Belgium-Belgie-Belgique-Belgien

Belgium: "All simple things catastrophically complicated". If there is not a problem one or two will be invented, then talked about for a long time. My theory is it's related culturally to several centuries of rule by foreign powers, Austrians, French, Germans (short, fairly nasty periods), 200 years of Spanish occupation etc., which seems to have led to a built-in cultural attitude to keep a low profile (the foreigners invading yet again), that it is always someone else's decision and responsibility (to mend the roads and so on), to have "un briqain dans l'estomach", that famous Belgian phrase about looking after and owning your own house as the ultimate goal and then of course one of the Belgian national pastimes, tax avoidance (don't let the foreign occupiers have our money and chickens).


Two short articles:
brussels-express.eu/making-sense-belgium
brussels-express.eu/wacky-world-belgian-politics/

People here spat blood in 2007. Yves Laterme's "Marseillaise" was a deliberate slur or mockery, in effectively saying that Wallonie was really still part of France. Sometimes I think he really did have a valid point: "The Flemish leader sparked national outrage by saying that the 176-year-old Belgian nation was an “accident of history united by nothing more than the king, the national football team and certain brands of beer”. It was a silly mistake by him. Wonder what he is doing now.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1558359/Belgian-politicians-national-anthem-gaffe.html

People do wonder why Flanders and The Netherlands never reunited. Well I spent time working up at a marine and dredging company Zwijndrecht west of Antwerp in about 2001 and discovered that a) Antwerpen was quite nationalistic right wing Vlaams Blokky and b) They did not really like the cocksure blabby Dutch much at all. I had determined many years previously that the Nederlanders regarded the Flemish as insular farmer boys with a severe inferiority complex and an excessive liking for beer and nice meals. It was all silly but deeply ingrained.

Like many parts of Belgium, the glory days were long ago. Here in the commune of Limal these were probably the Spanish period, 1621 to 1807. The drawings and plans showing the Chateau at that time are remarkable. It's a wreck now, bombed out in 1944, now part occupied one or two buildings, but back then it must have been remarkable, run by occupying Spanish/Portuguese nobility for 180 years. The Ulloas and Puentes were basically in-situ tax collectors. You can still recognise this and the walls are there, but it must have been hammered in the Battle of Wavre the day before Waterloo and then probably various ways again in WW1 and got whacked by mistake a little by a night raid by British bombers in April 1944 preparing the way for D-Day by hitting railway stations (it was a windy night, bombs went off-target as did planes)

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