The Sound of Music

         Being in Brussels, Belgium last weekend I had to find a way to keep myself busy. After walking around the city, going to the parks, shopping and eating all the chocolate we possibly could…it was only Friday afternoon and I still had a day and a half left in Brussels. There were no big tourist attractions to see. There was no need to wake up at the crack of dawn and exhaust ourselves by 3 pm because of the rushing around to see everything. There were no places to travel around Brussels that were worth traveling to. So what were we supposed to do? Why the hell was I there? Well, unfortunately I’m still not sure why I was there. I guess it was to see my best friends and go to the most amazing concert ever…but that was only for Saturday. Why the hell was I there two days in advance? Well, I don’t know. But we figured out a way to keep ourselves busy. Go to the Musical Instrument Museum. 

            As we entered the museum we weren’t really sure what to expect. We knew they had a ton of instruments showcased but were we just supposed to walk around the museum for hours and look at instruments? Sounds boring to me since I have never been interested in music. When we entered, we were handed headphones and were told, it’s okay there are no words. We had no idea what that meant but just went with it. As we walked to the first floor and opened the doors to the first exhibit, I was in utter shock. There were over 1,500 instruments on display, each room the size of 2 Foundation House classrooms put together. It was unbelievable. I was overwhelmed but intrigued. I wanted to see what these headphones had to “say” for themselves and what all these instruments were about. There were four floors in the museum, each exhibit as small as the next, with even more instruments in each room. Each floor had a different genre of music. The first floor being Mechanical Instruments having music boxes, barrel organs, pianolas, etc. The second floor being Traditional Instruments having wind, string and percussion instruments. The third floor being Modern Orchestral Instruments and the fourth floor being Strings and Keyboards. I was fascinated.

            We put on the headphones and nothing was heard. We tried to mess with the volume and all the other buttons but still, nothing was heard. We finally realized that you had to stand right at the display case and when you did that, the most wonderful music would play in your ears. When we stood by the guitar case, we heard the most beautiful strings. When we stood by the flute/harmonic cases, we heard amazing notes. When we stood by the drum cases, we heard unbelievable beats. The music never stopped. It was such an eye-opener to hear some of the most astonishing sounds that I never thought were possible to be made. We ended up staying in the museum for three hours, every minute spent listening to such engaging and delightful music. And of course, we ended our musical adventure at the top of the museum with a lovely cup of tea and pastries while looking out at the horizon of Brussels, Belgium.