Serbian Dejan Anastasijevic is the ICORN Guest Writer in Brussels. He is an investigative journalist and writer, and has freelanced for Time Magazine and The Guardian among others. Anastasijevic is the Featured Writer this spring, presented with an interview at icorn.org. At the same time Shahrazad - stories for life presents some of his writing.
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BRUSSELS FOR BEGINNERS
Who but Shrek, an ogre from the eponymous movie, would choose to live in Brussels, a city whose name, translated from Old Dutch, means „a home in the swamp"? Although half way between Amsterdam and Paris, Brussels lacks Parisian glitz or the Dutch tolerance towards commercial sex and substance abuse, it even lacks a river (they used to have one, but they buried it). It does, however, have an average of 200 rainy days each year, poor infrastructure, and one of the largest Islamic communities in Europe. It also has an army of Eurocrats, who might as well be Martians, spending their days in heavily guarded glass towers, and their nights in Irish pubs which the natives gracefully ignore.
Still this city has many hidden charms, easily overlooked by a casual visitor. Although many downtown old buildings were destroyed during the soulless modernization in the 60s - in architecture, this kind of vandalism is known as "brusselisation" - a short walk leads to intact art-noveau squares and green parks. Not to talk about the museums: there's something for everyone, from Flemish masters, through Magritte, to Tin Tin, and on top of that the Museum of Musical Instruments, of comics, and, naturally, the Museum of Beer, honoring the Belgian national beverage.
Belgian beer is universally acclaimed thanks to the special kind of yeast, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, endemic to Brussels and it surroundings. An average café offers a choice of at least fifty brands, ranging from white beer (consumed with lemon) through Flemish Red, to powerful Trappist beers with the alcohol content of 8 percent or more. Maybe all this beer (an average Belgian consumes a few hundred liters each year), is linked to the fact that Brussels' most famous monument, Mannequin Pis, represents a boy who, according to the legend, extinguished the fire with his urine. During festivities, beer literally flows from the Mannequin's body, less often it's champagne or wine.
Although it's not as famous as French, or as opulent as Italian, the Brussels cuisine is, by this reporter's humble opinion, among the best in the world. It's based on two pillars: one is shellfish, the other is meat, often also entrails that a visitor from the Balkans may find familiar. And then, there are fries, an inevitable side dish with every meal, including mussels. The fries are the true source of the national pride: Belgians can withstand insults concerning their ancestry, history, and homeland as such, but if you say that their fries are less than absolutely delicious, you'll find out why Julius Cesar wrote that Belgian Gaels are the fiercest of all barbarians.
As soon as you land on Brussels Airport, you'll see a billboard (in English), welcoming you to "Belgium, the home of the French fries". This reveals a certain identity problem, caused by the clash of French and Dutch cultural spheres. Real French, however, don't think much of French-speaking Vallonians, and in Holland, the Dutch-speaking Flemmish are subjects of cruel jokes (often the same jokes to which the Bosnians were subjected in the former Yugoslavia). Brussels-based Eurocrats often refer to Belgium as "an impossible country", "the Bosnia of Europe". Many think that Flemmish and Vallonians would have already split if they could only find a way to divide Brussels. Fortunately, this is impossible: unlike in ethnically homogennous provinces to the north and the south, the Flemmish and the Vallonians in French-speaking Bruseels are a generally happy mix.
A visitor may find it surprising that there are relatively few English speakers in the city which hosts not just the EU, but NATO as well. But unlike the French, who generally don't regard non-speakers as human beings, the Belgians are mostly kind to foreigners, even those who don't speak French or Dutch. A foreigner in Brussels faces a sort of benevolent indifference, and although the attitude towards immigrants is far from ideal, Brussels is mostly devoid of xenophobia which is now so abundant throughout Europe.
The worst thing about Brussels is the weather: it's rarely bitterly cold, but the city is constantly exposed to humid currents from the Atlantic, and it rains almost daily. A new settler quickly learns not to venture out without an umbrella or a raincoat, because even the most splendid summer day can quickly turn into a scene from the Great Flood. But even that has a brighter side: even when it rains, the clouds are not a monotonous grey cover; they are constantly on the move, racing each other accrost the Brussels' sky. Here, the sky is never boring, and on these rare occasion when the sun comes through, it results in a spectatular dance of light.
These are the reasons that your correspondent is grateful that the fate has stranded him here, in this hidden jewel of the European North, and not in glitzy Paris, or the tourist-infested Amsterdam . Even though after more than a year of living in the rain his skin is turning somewhat green, and, thanks to all the beer and fries, his sillouette resembles Shrek's nicely rounded shape.
