I Want You For Belgium

On Sunday morning on the Metro, we noticed alot of people draped in Belgian Flags, Jupiler clothing (their local beer), people covered in the "I Want You for Belgium" stickers and faces painted with the Belgian flag. We weren't exactly sure what was going on, but talked to people throughout the day and got some answers.

The Belgians organized a protest - over 25,000 people walked from the city centre to Cinquantenaire Arch (park across the street from our apartment). This was an important day in Belgian history, so thought I would share the details of this with you.

Quote from the Herald Tribune:
"Some 25,000 people staged a Belgian unity march in Brussels Sunday to vent their anger at a linguistic spat that prevents a government from taking office stoking speculation Belgium's Dutch and French-speakers would be better off breaking up."

Belgium currently does not have a government. The Dutch speaking and French speaking people in Belgium are fighting over power here and are not coming to any conclusions on their own. The protest was to announce that both sides want to come to an agreement and elect a government.

There was talks of breaking up the country into parts - Brussels being the centre, Dutch in the North and French in the South and having separate countries for each.

This is a quote from EuroNews today:
"Marchers carried banners and distributed leaflets in Belgium's three languages, French, Dutch, and German.
Flemish pressure to reduce French-speakers rights and redraw electoral boundaries around Brussels recently led to a collapse in talks on putting together a new government, which has yet to be formed 161 days since the last elections.
Some say the country has a dog's chance of getting a new government until the rift between the two communities is closed."

In Brussels, everyone speaks French and little Engligh. In Antwerp on Saturday, I spoke French to a sales lady and she looked at me like I had 3 heads. I asked her (in French) if she spoke English, she replied (in a Dutch accent)"I'd much prefer English to French".

Not hard for me to beleive that a language can tear a country apart....