Sun, 22 November 2009
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Flags have been mysteriously appearing throughout Brussels and Editor Paul Morris braved a glass of Westmalle Trappist to find out why there has been a sudden run on the national colours.Almost imperceptibly a grassroots campaign has sprouted (:)) in Belgium. On balconies throughout Brussels a strange sight began to appear some weeks ago: Belgian flags draped from balconies or jammed in closed windows, fluttering proudly for all to see. At first I thought it was a last ditch attempt to support the Red Devils (the National football team), but that was surely too late, having been effectively eliminated from next year’s European championship long ago.
photo : channel
It transpires that this is a campaign which began online, a clarion call from the Bruxellois to keep Belgium united, to show solidarity to fellow citizens. The thing grew and grew to the point that now every district of the city has streets not quite festooned but a notch below festoon - embellished perhaps - with the black, yellow and red of the national flag .
The Brussels folk are of course a case apart. I had a beer with Frédérick Bellens, recruitment officer with Dexia bank. We enjoyed a Westmalle in an Etterbeek café (I didn’t know it was a Tripel 9.5 degrees until I stood up and discovered that my legs no longer obeyed the chemical synapses of my brain). He was poring over Le Soir’s special edition on the ‘Crisis'. As expected copies went out the door like hot cakes, as Belgians snapped up a well put together (as only Le Soir can do) series of features on the travails currently afflicting the country. The centrefold was as revealing as any Penthouse or Playboy spread: it was a beautifully produced map delineating the linguistic division which splits the country geographically - an accident of history that leaves Brussels in a bit of a pickle.
Looking at that stark graphic image of Brussels withiin Flanders, connected to the rest of the country by the thinnest umbilical cord - the commune of Rhode-Saint-Genèse (in Dutch Sint-Genesius-Rode) - brings the whole crisis into stark relief: it looks like two entirely separate countries.
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