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.
