The last week has been a surreal one even by the standards of la Belle Belgique. Keep in mind that this is a country that inspired its painters to such outpourings of surrealism as this:
And this:
Last week the country passed the record for the longest it’s taken a country to form a government following a democratic election. The occasion was marked in a fairly low-key fashion with some nakedness in Gent and frites-eating across the country. A typical lunchtime in Belgium in other words. This follows an (obviously unsuccessful) campaign of political protest by beard-growing.
On Tuesday Bruxellois awoke to find the capital crippled by a transport strike. Hard-pressed commuters bore the news fairly stoically when at first it appeared that the strike was in sympathy with a driver who had suffered an ‘act of aggression’ from a passenger. But stoicism turned to outrage and outpourings of inventive language (my Flemish and French vocabularies were dubiously enhanced) when it became clear that it was THE DRIVER who hit a passenger. The rationale by which this led to the transport workers going out on strike evades most people. Anyway, a week later and there is still no government and someone apparently got let off a speeding fine because the people who installed the camera were French-speaking and the installation manual was in Dutch. I’m thinking of becoming a painter.
Dawn Nell 