Euro-Buzz: Bye, Bye Belgium

Stories sometime take on a life of their own.

In September, before I began this blog, I made a visit to some of the international schools in Holland and Belgium where I happened to see the news articles cited below. I was startled to read that a western European country was on the verge of … well… dissolving! Over the past few busy months I haven't had the time to think about this until I returned to Europe two weeks ago. En route from Brussels airport, my taxi driver, with a litle prompting, went into a rant (in guttural Dutch-English) about the lazy Wallonians to the south and how they were wrecking the country. Then, a few nights ago in Madrid, the subject of the Belgium “divorce” surpisingly popped up again during a casual dinner. Here’s a snippet of conversation you would have overheard, dear Reader, had you been there.

Can’t quite place your accent, I said.
Try, she said.
New Orleans, I said.
Try again, she said.
Quebec, I said.
One more, she said.
Paris, I said.
Wrong, she said.
Where, I said.
Belgium, she said.
BELGIUM, I said.
Belgium, she said.

And so Claudet –the wife of someone at the end of the table – told me about growing up in the French- speaking university town of Liège where she and her friends were discouraged from speaking Dutch. She indicated that her elderly parents who still lived there hoped Belgium would be split into two with one part being absorbed by France and the other by Holland. Go figure. Here is what I wrote before I ran into the taxi driver and Claudet:

A confession. I've never taken much of an interest in Belgium. It's my problem, of course, not the locals.

When we lived in neighboring Holland, Belgium was a place to go for a decent lunch (some white asparagus with mussels in wine sauce, perhaps?) or a romantic weekend in the Ardennes.

These pleasantries aside, my general recollection, perhaps unfairly, is a place of drab industrial estates and grey cement factories along side dank shipping canals. The criss-crossing highways seemed to be forever crowded with slow moving trucks. And then there was the rain. Go this way in the drizzle and the signs are in French. Go that way in the downpour and the directions are in Dutch. A cynic (not me) would say Belgium is where you get petrol on the way to Paris. Remember the sixties movie? If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium? You see? It's not just me.

Now I read that Belgium is dying. The local English paper in my hotel writes: Knives come out for Belgium. The noted Economist asks: Is Belgium Necessary? The International Herald Tribune poses the question: Can Belgium Survive?

Yikes! This is like hearing that a long lost friend or distant relative has cancer. When did we last speak to Freddy, dear? He looked so well in 1983. That sort of thing.

What's happening? Well, nothing new really for this unhappy bilingual nation except the problems are getting worse. The linguistic and culture divide (Dutch Flanders in the north and French Wallonia in the south) means separate schools, churches and media. Apparently, the important local parliamentary elections last June were inconclusive so... oops... there is no federal government. Now people on both side of the linguistic divide want to go their own way.

Napoleon Bonaparte met his Waterloo in ....Waterloo ...a village about 10 miles east of Brussels where his illustrious career came to a crashing end.

Is Belgium headed for its own Waterloo?