Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Antwerp, Belgium: Beer and Chocolate

In addition to the formal classes we have on Semester at Sea, before we land in a port, the students, staff and anyone on board particularly knowledgeable about the upcoming country give an informal presentation about what we can expect at our next stop. In the session before Belgium, a group of students stood up in a line and all said the same sentence, each in the language of his own heritage: Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Korean, etc. The sentence they repeated was:

Belgium is not only
Beer and chocolate;
Amsterdam is not only
Drugs and sex.

First, it was great to see that there was more diversity on the ship than we thought, and that the all-American student body is not only Midwestern blondes. But also, after all the tourist tips—about where to sample the 600 types of local beers that Belgium offers—and cautions—about illegal drugs and legal sex being so readily available just two hours away in Amsterdam—it was good to be reminded that the Benelux countries, like the rest of Europe, have so much more.
One of the field trips offered was a tour of both Belgian specialties, a chocolate factory and a brewery. How could one country be expert at two such different flavors? In the formal classes about Belgian history, we learned how; it is definitely a country with a fragmented personality.
Created as a buffer state in the early 19th century to keep France and Germany tame, Belgium has never truly unified. Today, the north half, Flanders, speaks Flemish, which our Flemish law professor assures us is Dutch with a funny accent. The southern half, Wallonia, speaks French. Flanders has its own elected parliament; Wallonia has two—one for economic issues and one for cultural issues. There is also a small, totally German-speaking region in the east that was given to Belgium as a prize after World War I. It is governed by the Walloon parliament for economic issues but has its own parliament for cultural issues.
And then there is Brussels. More a county than a city, like Miami it has 18 separate governing municipalities within it, and a parliament for economic issues as well as separate commissions for Flemish and French cultural issues.
All of these elected bodies work with a separate but equal elected national parliament—which has declared three official languages, French, Flemish and German—and a King, descended from a prince they hired away from Germany back in the 19th century, to pull this mélange together.
Confused yet? Here's the amazing thing: It works. And the proof is that they have never fired a shot at each other. Obviously, diplomacy and negotiation are among their cultural traits. My Irish husband was amazed. How come the Catholics and Protestants, the Brits and Irish, can’t do this?
On our first day in port, Tony got up early, looked out the porthole, and announced, “We're in downtown Antwerp!” Unlike in Dublin, where we docked in East Cleveland, here we were right in the city center. We hit the streets immediately, and was thrilled to discover the only port where I was able to use my French, and my bit of high school German to translate the Dutch signs—which are really in Flemish. The cuisine, too, is a mixture of Franco and Germanic influences, so everyone sits in cafes and drinks beers, while eating Belgian waffles with chocolate sauce. We decided that we like this.
These cultures are so easily linked by the great European train system, that we had to decide whether we wanted to tear ourselves away from lovely Antwerp to visit the other cities recommended. We agreed on one day in Amsterdam because Tony had been there in 1971 and again in 1981, and wanted to see if his son, who visited recently, had found the same fascinating city that he had as a youth.
The only official field trip Tony and I signed up for was a briefing at the European Commission offices in Brussels. We got off the bus with about 40 other students and faculty, and, there it was: The tall, non-descript, modern building, surrounded by car parks and construction, that holds the offices for thousands of workers who run the European Commission arm of the European Union. It’s one thing to read about it in the newspapers, but another to experience it firsthand.
Our meeting was with the Director General of Education and Culture, a German native who spoke fluent English and French, taking time out from his Dutch class to explain to us the intricacies of one of the biggest bureaucracies on the planet. Whenever conflicting interpretations of the body of rules and regulations that has grown up with the 15 member-states arise, the official advice is, “Look to the treaties, the treaties, always the treaties” that originally established and have since enlarged the Union.
Once the recalcitrant Irish finally ratify the Treaty of Nice this fall, the way will be cleared for 10 more already qualified nations, including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, to become full members with the next regularly scheduled election in 2004. The total population in the Union, which is already 100 million more than in the United States, will jump another 100 million or so.
What better city than Brussels, with its hodge-podge of governments, the peacemaking middle child between France and Germany, to play host to this unifying force of nine official languages and four currencies? When our briefing was over, and I had raided the bookstore for free brochures to use in my classes, we wanted to have lunch in the traditional part of the older city that every tourist hears about. The EU staffers we asked seemed nonplussed about how to get there. Well, you could take a bus. Or you could walk; it's about 20 minutes. I got the feeling that to them Brussels was the modern office buildings not the quaint cafes.
We walked and walked, first on the very narrow sidewalks rimming parking garages and office buildings, then circling around the 19th century palace of the King, visually and physically linking the two halves, and finally downhill on cobblestones to the original city with its wide plazas and squares, back alleys filled with restaurants pushing bouillabaisse and paella, and a swirling mix of languages, smells and beers. An arrow pointed us to the symbol of the city, the Mannekin Pis, but our quest for ice cream in the heat didn’t take us that way. Later when we were on the train, a young Belgian male obliged by stopping his bike on the side of the road and taking a leak. You don't have to go far on this planet to see a little boy pee.
We headed home via Ghent to take in the Arts Festival. There were street performers on stilts and stages, unicycles and tightropes, and a magnificent jumble of buildings making up the university and the town, with examples from every century, from the 20th all the way back through to the 12th, linked by a canal system filled with floating modern sculptures for the festival. After one good Guinness at an Irish pub, we decided we’d move there in a minute.
Back in Antwerp we were sharing the city with the International Folk Dancing Festival. Throughout the town were Europeans of all ages, dressed in storybook costumes with white stockings, dark velvet vests, and colorful ribbons streaming from every orifice, spontaneously bursting into song and dance in every cafe or square. Or they could be seen, in costume, walking the streets, chewing gum, smoking cigarettes, and getting drunk on those 600 beers. I’m sure there are Balkan-like rivalries over who had the most ribbons, but to us all the dance steps looked the same.
At sea again, we are learning about Italy, with its many nation-states now united by a common language, but divided by a schizophrenic political system. A perfect member for this European Union.
For the WLRN Radio Reading Service, this is Kathleen Dixon Donnelly—at Sea.