Wednesday, April 13, 2011

belgium - update politics

he, the flemish populist clown (Bart De Wever) has been having lots of fun speaking with the french speaking populist clown Elio di Rupo for approx. 300 days, big friends now, but they just can not decide what they wan't to do with little Belgium, and it's 11 million "strong" beer drinking people.







MottoEendracht maakt macht - L'union fait la force - Strength through unity- Einigkeit macht stark

The motto was used by Belgium after its Revolution of 1830, initially only in its French form "L'union fait la force". Only when the Dutch was equated with the French did the Belgian state take "Eendracht maakt macht" as its motto instead, sometimes with the variant "Eenheid baart macht". In 1830 this unity was identified with the unification of Belgium's nine provinces, whose nine provincial coats of arms are represented on the national arms, and the new country's unification of its liberal progressives and Catholic conservatives. Indeed, it was launched in 1827-1828 by newspapers published in Liege which allied liberals and Catholics in the unionism which brought about the Revolution and which then dominated Belgian politics until the founding of the Liberal Party in 1846. Although the motto is often used in Belgicist or unitarist circles (as a call to Flemings and Walloons, natives of Brussels and German speakers, all to maintain Belgium's unity), this is a historical misinterpretation - the motto is a unionist not a unitarist slogan. Its German version is "Einigkeit macht stark". Flemings sometimes parody the motto by chanting it as "L'union fait la farce" ("Union makes a farce") or "L'oignon fait la farce" ("The onion makes the filling"), trivialising it as a cooking recipe.
 source:wikipedia.org

Monday, April 4, 2011

http://www.brussels.org/

Easy to remember and very useful site for practical information about Brussels:

Theatres, museums, shopping, restaurants, hotels, all the adresses and info

http://www.brussels.org/

Have you been to Brussels already?