Mister Superb

Vandaag en morgen loopt in Flanders expo in Gent de jaarlijkse F.A.C.T.S. comic beurs. Het is ondertussen de 20ste editie en dat zullen we geweten hebben. Voorgaande edities vonden plaats in het I.C.C. maar dit jaar zijn er dus 3 hallen in de expo.

Wat direct opvalt is dat er dit jaar veel aandacht besteed werd aan games en consoles, iets wat vroeger  minder of niet het geval was. De grote namen zijn aanwezig met al even grote standen waaronder Nintendo, Playstation, XBox, Ubisoft, …

Na de games, komen de collectibles en de merchandising. Kledij, wapens, T-shirts, pins, maskers, action-figures, card-games, foto’s, posters, schilderijen, prints, bustes, standbeelden, speelgoed, helmen, gezelschapspelen en ga zo maar verder. Het valt op dat er vooral veel nieuwe Franse standen zijn en dus ook veel meer Franstalige bezoekers dan vorige jaren.

De laatste hal,  de belangrijkste, is die met de comics en eerlijk gezegd mochten er wel wat meer standen geweest zijn. Er waren 3 grote standen met mainstream-comics, veel manga,  maar graphic novels zijn er  nauwelijks te vinden, als je goed zoekt vind je wel enkele pareltjes maar het genre lijkt een grote afwezige op deze beurs.

Mijn aanrader voor deze beurs is het debut van Serge Buyse, zijnde Adventures in Cult City. Go get it!

We went on a 5 day trip to Berlin some time ago and here are some things we found out:

• If you are planning to go to Berlin, try and find a hotel or place to stay at the East side of the city because that’s where all the good stuff is at.
• Use the underground to get from one place to another or your feet will kill you by the end of the day.
• If you like street-art and graffiti, definitly visit Mitte and Kreuzberg, maybe even take the ‘alternative tour’ with superguide Taylor, it’s well worth the money and it takes you to places you wouldn’t think of visiting by yourself. New European Tours
• Comic shops are hard to find in Berlin. There are 2 shops both called ‘Modern Graphics’, one small, one bigger but they were kind of a disappointment to me due to the lack of English books. Yes, they even ‘dub’ comics, like the television wasn’t enough. More about that later…
  Both shops offer different types of comics but mainly manga, indi stuff and German dubbed mainstream comics. The big shop had a lot of figurines and merchandising too which is nice but not what I was looking for. Anyway, on with the list…
• If you want to buy a really cool and original card or gift for your friends or family, go to Tacheles in the Oranjien Stra§e, go up to the 4th or 5th floor and visit the shops of the people living there.
• Go and have breakfast in the city instead of the hotel, you’ll be sure to find many places where you can have a cosy first meal of the day.
• Take a walk in one of the many parks and maybe even visit the Zoo (zoölogischen garten).
• Shops open and close pretty late, so you don’t have to get up early if you want to go on a shopping spree.
• The guys in green with the hats are cops, not zookeepers…
• You can rent bikes almost everywhere which is great if you don’t need a map to find your way.
• The bus is slow, the subway (U-Bahn) is much faster.
• If you go to club KitKat, know that their dress code only allows 3 possible outfits: 1. Uniform / 2. Fetish-clothes / 3. no clothes.
• Free wifi is very expensive in hotel Agon Opera. Also most of the hotspots in the city are provided by T-Mobile or Swisscom and they charge 8€ for 60 minutes or 13€ for 24 hours of precious access.
• Don’t go to Mr. Hai & friends for cocktails. Although the people are friendly, the drinks are quite the disappointment.
• Berlin has the greatest percentage of Turkish people of all cities in Europe (accept Turkey), so just like in my town they do park in the middle of the street and find this very normal.
• The Jewish museum is an impressive building which mainly reflects how much money, power and influence the Jews really have. Just look at the list of companies who contributed to the project and you’ll know enough. Also notice they use iPods as audio commenting systems and Sennheisers HD25s at all 50+ computer booth’s.
• Don’t watch german television, every channel accept CNN world news is in German. I’m still trying to erase Joey Tribiani saying “Heeeey, wie gehts”  from my mind. They even did it to South Park…
• Sausages are indeed breakfast, diner and lunch in some German homes!
• When a guy in a suit whispers “entshuldigung” in your ear while you’re on one of those automatic staircases he means: “get the f*** out of my way, you f***ing tourist”.
• Parties start between 11pm and 1am and can last for days…
• The traffic lights for pedestrians switch back to red so fast, it’s impossible to make it to other side of the road in time.
• The closest thing to a night shop we’ve found was a video center that stayed open really late.
• Watch out for scientologists! They’re selling L. Ron Hubbard books at street corners…
• The Berlin Music festival was a very bad organized event and it’s a shame we spent money on it. The location was terrific, the bands should’ve been great but we didn’t see much of them because the police closed off half of the party grounds because they were affraid of a second love parade… Sad!

Berlin is a great city, definitely worth a visit! Here are some pictures we took:

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