Fell In Love

I never thought it would be possible but I have fallen in love … I am completely, head-over-heels in love with Brussels. I think I could spend the rest of my life here and never get bored or restless which happens rather often for me (usually after I’ve been in one general neighborhood for two years or so I start to get restless and want to move to somewhere new and if I don’t the feeling will go away eventually but it will come back with greater intensity and more frequently until I do something about it). It’s just so interesting here. You have a building from the early 19^th century sharing a wall with a very modern minimalist one, you have people conversing in three or four different languages in the scope of one conversation, you have a monument that was built to commemorate the Belgian civilizing mission in Congo and graffiti promoting anarchy. And from what I can tell all of this is continually evolving and changing and melding. Brussels has taken practically everything I’m interested in (the interaction between people [anthropology], the interaction between governments [international relations, the EU], architecture, the influence of language on culture, French, art, city planning and conservation) and put it all in one place where I can easily, well maybe not easily, soak it all up and just kind of study it. It’s absolutely fascinating. Right now, I just really don’t understand how people know which language to use when. Belgium has three official languages but not really. The country is basically split in two: Flanders and Wallonie. Flanders speaks Dutch and all official documents and whatnot are done in Dutch. In Wallonie, it’s French. It a few cantons in the southeast, it’s German. And in Brussels, all three are official but places are only required to do it in Dutch and French. But usually businesses, from what I can tell, try not to give preference to one of the languages by using it, so they use English instead. It’s crazy! I love it!