If it's Tuesday, this must be Beligum

With my cousin, Aidan, in the Grand Place of Brussels


In January, I went with my dear cousins from Minnesota to help them move into their home outside of Brussels, Belgium, where they will be for two years. I am so proud of them for making this move and experiencing a new culture for this time! Belgium is a beautiful place with all kinds sites to explore. There are tons of pictures on my facebook page, if you're curious.

Being there, I kept thinking of the 1960s movie, "If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium". It was filmed to parody all the American tourists who started to descend on Europe after WWII (which has only grown since) and visit an insane amount of countries in a short amount of time:) One day per country!:) Although, it's dated, it's still pretty funny and things haven't changed too much really. I can't find very good clips on yotuube from the movie, but you can probably still rent it. The opening song sounds very late 60s, although doesn't seem to capture the feel of the movie. Still, I love the melancholy feel to it and it's worth listening to, if you don't know it. Below is the song from the film, sung by a different singer (orginally by Donovan). The first 2 minutes have the vocal part of the song and are the best, although some of the subtitles are incorrect. It should read "Montreux",as in Montreux, Switzerland, and not "Montreal".



I hadn't been back to Europe in 8 years and what struck me so strongly this time was how much English is spoken in comparison to when I was there before. Especially since my cousins are in the Flemish part of the country and people there would rather speak English than French given their long contentious history with French speaking Belgium, we ended up communicating almost as much in English as in French. Even in the French areas, however; many of the workers in the myriad chocolate stores and souvenir shops were from other countries and spoke broken French, and prefered to speak in English. This was such a change from when I was living in France in 2003!

I just found it interesting how globalized English has become in such a short time. Of course, you could speak English when traveling 10 years ago, but this time tourists no longer were asking, "Do you speak English?" before beginning their question. They just started speaking in English straight away and completely assumed that the other party (native Belgians) did indeed speak English. And I suppose they were right in doing so because I never heard anyone say "Sorry, I don't speak English". They almost always could answer the questions with detailed English responses. Impressive.

I guess it's great that English has become such a lingua franca that we can all use it for global communication. On the other hand, though, I find it more than a little sad that we are not forced to use the local languages. Part of the fun in visiting new countries is attempting to communicate in a new language and to experience new things that we cannot find at home. For people of other nationalities, they will always have their language(s) PLUS English. But for Americans, it is extremeley difficult to become bi-lingual when English is all that is needed. Although globalization has its good qualities and certainly has made travel much easier, I just hope that countries will fight to keep their own wonderful uniqueness as much as possible.

Belgium certainly still retains its amazing architecture, beer, chocolate and WAFFLES (yum!!) and fascinating history including Napolean's defeat at Waterloo and the site of the famous poem "Flander's Fields" from WWI. Being a country approximately the size of Maryland and containing 3 distinct regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels) and with 3 official languages (French, Flemish and German) is certainly impressive.

Viva la Belgique!