The Belgians and the Germans
Postcard — By Luke Holland on August 29, 2010 7:00 am
Viewing a nice Ahr
LAST TIME I packed my backpack and hit the road for any length of time with my (now) wife, Louise, we started with five weeks, on our own, in Russia. In winter. This time round, for our year long career-break cum honeymoon, we started in… errr… Belgium. Home of waffles, frites and mayo, bier, Tin Tin and Poirot. And the European Parliament.
Dwelling on the lazy stereotypes briefly, I would point anyone looking for great fries in the direction of Antoinne’s – truly sublime and worth the wait. Morte Subite has top notch beer, décor and attitude in spades, along with service that manages to be both unbelievably surly and hugely charming at the same time. As for the waffles – go easy on the toppings, and don’t fret too much where you get them from. As one local told us, they all taste the same.
Brussels itself was much as I remembered it, though with a slight hardening of indifference, bordering on contempt, amongst younger people towards the huge European project that has done so much to regenerate the city. Most striking, however, was the shining beacon of bilingualism that personifies the city. Every advert, announcement, service and food label there is in both official languages. It is, to this visitor at least, a great example of what some canny legislation can do with support from the punters and business community. Common sense prevails – no examples of kebab sellers being hung for trading in a preferred tongue – and the whole thing is pretty fab.
Indeed, I would say that I’d love Cardiff to be just like this in a few years time – were it not for the rest of Belgium, which is, by any measure, in something of a mess. The polar opposite of the capital, the line drawn years ago along linguistic and cultural lines has left a country divided in the most deep-rooted and catastrophic of fashions. Government is completely stymied for months at a time, with popular support across the country as a whole damned near impossible.
Stories of the human face of this tragedy abound, with the latest being an emergency service operator in a border area refusing to send an ambulance to a road traffic accident as the caller spoke the “wrong” language. Talk of a split of some description is legion. As a friend of Louise remarked, whenever that happens, a new minority will soon be born, looking for independence themselves. Hailing as she did from Belgrade, she had a fairly good idea how such splits often pan out.
After Brussels, and before heading into Eastern Europe via Vienna, we spent just over a week meandering through Germany. Starting in Cologne and ending in Munich, we wound our way through the Rhine and Ahr valleys in between, following rivers and wineries wherever we went. Every step along our journey, it was more and more obvious why so many Brits (and people who do would doubtless be happy being thus labelled) really seem to hate the Germans. It’s got nothing to do with the war, as far as I can see. It’s that they are exactly the same as us. Only, in pretty much every respect, a little bit better.
Nowhere was this better demonstrated than at the site we camped at near the small village of Altenahr, in the Ahr valley, and we camped in a great site next to said river. As the only British couple there, Louise and I could only look on in awe at the wonder that is a German campsite. Our little tent was dwarfed amongst campervans, caravans with plastic conservatories, and an array of furniture and gazebos, along with a selection of BMWs, Audi TTs and vintage Mercs. Badminton courts would be conjured up out nowhere, barbeques lit with ease, children played happily but quietly, and the pub on site did pints of ice cold lager for less than two quid a pop. In other words, like a campsite in the UK, just that little bit better.
As the barman explained over a beer one evening, the real reason that the British should get so annoyed with the Germans is that, despite our best efforts, they don’t really give two hoots about us.
“All that anger from you, at football and towels on deckchairs and the rest, and we think of you as we do the Swiss”, he told me. “Not much at all.”
Quite.
Tags: Belgium, bilingualism, Germany, identity
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20 Comments
I have never been to Belgium. This article tempts me to do so.
I have never been to a German campsite. Still not sold. But then again, I doubt anyone could persuade me to spend the night on a campsite.
Keep the travel blogs coming, both. Would love to read more about the Bulgarian monastery.
Belgium – Wales, Wales – Belgium, similar yet different; might we be heading in a similar direction, the southern region keeping its affiliation with the UK, whilst the northern region maintains its particular cultural differences, but in truth, what are the cultural differences amongst a people with similar needs, similar aspirations and the love of reality TV?
Might it be that real cultural differences in Wales are an illusion, the stuff of fables and folklore, important only to those people who need “difference” to pursue a particular political agenda. Might it be that by creating differences through the use of legislation, we could replicate the divisions found in Belgium, who could benefit from such divisions?
It’s easier to talk with Wallons in French than Parisians. They talk slower and that gives me an opportunity to hold some sort of conversation.
‘The New York’ of Europe Brussels does have height. The amount of domed churches and very long streets does give Brussels an interesting flavour. The skyscrapers as well seem un-European.
Some times you find Wallons do not like the Flemish and vice versa. In facts some Flemish would rather be part of the regions that comprise the Netherlands.
I can remember one shopkeeper I met would always refer to the old Belgian francs as ‘flemish’ money When I would utter Belgian he would wave his hand and say ‘Non non, flemish’.
Belgium does have some fabulous churches, I actually worked on the Church of Our lady in Brugges quite a few years back when it had some exterior restoration. The belfry on Brugges Cathedral is something.
A very good small museum is the Groenig Museum. Superb flemish painting, Van Eyks etc.
The Royal palace in brussels is something, a magnificient house sized painted of Venice inside, almost think you are in Venice whilst in Brussels.
Saying this, along with Hiroshima-Nagasaki, the German extermination of Jews…the Belgians really have got away (somewhat) with 9million or so murders of indigenous people in their former Congo colony. Massive atrocities.
It’s really the Belgians and not the British who have given colonialism a bad reputation.
Germany…..I could talk all day but…..
Wales and Belgium are distinctly disimilar. Drawing political and cultural parallels can only be made innocently. Practically the only thing they have in common is that both countries are used as units for measuring tropical rainforest loss.
CapM
I edited your last comment. Read our Comment Policy to understand why.
(nb. This is not an invitation to have a debate about the Policy or its application. Editor’s decision is final and all that)
Silly suggestion that Belgian language politics will end up in Yugoslavian style situation.
The great Welsh historian RT Jenkins has a quote that when OM Edwards went to the continent, he could never really concentrate on what he found, because he’d taken Bala in his bag with him (both men were from Bala).
When Labour politicians talk about Yugoslavia and language politics in the same sentence, you get the feeling that this says rather more about Welsh Labour than about the Belgian language line.
Good luck on the trip anyway. Happy camping!
Daran – you should try the German camping. It’s great. The monastery was fantastic – in Istanbul right now, which is quite something as well.
Senn – there was an exhibition about Belgian involvement in the Congo in their military museum, which Louise and I visited. There was a slightly bizarre attempt to focus on the positives of Belgian exploits there which we found a little odd. Still, not sure about some parallels drawn elsewhere in the comment.
John – will be interesting to find out.
Cap M – not sure I agree. They are both also used to describe the size of lakes and areas affected by natural disasters. Also, more seriously, think there are other cultural parallels.
Simon – due respect, I didn’t. I was talking about language, culture and the wider issue of nationalism around those issues. The comments made came from a friend who happened to live in the former Yugoslavia. As an aside, the Serbs we spent time with in Belgrade were pretty split on the issue. And I was never a politician – just a grubby apparatchick
Wow, the trip sounds like great fun.
Simon I believe he said it was the lady from the former Yugoslavia who saw the similarities. While you are correct to say the situations are different, they both involve identity politics. The story over the ambulance is terrible and we can only be thankful that Welsh people find such identity politics so tedious.
An interesting enough article, but very little Welsh perspective on these two countries, instead this tiresome “us Brits” stuff.
John Tyler – Yes, it’s terrible the Welsh wish to be bilingual and so different. They come to this country, do as they please and just won’t comply at all. Send them back whence they came I say!
The Serbs and Croats are essentially the same people living with Theodosius division of the Roman Empire in 395CE.
In my experience of Germany and the Germans, which includes living their for years with a German wife, the Germans are anglophiles. They don’t know a whole lot about Wales or the difference between being British and being English, but they generally like the English and English culture.
Carlo, give us some guidelines then. So future travel authors can give their pieces a “Welsh perspective”. I would have thought the very fact he is a Welshmen giving his opinions automatically made it a Welsh perspective.
In reply to Carlo August 29, 2010 • 10:22 pm …
In the UK we have …
Anglic
* English, with 24 dialects, Scottish English, Welsh English, Hiberno?English, Mid Ulster English, Highland English.
* Scots, Ulster Scots, Doric, Lallans, Glaswegian, Shetlandic, Orcadian.
* Brythonic languages of Cornish and Welsh.
* Goidelic languages Irish (Ulster), Scottish Gaelic, Galwegian
* Shelta (strongly influenced by English)
* Romany
* Angloromani
* Welsh Romani
* British Sign Language
* Irish Sign Language
* Sign Supported English
* Tic-tac
We then have the most common recent immigrant languages, according to Ethnologue, Punjabi, Bengali, Saraiki, Urdu, Sylheti, Cantonese, Greek, Italian, Southwestern Caribbean Creole, Gujarati, Kashmiri, and we are now welcoming further European languages ……
If the UK were to go down the Belgium route the challenge would be to create legislation that protects the rights of every single person, living in the UK, to use their preferred language without disadvantaging any other person; most see such an approach as a legislative and cultural nightmare of epic proportions. I am not certain that legislation has ever successfully imposed cultural norms upon any society, certainly not for any length of time without reducing populations to serfdom.
Here in our small corner of the UK we have people amongst us who speak many of the languages listed above, they are all equal partners in society. It is the use of legislation Carlo, not the language that concerns me, when Belgium created its constitutional language areas, they created a mess which seems to have engineered further social and political disintegration.
Personally I am indifferent to language issues; it is the message that language carries that is important, not the linguistic envelope it is carried by.
“Personally I am indifferent to language issues; it is the message that language carries that is important, not the linguistic envelope it is carried by.”
This is the classic view of those who speak a dominant language. Monolingual French speakers in France are generally indifferent to language too but ask them about the status of French in Quebec, Belgium or on the world stage and you’ll get a passionate answer.
Welsh-language legislation would protect the rights of Welsh-speakers rather than impose the language on those such as yourself, John Tyler, who claim to be indifferent to it. English’s position globally and in Wales is not under threat, but Welsh’s position as a community language in Wales is indeed under threat and legislation would go some way to giving it further status, as well as facilitating its use. For a lot of us Cymraeg is far more than a mere “lingusitic envelope”.
“southern region keeping its affiliation with the UK, whilst the northern region maintains its particular cultural differences, but in truth, what are the cultural differences amongst a people with similar needs, similar aspirations and the love of reality TV?”
Really? Outside Gwynedd/Anglesey, the North seems far more Anglicised than the South.
I know this is thread-drift, but Carlo said “Welsh-language legislation would protect the rights of Welsh-speakers”. In what way are the rights of Welsh speakers threatened?
Belgium has three official languages, not two – German is spoken by an indigenous minority much smaller than speaks Welsh (I think it’s about 60,000), and public services are required to provide services in that language to them. No-one in Belgium would seriously suggest that the German speakers should not have equal linguistic rights, or that funding for their schools and media be cut.
As a half-Belgian myself (and all Belgians are really half-Belgians), I’ve never actually heard one Belgian attacking the other language’s right to exist in the absolute, or to mock it and demean it in the way the anti-Welsh lobby in Wales carry out their obsessive Cymraeg-bashing. No Belgian media forum for instance contains the sort of linguacidal fantasies we see regularly on Betsan’s blog or the Western Mail’s comments site, where the Welsh-bashers call Welsh-speakers ‘primitive’ , ‘mentally ill’, ‘backward’, ‘inbred’ etc, and my special favourite from a few days ago, ‘harking back to the days when druids made human sacrifices’. Indeed I think most Belgians I know would find the anti-Welsh lobby’s idea of language and culture debates crude, unpleasant. primitive and vicious. But maybe I’m just being patriotic.
The idea that there’s any resemblance between Belgium and Yugloslavia is belief-beggaringly dumb – I hope that’s not Luke’s suggestion.
The problems in Belgium, which are big, arise around questions of where which language should be spoken, and not whether it should exist. That’s why people like John Tyler don’t actually understand this, because their entire political outlook is based on a hatred and fear of Welsh. To see that essentially parochial and often barmy (I’ve encountered the man’s blog, and he’s claimed that Welsh-speakers want ‘ethnic cleansing’ against the rest of us…) attitude projected onto the complex histories and geopolitics of European nations is as baffling to me as it would be to any Belgian reading this. I think even the most hardened Belgian single-language , anti-bilingualism campaigner would find the sort of stuff spouted by the welsh-haters unpleasant, and would be offended to be associated with such a crowd.
I suppose the other thing to remember is that Belgium is an artificial state, made up of two countries with radically different histories, and not just languages. To obsess about difference of language misses a great deal of the point. If you see language as a symptom of cultural difference and not solely its cause (something that doesn’t seem to have occurred to the anti-Welsh lobby, who in my experience aren’t very bright), then you realise that the removal of one language, however much you’d love to do it (and you would…) won’t resolve anything.
Belgium is a great place, but for all its problems it’s conducting its debates and even its fisticuffs about language and culture and politics at a considerably higher level than we do here.
A last word – Luke claims that the inability to form a national government is a problem. He doesn’t point out the layered governments of region, state and nation do different things and have different responsibilities. One can easily go without a national government, and indeed most people don’t notice its absence. I wish that was true here. To be honest, the country’s infrastructure is, to a socialist like myself, a functioning, caring, egalitarian and humane one.
Patrick – You say that “The idea that there’s any resemblance between Belgium and Yugloslavia is belief-beggaringly dumb – I hope that’s not Luke’s suggestion.” I agreee that any such conflation would be absurd, and even the most cursory reading of my piece shows makes it clear that I do not. Which means that either you didn’t read the piece properly before commenting at length, or that you did but chose to wilfully misrepresent what I said. I’d contend that either way that’s fairly dumb, “belief-beggaringly” or otherwise.
On the issue of national government in Belgium, it is not a “claim” that the recent situations have been problematic, but a statement of self-evident fact. That Belgium’s multi-layered system of Government has helped ameliorate the situation is a good thing, but it doesn’t change the fact that there was a problem to begin with. As an aside, the group if Belgians I discussed this with over a beer (or eight) in Belgrade a week or so ago were split as to the way forward, but agreed to a man and woman that the last few months have been pretty hellish.
Tom – I’d agree with you in many ways, certainly from a sporting, cultural and shopping point of view!
Carlo – sorry that you found the style tiresome. As a proud Welshman travelling the (parts of) the world with his English wife, I take pride in telling the umpteen people who ask me each day where I’m from that I’m Welsh. I’ve waxed lyrical on our music, cuisine, mountains, rivers, theatre, sporting achievements and political punch and much, much more. My being Welsh informs what I write and how I view things – it won’t really get much more explicit than that. For the fifty or so percent of people who hadn’t heard of our fabulous country when we first met, though, they certainly do by the time we’ve finished talking.
Luke, thanks for the clarification. This is your statement: “Talk of a split of some description is legion. As a friend of Louise remarked, whenever that happens, a new minority will soon be born, looking for independence themselves. Hailing as she did from Belgrade, she had a fairly good idea how such splits often pan out.”
Now, that is surely a strong suggestion – the word ‘often’ for one thing, the invocation of Yugoslavia rather than any of the peaceful secessions and splits of the last 20 years you might have pointed to – that Belgium and Yugoslavia have the capacity for a similar endgame. I can’t see how one can read that in any other way than I have. Never mind, probably a misunderstanding then…
The national governments of Belgium have often taken huge amounts of time to form. It isn’t a national trauma and it’s happened many times in my lifetime alone. It isn’t a national trauma because the mainstay of daily life – health, schools, roads, etc etc – are administered by regional and provincial governments. It might look stupid, and certainly one would prefer it otherwise, but there we go. It isn’t a sign of a dysfunctional system, and – I’m not imputing this view to you personally, but I’ll say it generally – the British Nationalist sense of superiority about other people’s political systems. Belgium is more equal, greener, healthier, better-educated and has better infrastructure than the UK. As a member of the Belgian Parti socialiste, I should also point out that our likely PM (whenever that happens…), Elio di Rupo, is a 1st generation, gay, Italian immigrant, and there are national, regional and provincial ministers with Algerian, Congolese, Eastern European etc. origins . The day Britain can boast of a similarly diverse governing class is the day I’ll start having some respect for the sense of superiority that lurks at the heart of anything we say about our European neighbours.
I also dispute this extraordinary statement: “the rest of Belgium, which is, by any measure, in something of a mess” … By whose account? Which ‘rest of Belgium’? I didn’t see that after seven weeks in my Walloon home town this summer, or during a week in Ghent. What you mean, and should have said, is that certain areas of the country, provinces (parts of Brussels included, but also parts of the Brabant, les Fourons etc), are undergoing linguistic/territorial fights about which language should be ‘official’. Often this takes the form of a rejection of the national bilingualism policy, and that’s unfortunate. But in the places that are comfortably and historically Walloon or Flemish, these aren’t issues.
There are some very unattractive aspects of regional nationalism, of course, and I’ve seen them myself, and the old Belgium of language switching, and moving between cultures was always a cosmopolitan dream. My grandparents believed deeply in Belgium as a nation, but couldn’t speak Flemish. My cousins speak good Flemish but are probably separatists. Their Flemish friends speak excellent French, and are likewise inclined to go it alone. They communicate, in other words.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to the country in the end. I was at the 21 July national day celebrations in my home town, and there were probably only about 20 people there. Three of them Welsh…
Gez, re. rights of Welsh speakers. Despite the 1993 Language Act public bodies in Wales don’t operate bilingually in the true meaning – internal meetings are conducted in English, internal reports are drafted in English. A Welsh civil servant who is more comfortable in Cymraeg has no choice but to use his second language and is at a disadvantage when seeking promotion. Translating signs and some documents is not enough when these organisations of the Welsh nation, funded by you and I, operate solely in English.
Utility companies offer a public service and should also offer a bilingual service. Many already do, others need to be compelled through legislation to respect the bilingual nature of Wales.
Luke – good to hear that you’re promoting Wales along the way. What I was getting at was that there are plenty of travel articles out there written from a British (English) perspective, but almost nothing about travelling as a Welshman or woman and how people respond on hearing ‘Wales’, or whatever Wales is in the local language. Bon voyage! (sorry, don’t know the Flemish equivalent…)