavorful minestrone with a bit of a kick. There was a slab of crusty bread sitting in the middle with some soft cheese and olives on top.

The main course had slices of beef (with some beef gravy) and thinly sliced mixed vegetables sitting on a rich version of Lyonnaise potatoes.

Dessert was presented in a parfait glass which was filled with a good vanilla ice cream, raspberry sherbet, a dollop of caramel sauce and a tuile rising out of the top – simple, pretty and a perfect ending.

Brewing at  Saku Brewery was first documented in October 1820. It was owned by count Karl Friedrich Rehbinder who built a distillery and a brewery on his estate.  Saku still is among the  most popular beers  in Estonia. Beer was already known in present-day Estonia between 500 and 1000 A.D.

To rent a bike in Tallinn, Estonia after you have located a bike stand, you call a phone number, give them you credit card number, and then they give you a code to release that bike. When done, you call them again and they charge you for time used.

Even way back when, when cannons were the preferred weapon of destruction, there came a time when they were no longer useful to fire. So in Riga, Latvia, the Baltic States, Finland, you will find cannons that were stood up on their edge to protect corners of buildings. When horse drawn carriages made their way down narrow streets, they often bumped into the corners of buildings and damaged them. This way the cannons took the hit and the buildings were saved.