Doug across Africa, but first Brussels

This post goes out to my friend Doug Muir, over at HDTD.  Doug is going to Burundi.  Burundi, unlike neighboring Rwanda, is still at risk of relapsing into violence, although I wouldn't want to exaggerate it.  Doug writes, “I don't know if Burundi is the sort of place that stimulates blogging,” which I don't understand, and “nor whether the work will allow much time for it,” which I most certainly do.  Anyway, here's a vote for some reportage on what the situation looks like on the ground. 

Before that, he is going to Brussels.  Brussels is interesting.  The two main train stations are strangely chaotic, a throwback to the 1980s in New York.  The smaller one smells of vomit and has a population of rather hostile-looking teenage runaways.  But the architecture is pleasant. 

The larger one, Midi, closely resembles Penn Station in New York, save that it's rare to have to break up a screaming match between a dude in a leather jacket and a tall slender woman in Penn Station these days.  The strange thing, to an American, was the lack of reaction.  I ran towards the guy yelling, "Llame seguridad!" but an Algerian and a British dude (both of whom seemed to work in the bar) got there first and grabbed him, telling him ... something.  Meanwhile, all these other people stood around and watched.  Ignore it completely, that I understand, jump in, that I understand, but gawk?  A little odd.

I don't suppose that this will be obvious to people who don't know me, but I like the above kind of thing.  At least now that my city of birth no longer has it.  Brussels is a real city, and I very much like the place.  Quite a bit. 

Outside Midi is an immigrant neighborhood well worth visiting.  More below the fold.

We had some time to kill at the station, and we had no plans at all when we wandered outside.  To be honest, that part of the city is not particularly inviting at first glance:

But we wandered out, more out of boredom than anything.  Luckily, once you cross the street, the ambience changes.  The buildings get (at least) sixty years older (likely more) and while it's still pretty ugly, it's pretty ugly in the kind of vibrant way that will get you great conversation and interesting experiences if you don't get run over by a speeding car or mugged first.   

We passed a bar filled with young guys yelling at each other about something.  They seemed jovial enough, but we put discretion ahead of valor.

One thing that certainly caught my attention was the number of satellite dishes decorating the buildings.  I can't recall seeing anything like it in either the United States or Latin America.  I'm not sure if that's because you can generally get English television on cable in Latin America and Spanish shows likewise in the States, or if there's a deeper explanation.

Basically, it was an immigrant neighborhood.  Mostly Turkish and Romanian, to judge from the flags, but there were several people speaking Arabic and at least one fellow in a shalwar kameez, which is something you'd see in Pakistan and the Pashtun parts of Afghanistan.  We also spotted plenty of Portuguese flags (it was around the time of the Eurocup) which wasn't what I'd have expected.

Now, here's the thing that really reminded me of New York.  Not the presence of kids, although there were a lot of kids, of all ages, just like Brooklyn.  Nor the fact of the immigrants, although like I said, it was an immigrant neighborhood, just like Brooklyn.  Nor that the kids were clearly talking to each other in French, just like their Brooklyn counterparts would in English, or that it was pleasantly run-down and utterly non-touristy, like Brooklyn used to be.

No, it was that this neighborhood had clearly been an immigrant neighborhood for a very long time, once populated by ... Jews and Italians.  Just like most of Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, our discovery of the neighborhood's formerly Jewish character was very sobering. 

Behind that wall was this barren plaza, with thousands of names enscribed in stone on the sides:

In the other direction there was a menorah made out of chains.

The place was a memorial to the 23,838 slaughtered Jews of Brussels.  While the wind had blown trash into the plaza, the area around it was well-manicured and well-maintained, and there were no signs of vandalism despite the now Muslim character of the area.

Thankfully, our discovery of the former Italian presence was a bit more lighthearted.  When we came out the plaza, we spotted some basketball courts (filled with teenagers playing one-on-one) and a soccer field. 

Behind the soccer fields was this:

Which turned out to be a great Italian restaurant, with real honest ovens, and a very voluble clientele happy to tell you anything you want to know in a language you can't understand.  The place is called “Sicilia Riesina;” recommended.  If you can find it.  The only clue I have as to location is in the below picture of the propietor grilling out front:  Emile Carpentier Street.   

It was the best part of our trip, and I have to say that the rest of Brussels is quite fun, too, so I don't mean that in any sort of sardonic or sarcastic way. 

Doug, if you have the time, which you probably won't, I recommend it.  Meanwhile, if anybody out there on the interwebs knows anything about the neighborhood we wandered through, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

We met a fellow from Nigeria and a woman from Peru, both of whom seemed to be settling in very well to life in Belgium.  They said that they felt as Belgian as could be, but they might not be representative.  My wife hypothesized that might be because there is no real Belgian ethnicity, but rather a pan-ethnic nationality.  (Although who knows how much longer that nationality will last?)  Me, I don't know.  You hear about nativist parties winning in Flanders, and like I said, two people does not a valid sample make.      

But still.  Brussels is a good town.  Doug, I hope you get a chance to explore it, although I (quite selfishly) hope more that you'll be able to make some hands-on reporting from Burundi. 

And I can't say this too much:  congratulations on the new addition to the Muir family!   

Comments

[Doug M.]

Aww. Thanks, Noel.

I won't have any time at all in Brussels, alas -- evening flight in + morning flight out = a night at the airport Crowne Plaza. I'll have just enough time to get something to eat, check e-mail and crash if I want eight hours. (And oh, do I want eight hours.)

Burundi: I've found that some new places -- okay, most -- make me want to write about them. But there are exceptions. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for instance... I didn't blog much about that, and I think it was because it depressed and saddened me. What happened there was so awful that even thirty years later, it's still part of daily life. (Like, there's a whole generation of people walking around -- everyone born between the middle 1970s and the early 1980s -- that is /really short/. Once you realize this, you can't stop seeing it.)

But who knows? We'll see soon enough.

Anyway, thanks again!

Doug M.

[Jussi Jalonen]

Didn't have time to check the Royal Museum of Central Africa, or King Leopold's equestrian statue?

It's sort of ironic how the failure to admit the Armenian genocide is always cited as a negative factor preventing the Turkish entry to the European Union... and at the same time, most of the central facilities of the European Union are located in a country that has also, until very recently, failed to admit its own genocidal past, and very often denied it outright.

Cheers,

J. J.

[Noel Maurer]

Statue, yes, museum, no. We were on a whirlwind trip across northwestern Europe, with one day-trip to and one prolonged stopover in Brussels.

Is the museum worth it? I have to admit that it wasn't even on the radar screen.

It isn't typical, I know, but the only must-see things we went to in Brussels were the various European Union buildings.

All else was gravy, and both my wife and I generally prefer to see the ordinary workaday parts of cities and towns rather than the attractions. Not that we'd planned to in Brussels; we just had several hours to kill and decided to walk around south Brussels at random rather than check out the central sites for the second time.

At some point I'm going to have to make an E.U. post on AFOE. There is a simple (and, of course, oversimplified) way of thinking about the organization that I have found to be quite powerful in understanding what it does and how it effects business and political life across the continent.

[Jussi Jalonen]

Well, when you have a limited time in your disposal, the Museum probably isn't worth a visit.

To continue with the analogy; I suppose that you remember the post that Douglas made about the Armenian genocide museum. He mentioned that the exhibits suffered from the overt repetition of the same theme "The Genocide DID SO HAPPEN, damn it!"

The Central African Museum in Brussels is of the exactly opposite kind. More than a few people have pointed out that the Museum deliberately avoids confronting the issues raised by the "Heart of Darkness" or "Red Rubber". The almost total _absence_ of the well-known dark sides of the Congo Free State has astounded many people who have visited the Museum.

But, then again, as the website of the Museum correctly and honestly informs people:

"Here colonial history is regarded from a purely Belgian point of view. Thus, on the gallery's walls, only the names of the Belgians who died on Congolese soil are commemorated. There is no reference to Congolese dead."

(N.B., our local museum recently ran an exhibition on the 90th anniversary of the Civil War and the Battle of Tampere. Both sides were commemorated. That's healthy.)

Cheers,

J. J.

[Grace Puckett]

I myself also love the place as much as you love it yourself. There were memories in the place that cannot be replaced by something.