EXPERIENCING BELGIUM
Thursday, February 22, 2007
 

Groetjes uit Sint Joost ten Node!

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 18:05

The infamous Experiencing Belgium desk has now moved from downtown Bru-town to a sunny rooftop location in Sint Joost ten Node! On the plus side - no annoying tourists snapping pictures and no more provincette suburbans walking the streets to gawk at us multi-cultural inner city natives. Another welcoming benefit to the humble commune of Villettes version of San Jose is that bearded folk aren't a spectacle of unintentional players in street scene performance art! When daytrippers from the provinces come into town and point to me and say in Dutch "look there is King Leopold the second" - despite their linguistic assumptions I understand everyword being said and I take it as the anachronistic compliment that it should be. There still are a few virtues in reading up on King Leopold II Ghosts from some Christmas pasts.

Meanwhile I just finished reading an English translation of Georges Rodenbach's old novella Bruges la Morte. Despite the annoying introduction by a Franco-centric Anglophone who goes by the name Hollinghurst -This book from before the turn of the last century still rings true for Brugge/Bruges of today and certainly for the whole of this present Flanders. If you are wanting to get into the psyche of Belgium then this old tale will teach you the twisted inner workings of social life in these here damp Southern lowlands of Northern Europe.

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