FRIET MUSEUM

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While it was not there when I was in college in 1967/8, I knew from my trip ten years ago that there was a Chip Museum in Brugge. I didn't go in then, any more than I went into the Leprechaun Museum in Dublin. Tourist kitch, I thought to myself.

But I would have been wrong on both counts. The Leprechaun Museum is really a museum of Irish mythology and the title seems to be there to tempt in gullible yanks. The Chip Museum is really a museum of the potato and it is well researched and presented.

The museum is situated in the Saaihalle, a fourteenth century structure which was the focal point for Brugge's trade with Genoa.

As it now houses a museum, major structural changes were avoided in adapting the building to its current use. So the museum is not just celebrating the potato but also the building in which it itself is housed.

Apparently the potato, or at least its use for human consumption, originated some 8,000 years ago in Peru.

The storyline is carried through a set of cartoons showing an ongoing conversation between a chip and a potato.

Here we learn that the potato made its way to Spain via Chile and the Canary Islands.

A reminder of the Spanish presence in South America !

There are two panels in the museum dealing with the advent of the potato to Ireland.

The first panel tells of its great success in feeding the natives.

The second panel deals with the Famine and the disaster of over-reliance on a crop that repeatedly failed.

I had to smile at this. We have, or at least used to have one of those. Simple but effective.

This is Flemish/Dutch and not Ulster Scots, but you should be able to make out the sense of this record-breaking claim for yourself.

There are lots of examples of chip related inventions on display, some sensible and others, like this instant chip slot machine, off the wall.

If you're ever in Brugge you should drop in. I'm told you can even sample the product in the basement, but it was my last day there and I still had things to do so I didn't descend to that level.

I must record, however, that in all the meals I ate in Brugge on this visit, the chips were very disappointing. Now, my aunt Nora's chips - but that's another story.

You can follow up on the Belgian Chip on the Museum's website and learn, inter alia, how the original chip was invented as a fish substitute and how French Fries are really Walloon Fries in disguise.