Belgium: Europe's true melting pot

Belgium is a funny place. A trip to Brussels will bring travelers face to face with some of the best and worst parts of Europeanism.

First, there is the architecture. And the museums are fantastic. Most of the residential streets of Brussels that I saw were gorgeous, and a lo of the architecture was somewhere between that of Paris and that of San Francisco in style. There are wonderfully intricate wrought-iron balconies and window coverings as there are in Paris, but the houses are a little bit more severe—more narrow, with roofs that point up to the sky rather than flattening out. On any given street, there are several different colors, each indicating a different dwelling (but in this city, they are all actually the same building).

However, move five feet to the right when standing near the corner, and all of the sudden something like the BNP building comes into view, a glaring monstrosity of black rectangles gone wrong. It looks like the International Affairs Building, but black, less tall, more fat, and across the street from a Palace (also nearly black and disappointing).

So Brussels is what you have when a society tries to go modern, gets confused, and is stuck in some strange caricature of its ideal. And this all goes back to Belgian history.

Belgium is not really a place that garners a prominent position in most world (or even European) history classes. It’s a small country with funny traditions and two different languages. More recently, it has become the capital of the European Union, lending the first two letters of its name to the composition of the Benelux group.

But what else is there to Belgium? Why does it even exist?

Before it was Belgium, the region had been ruled by the Romans, the Gauls, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, the French, and finally, the Dutch. However, there was somewhat of an “accidental” revolution in 1830. Really, it was the bourgeoisie that wanted independence. Then, some of the common people got on board, and all of the sudden they found themselves with a country.

It was named a constitutional monarchy when King Leopold I was given power in 1831 and has since been comprised of two regions: the French-speaking Wallonia in the south and the Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north (there is a tiny population of German speakers in the east, but they are not politically important to this story).

Not unlike the United States’ own geographical split, the French-speaking Wallonia had all of the industry during the 19th century, making it much more economically productive. The nobles and bourgeoisie spoke French as well, so for many years government took place entirely in French, leaving Dutch only to the “peasants” in the north.

Eventually, Dutch was introduced into government, so much so that today in Belgium every government document, street sign, and proceeding has to be in both languages (contributing to the country’s large debt).

Economically, the tables have turned. Heavy industry is not so appreciated anymore, and most of the Wallonia factories have closed while Flanders has flourished with more light industry and tech enterprises.

Because of government, economics, and just plain tradition, the language and cultural barriers between Wallonia and Flanders are still very much alive, at least in theory. There is somewhat of a tradition of French-speaking snobbery, so the Wallonians rarely speak Dutch. The Dutch, on the other hand, traditionally had to learn French to understand their government. They therefore speak French rather fluently, but under duress—they would rather address you in English.

In practice (in tourist areas like Brussels and Bruges, at least), I have yet to meet a Belgian that speaks fewer than three languages (fluently), and plenty of them know four or even six. It’s becoming the true European melting pot. And maybe that’s what Belgium was meant to be.

Shane Ferro is a Columbia College junior studying abroad at Reid Hall in Paris. La Vie Culturelle runs alternating Tuesdays.