From where I live, Belgium is a very small country. Avoiding the morning and evening traffic I can drive in any direction that I want and it will never take me more than two hours to reach one of the borders. It takes me a 75 mile drive to reach the beach, it takes me a bit longer to have a walk through the heart of the Ardennes. And in between there a some quite lovely places to visit. An 87 mile drive leads me to my family in the neighborhood of Liege where half of my family lives.
I am one of these Belgians whose family at mothers side is partly French, partly Flemish speaking. And I am grateful for that. If it were not for my grandfather having had to move to Visé, a lovely little town along the Meuse and close to the Dutch border, I would never have learned to speak French as I have done now. Grandfather unknowingly kept the whole family in balance. He had two sons and two daughters. One son and one daughter made their living in the French part of our country, the other son and other daughter moved back to Flanders. He had ten grandchildren, again five boys and five girls. Half of them are French speaking, the other half is Dutch speaking. When he was still alive we would spend a lot of time together. The French connection, in spite of having Flemish speaking parents, never learned the language and so the other part had to learn French.
Each year, at the end of august the ten grandchildren meet. Parents are not allowed. On these happenings we do not care what language we have to speak in order to make ourselves understood. We are just happy to be together and to have some good laughs and more importantly good food. And on the rare occasions that we talk about politics none of us wants our country to be split in two. The French part of the family however agrees that there should be a separation of some financial issues because they find that their part of the country should stop asking money and start working instead but for the rest we are quite happy to remain the Belgians who we are now.
And that is the reason why I am not very happy with what is happening in this country. It makes Belgian less beautiful as it should be, it turns our country into a joke that no one seems to understand anymore. We might very well house the United Nations, the center of the European Union and so many more things but the only thing people in other countries lately seem to remember and talk about, is how ridiculous it is that after more than two hundred days, we still do not have a government. To me, politicians turned into a kind of aliens who do not seem to be in real touch anymore with what we citizens want. Upon the last note of Van de Lanotte, one part says ‘yes but’ and the other part says ‘no because’. They say the same but they seem to refuse to see it. And so this country seems to be ready for yet another battle of a bunch of egos who are less and less willing to mix their burgundy with some sparkling water. And that is why I am less and less interested in what is happening in this country. I do like a good joke but I do not like this kind of jokes. You do not understand one bit about this country? Just watch this Belgium for dummies
And while our politics are a complete chaos, the media are making a fuss about this while they conveniently forget about one of their own politicians. I know which one I would prefer.
