A total idiot? You blackguard!
Anyway, I have a good excuse --my petty environs:
What really is the point of Belgium?
From Leyla Linton in Brussels
You might think Brussels is boring but at least the food is good. That was the slogan I used to encourage friends to visit the heart of Europe. Not any more. One of the few pleasures of living in the city - enjoying hearty meals and chocolates and mayonnaise-smothered chips in between - is now a risky business. Eating has become an angst-ridden, complex undertaking after more and more dairy and meat dishes were taken off the shelves and off restaurant menus.
Chicken, eggs, pork, beef, milk, chocolates, cheese, mayonnaise, pastries and fresh pasta found themselves on the danger list after fears of being contaminated with dioxin - a class one cancer-causing chemical.
Only vegans could chow down without fear. Salad bars at the European Commission's canteens were swamped with converts.
But no sooner had the crumbling coalition government declared the foods to be safe than it was hit by another health crisis. This week, the number one brand Coca-Cola found itself in the dock and was forced to recall 30 million drinks after its products were contaminated.
With the government's track record of bungling investigations, Belgians now have a tough choice. They can either believe those in power have solved the dioxin problem (even though the contamination source is still unknown) or severely restrict their calorific intake.
"What must you think of us?" mutters my Belgian newsagent each time another crisis erupts. Even Belgians - as patriotic as they come - are embarrassed by the state of their country. And outsiders wonder why the place even exists.
Struggling to name 10 famous Belgians is an old and mean joke but, like most cliches, it is true. Even the most pro-Belgian expats here have a hard time coming up with their list.
There was King Leopold II, cyclist Eddy Merckx, saxophone inventor Adolphe Sax, Georges Simenon, womaniser and creator of Maigret, the great artist Ren‚ Magritte and the singer Jacques Brel. Add Johnny Hallyday [a French pop star] (his father was Belgian), Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and comic-strip hero Tintin and you are nearly there. That makes nine.
Of course, Hallyday is really French. The last two are fictional and, worse still, more often than not mistaken for Frenchmen. To win this game, you need to bend the rules a little.
Even allowing for the fact that Belgium only came into being in 1830, is a quarter the size of England and has just 10 million inhabitants, there is no getting away from the obvious conclusion that the country is a nonentity. What is it for?
Historically a buffer zone between its warring neighbours, the bit of cotton wool in a medicine bottle to stop tablets rattling around, Belgium would be happy to sink into obscurity. It is well-suited to its role of playing host to European institutions and their faceless bureaucrats. It has been dubbed the "heart of Europe" and is thrust into the limelight whenever EU decisions are taken. (For Euro-sceptics, the word Brussels sums up all that is evil about the great European project.) It enjoys being compared to truly international cities like London, New York or Paris but, unfortunately, it just doesn't measure up. Expectations of a dynamic, multicultural city are usually disappointed. At heart a provincial town presiding over a provincial nation of narrow-minded bores, Brussels has tolerated having thousands of expats grafted on without fundamentally developing an international character.
But being a bit dull is no crime. The real issue is that for a country its size, Belgium generates a large proportion of scandals and has rapidly acquired an international reputation for all the wrong things: racism, corruption and incompetence bordering on the criminal.
Only yesterday, 60 per cent of Belgian soccer players said they believed their game was tainted by corruption, according to a magazine survey.
And the food crisis which led to the downfall of Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene and his ruling coalition at the general election earlier this week is just the latest in a series of scandals.
The voters were furious that his government had sat on research showing there was dangerous contamination for more than a month without telling them. For months, possibly poisoned products were being exported all round Europe, including Britain.
What is surprising is how Dehaene hung on to power for so long. The food crisis seems trifling in comparison with the tragic bungling in the country's notorious child sex and murder scandal. Marc Dutroux has been held on suspicion of the rape and murder of four girls and the kidnapping of two more for almost three years without trial.
If the police and judicial authorities had got their acts together, Dutroux, a convicted paedophile, could have been stopped and the little girls saved. Police searching his house had heard children's voices but did nothing.Dutroux is probably Belgium's most famous citizen and adding him to my list makes 10. But it is a hollow victory. Or, as their own King Leopold II said: "Small country, small-minded people."
¸ Express Newspapers Ltd
Link:
lineone.net
Although I pretty much agree with Leyla Linton's caustic snapshot of the Belgian Zeitgeist, I'd like, however, to mitigate her following verdict about Brussels's alleged parochialism:
It [Brussels] enjoys being compared to truly international cities like London, New York or Paris but, unfortunately, it just doesn't measure up. Expectations of a dynamic, multicultural city are usually disappointed. At heart a provincial town presiding over a provincial nation of narrow-minded bores, Brussels has tolerated having thousands of expats grafted on without fundamentally developing an international character.
Actually, Brussels is indeed a multicultural, multiethnic, and multifaceted city --although not as much at the upper middle-class level as at the lower rungs of its populace. To get across, I'll take an everyday experience: if one stands on a corner near downtown Gare Centrale (central railway station) on any business day, between 4 and 5 PM, s/he can witness the daily ebb tide of Brussels' (mostly) Flemish commuters who seem to be as much in a desperate hurry to leave their official capital in the evening as they were hungrily flocking into it in the morning (commuters are estimated to total 300,000 --daily)..... At this point, as L. Linton rightfully hinted at, our observer would be unlikely to pick out any ethnic nine-to-fiver --whether Black or Chinese or whatever-- among the crowd flowing toward the station entrances..... Belgium sure is neither a US-like melting pot nor a salad bowl. But what is multiculturalism, after all? It seems that it depends on the country we're dealing with: in the US, it basically comes down to a successful cooperation involving different ethnic minorities (ie black, white, 'yellow',....); in India, multiculturalism starts by allowing lower (out-)castes (such as the untouchables) in India's power elite; in Israel, I guess that Ashkenazis messing together with Sephardic Jews can be called a fair, kosher melting pot; similarly, Belgium's multicultural apex is any long-lasting venture gathering Flemings, Walloons, and a couple of Bruxellois together.... Any other cultural endeavour that would prove more ambitious in attempting to stretch such narrow-minded definitions of multiculturalism would put too much stress on their respective social fabrics.....
Besides, both the Flemish and the French-speaking bourgeoisies are no longer fond of their capital. To be sure, the Flemish bourgeoisie considers Brussels more as a political trophy to be ripped off the Frogs' hands than as a genuine Flemish city which deserves frequent courtesy calls by the Flemish elite. Likewise, the French-speaking elites snub Brussels as a tacky burg in comparison to Paris, or even to Brussels' swanky outskirts in Brabant wallon.... Hence, Brussels' pathetic night-life: no discos where you may encounter showbiz celebrities (like in Paris, LA,...), no (big-time) live theatre shows (like in New York [Broadway], Paris), no Quartier Latin, no Chinatown, etc. That's why most local businessmen have welcomed the TGV fast-railway connection with Paris as a godsend: now, they can easily entertain their Japanese guests in Le Moulin Rouge in Paris instead of bringing them in yet another of these booooring Brussels restaurants.
Contrariwise, it's almost a duty for the French bourgeoisie to show off in Paris, whether for culture, politics, business, or merely socializing.
However, for the petty bourgeoisie and the working class, Brussels is far more multiethnic and multicultural than it seems to its homogeneous white-collar stratum. It's partly due to the fact that all these Turks, Moroccans, Poles, Congolese, and other minorities are never totally cut off from their native cultures: they can still easily (by car, train) and cheapily travel back to their homelands (no so cheapily for black Africans though) and they can purchase satellite dishes to tune their TVs to their favorite home channels. Such a proximity with the cultures from Eastern Europe and from the Mediterranean basin allow the migrants to keep their peculiar features (character, mindset, language, religion, and mores), providing western Europe with a much more lively culture mix than the US's whose remoteness fosters a faster cultural absorption --except for the Latinos....
Regards,
Gus. |
