Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
6. Belgium
I spent a couple of pleasantly pointless days wandering around Belgium by train. As countries go,
Belgium is a curiosity. It's not one nation at all, but two, northern Dutch-speaking Flanders and southern
French-speaking Wallonia. The southern half possesses the most outstanding scenery, the prettiest
villages, the best gastronomy and, withal, a Gallic knack for living well, while the north has the finest cities,
the most outstanding museums and churches, the ports, the coastal resorts, the bulk of the population and
most of the money.
The Flemings can't stand the Walloons and the Walloons can't stand the Flemings, but when you talk to
them a little you realize that what holds them together is an even deeper disdain for the French and the
Dutch. I once walked around Antwerp for a day with a Dutch-speaking local and on every corner he would
indicate to me with sliding eyes some innocent-looking couple and mutter disgustedly under his breath,
'Dutch.' He was astonished that I couldn't tell the difference between a Dutch person and a Fleming.
When pressed on their objections, the Flemings become a trifle vague. The most common complaint I
heard was that the Dutch drop in unannounced at mealtimes and never bring gifts. 'Ah, like our own dear
Scots,' I would say.
I learned much of this in Antwerp, where I stopped for an afternoon to see the cathedral and stayed on
into the evening wandering among the many bars, which must be about the finest and most numerous in
Europe: small, smoky places, as snug as Nigel Lawson's waistcoat, full of dark panelling and dim yellowy
light and always crowded with bright, happy-looking people having a good time. It is an easy city in which to
strike up conversations because the people are so open and their English is nearly always perfect. I talked
for an hour to two young street sweepers who had stopped for a drink on their way home. Where else but
northern Europe could an outsider talk to street sweepers in his own tongue?
It struck me again and again how much they know about us and how little we know about them. You
could read the English newspapers for months, and the American newspapers for ever, and never see a
single article about Belgium, and yet interesting things happen there.
Consider the Gang of Nijvel. This was a terrorist group which for a short period in the mid-1980s
roamed the country (to the extent that it is possible to roam in Belgium) and from time to time would burst
into supermarkets or crowded restaurants and spray the room with gunfire, killing at random - women,
children, anyone who happened to be in the way. Having left bodies everywhere, the gang would take a
relatively small sum of money from the tills and disappear into the night. The strange thing is this: the gang
never revealed its motives, never took hostages, never stole more than a few hundred pounds. It didn't even
have a name that anyone knew. The Gang of Nijvel label was pinned on it by the press because its getaway
cars were always Volkswagen GTi's stolen from somewhere in the Brussels suburb of Nijvel. After about six
months the attacks abruptly stopped and have never been resumed. The gunmen were not caught, their
weapons were never found, the police haven't the faintest idea who they were or what they wanted. Now is
that strange or what? And yet you probably never read about it in your paper. I think that's pretty strange or
what, too.
I went to Bruges for a day. It's only thirty miles from Brussels and so beautiful, so deeply, endlessly
gorgeous, that it's hard to believe it could be in the same country. Everything about it is perfect - its cobbled
streets, its placid bottle-green canals, its steep-roofed medieval houses, its market squares, its slumbering
parks, everything. No city has been better favoured by decline. For 200 years Bruges - I don't know why we
persist in calling it this because to the locals it's spelled Brugge and pronounced 'Brooguh' - was the most
prosperous city in Europe, but the silting-up of the River Zwyn and changing political circumstances made it
literally a backwater, and for 500 years, while other cities grew and were endlessly transformed, Bruges
remained forgotten and untouched. When Wordsworth visited in the nineteenth century he found grass
growing in the streets. Antwerp, I've been told, was more beautiful still, even as late as the turn of this
century, but developers moved in and pulled down everything they could get their hands on, which was pretty
much everything. Bruges was saved by its obscurity.
It is a rare place. I walked for a day with my mouth open. I looked in at the Groeninge Museum and
