Tag Archives: belgium

in english

Belgians are nice, but their country is weird

I have now quite a few local friends, mainly from school, and I think we get along quite well. They are in general nice people and everything seems to be OK. However, I can’t help but notice how deeply is their country divided along linguistic lines, and how difficult it is for some of the Belgians to bridge that chasm.

I’ll give a stupid example: TV. You have several channels in French and several in Dutch, and you may have the same football game at the same time being broadcast in both channels. The French-speaking news say very little about what happens in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and vice-versa. Even the Telemarketing ads are in both languages depending on the channel, even when they’re selling the same thing (these days they keep on pushing a “Disco Fever” CD collection, which actually looks quite nice, but anyway) .

I don’t think they’ll truly separate, because, as a teacher said: “What do we do with Brussels then?”. However, it is quite interesting to see the dynamics between two communities that live next to each other but only rally around the Red Devils (the football team), the Flag, the King and Kim Clijsters (the tennis player).

in english

Racism and “otherness”

Yesterday, after finishing a company visit our class took the bus back to school. We were more than 20, and in the bus we were of course speaking English, as it is our only lingua franca. You can imagine our surprise when some kids (the oldest one was probably 15) started shouting stuff at us from the back of the bus in English. After ignoring them for a while, they switched their verbal abuse to Dutch and French, at which point I got very annoyed as it was mostly directed towards the girls in the class. We continued to ignore them (and I have to admit that I had to restrain myself a couple of times) until we reached our destination, but it was around 40 minutes of intense bullying.

It was worthless to waste my time on those kids (who, by the way, also seemed to be from an Arab immigrant background), but I couldn’t answer in their language properly, which is a handicap, and physical action is completely out of the question. I was also not very happy with the fact that this can happen here (I’ve heard it’s a problem in France too)

Discussing this situation with the Chinese guys in our group, I was dismayed to hear that it is not uncommon for them to get that kind of treatment. I have had problems a couple of times (In Finland I was called “vitun turkkilainen” twice, had problems once with a bouncer in a bar since closed and once a 15-year-old try to spit on me while skating, whereas here I’ve been asked twice if I’m Maghrebi in a hostile voice) but it was rather uncommon. In Finland that behaviour in a city bus wouldn’t happen as kids are educated differently, whereas in Mexico they would probably get their asses handed to them anyway.

I know it’s a chicken and egg situation, in the sense that bad treatment from one side will cause bad treatment from the other, but I can’t help to feel pissed off by this behaviour. I don’t expect everyone to live “happily ever after”, but that is just not acceptable, regardless of who does it.

in english

Brussels the melting pot

The city where I’m now based is truly a melting pot. Walking accross the street you can listen to 10 different languages, and if you’re not used to it (as opposed to actually craving it like I did) I suppose it can be a little overwhelming. The difference with, for example, France, is that all the different communities tend to live more or less together, which isn’t easy, but requires tolerance from everybody involved. To give an example, on Friday I was partying with the Erasmus exchange guys, who come from Spain, Finland, France, England and Poland. On Saturday I was out with a French friend who has lived in Finland, New Zealand, Ecuador and now here. On Sunday I was with some Mexican friends walking through downtown, and this week I plan to have a beer with a British friend who was in Japan and is working here now. Another good friend of mine (Kiwi, but lives in Singapore) told me the other day that my pictures in Flickr make Brussels look like a more interesting place than he thought of given the impression he had from the news, and I have to say that he’s right, this is a much more interesting place than it is regarded of. As long as it stays so in the right ways everything is fine.