The Brussels Times Magazine - Winter 2018/2019 by The Brussels Times

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Winter 2018 / 2019

This year marks the centenary of the end of the “War to end all wars”. Commemorations throughout Europe take place to remember the lives lost and to observe the armistice of 11 November 1918 that finally ended the First World War. In Belgium, an emotional service was held at the military cemetery near Mons, where the war began in 1914 and where the first and last casualties of the battles lie. The centenary occurs during the lead up to Britain’s exit from the EU, and the intense and difficult negotiations between the parties to reach a fair agreement. Most Europeans, and many Brits included, woke up shocked and surprised on 24 June 2016 to the results of the referendum. Two years on, the Brexit path seems set, despite the unease and much uncertainty from even local British public opinion, with recent surveys suggesting that the closer we get to the official departure date, the more Britain wants to remain in the EU. So, what is a fair agreement? With the EU likely to want to appear tough with the UK to deter other members from leaving, the negotiations has similarities with the classical “prisoner’s dilemma” problem, whereby uncooperative parties end up choosing outcomes that are not necessarily the most beneficial for them all. In this issue, economist Philippe Legrain discusses the future of the EU in the face of growing nationalist sentiment across the union. Belgian philosopher Philippe Van Parijs elaborates on what a fair Brexit agreement could look like. Martin Banks recounts untold stories from when over one million Belgian refugees left the country as a result of the outbreak of the First World War. And Investigative journalist Jelter Meers follows the steps of a young Somalian man who trekked through Africa, to flee from Al-Shabab, to Belgium.

On the Cover Illustration by Lectrr Publisher The Brussels Times Avenue Louise 54 1050 Brussels +32 (0)2 403 36 93 info@brusselstimes.com ISSN Number: 0772-1633 Founding Editors Jonadav Apelblat Omry Apelblat Art Director and Art Editor Graphic and Art Designer Account Manager Denis Maksimov Marija Hajster David Young Contributing Editors Derek Blyth, Philippe Van Parijs, Martin Banks, Tom Vanderstappen, Philippe Legrain, Alexandre D’hoore, Alicja Gescinska, Marianna Hunt, Alan Hope, Hughes Belin, Liz Newmark, Jelter Meers, and Boré Kedober Advertising Please contact us on info@brusselstimes.com or +32 (0)2 893 00 67 for information about advertising opportunities.

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We hope that you will enjoy these and the many other stories in this issue. The Editorial Team The Brussels Times Magazine GLOCAL AFFAIRS The future of the European Union: Brexit, division and the threat from within Five questions to philosopher Philippe Van Parijs on a fair Brexit From Somalia to Belgium: Trekking through hell to flee from al-Shabab

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How the citizens of Brussels are reclaiming unused space

How to become a Belgian citizen: Red tape, inconsistencies and changing laws

POLIAESTHETICA Reviews: Art shows in Brussels and beyond

Surreal city in transition: Interview with Belgian photographer Bram Penninckx

PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE AND HISTORY How Belgians became refugees during the First World War

Gender inequality in Belgian politics

Exorcising the ghosts of Belgium’s colonial past

From the low lands to the high seas: Belgian pirate radio’s rise and demise

The story of how Leuven’s jewel was twice destroyed and rebuilt

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LIFESTYLE Brussels’ urban farming phenomenon

116

The Belgian Gourmet Corner

127

Discovering the architecture of Brussels: Saint-Josse

133

Derek Blyth’s Hidden Secrets of Brussels

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GLOCAL AFFAIRS 06-44 p

With Brexit looming closer, the EU will, for the first time since its formation, see one of its members leave the Union. Faced with a growing surge of nationalist movements throughout Europe, the fear in Brussels is that other countries may follow suit with their own national referendums on whether to relinquish their memberships. However, despite the rise of right-wing parties with anti-EU agendas, new recent surveys show a growing support for the EU in most member states, suggesting a consolidation between EU supporters and citizens who may previously have been on the fence between staying or leaving the club.

Credit: Bram Penninckx

Philippe Legrain is a political economist and writer. From 2011 to 2014, he was the economic adviser to European Commission President JosĂŠ Manuel Barroso.

THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION BREXIT, DIVISION AND THE THREAT FROM WITHIN

n a few months, on 29 March, Britain is due to leave the European Union. For the first time ever, what had been an ever-expanding club, will lose a member. The fear in Brussels, Berlin and Paris is that other countries might follow. After all, nationalists are on a roll. Closing borders is now seen by many as the solution to every ill. Multilateral, technocratic institutions like those of the EU are seen as trampling on national sovereignty and democracy. Italians/ French/Hungarians First! With further enlargement on hold for now, the EU could become an ever-shrinking club.

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Further exits cannot be ruled out. Financial markets may yet force Italy out of the rickety euro, for instance. But the biggest danger is not that nationalists will lead their countries out of the EU; it is that they will first undermine and then take over the EU.

No more exits When Britain voted in June 2016 to leave the EU, it was widely thought that its departure

“The fear in Brussels, Berlin and Paris is that other countries might follow. After all, nationalists are on a roll. Closing borders is now seen by many as the solution to every ill. Multilateral, technocratic institutions like those of the EU are seen as trampling on national sovereignty and democracy.”

might start a trend. France might Frexit, the Netherlands Nexit and Italy Italeave. That fear, in turn, is a big reason why German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are so intent on striking a tough bargain with the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May. To deter others, leaving the EU must be seen as making Britain worse off. You can’t have your cake and eat it. The strategy seems to be working. The European Parliament’s latest Eurobarometer survey shows support for EU membership rising in most countries – even though voters also increasingly think the EU is going in the wrong direction. This grudging support for the EU comes out particularly clearly when voters are asked how they would vote in a putative referendum on EU membership. In Italy, where the EU is least popular, more voters (45%) think their country hasn’t benefited from EU membership than think it has (43%) – yet only 24% would vote to leave the EU in a referendum (and 44% to remain). The EU may be deeply flawed, but leaving seems worse. No wonder nationalists are backtracking from their earlier enthusiasm for exiting the EU. In France, where 63% would vote to remain in the EU and only 17% would vote to leave, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (previously Front National), has ditched her previous demand for Frexit. In the Netherlands, the hard-right populist Geert Wilders now emphasises hostility to Muslim

“The European Parliament’s latest Eurobarometer survey shows support for EU membership rising in most countries – even though voters also increasingly think the EU is going in the wrong direction.”

immigrants rather than Nexit. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, the hardline interior minister who is also the leader of the far-right Lega (League), rages against the constraints of euro membership, but says Italy has no intention to leave for now.

The threat from within It’s a good thing that leaving the EU is losing its appeal. But there are no grounds for complacency. While Britain’s chaotic attempt to exit looks to most Europeans like an act of reckless selfharm, the nationalist threat to the EU is stronger than ever. This at a time when economies are growing at a decent clip, wages are finally rising, unemployment is falling and the numbers of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean have plunged. How strong might the nationalist surge be the next time a big crisis flares up? Explicitly far-right parties are already soaring in the polls in many countries. Lega now tops the polls in Italy. In France, the Rassemblement National is neck and neck with President Macron’s La République en Marche. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has overtaken the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to become the second most popular party. The European Parliament elections next May are likely to see record numbers of nationalist MEPs elected. Nationalists increasingly set the political agenda. Mainstream parties often echo their lines; some even get into bed with them. Witness Austria, whose 32-year-old prime minister Sebastian Kurz is fêted among many European conservatives for having halted the rise of the far-right. His strategy: copy many of the Freedom Party’s policies and much of its rhetoric and bring it into his coalition government. Who, then, is co-opting whom? Kurz would doubtless point out that his coalition is explicitly pro-EU. That is true and welcome. But the nationalist threat remains real, because far-right leaders have concluded that countries don’t need to leave the EU in order to reassert their national sovereignty. In the short term,

THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

With the rise of right-wing parties in Europe, the next European Parliament elections in May 2019 may see record numbers of nationalist MEPs elected.

“Both Poland and Hungary break the EU’s fundamental rules, while pocketing EU subsidies and other EU benefits, such as the single market and free movement for their citizens. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it?” they can emulate the Hungarian and Polish governments and ignore the rules they dislike, while still reaping the benefits of EU membership. The Polish government is busy trampling on the rule of law with impunity, protected against any effective EU sanctions by the prospect of a Hungarian veto. The Hungarian authorities’ moves are even more outrageous. They are muzzling press freedom, suborning independent institutions with corrupt cronies and banning civil-society groups from helping asylum seekers. But Prime Minister Viktor Orban is protected from censure by his Fidesz party’s membership of the European People’s Party (EPP), the ostensibly centre-right political grouping that dominates EU

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institutions. (Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and Antonio Tajani, the presidents of the European Commission, Council and Parliament respectively are all from the EPP.) Both Poland and Hungary break the EU’s fundamental rules, while pocketing EU subsidies and other EU benefits, such as the single market and free movement for their citizens. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it?

The Trump strategy Looking forward, far-right nationalists aim to achieve a “Europe of nations” by hijacking the EU institutions from within. Some do so as outsiders, such as Salvini, who says he might seek the presidency of the European Commission as the Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group in the European Parliament. Others do so as insiders. Orban is the champion of what could be called the Trump strategy. Donald Trump didn’t run for president as the candidate of a third party set on displacing the Democrats and Republicans. He infiltrated and then captured the Republican Party, using it as a vehicle to get into the White House. As president, he induced Republicans to shift their positions in his direction. And he has set about undermining US democratic institutions – and

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Far-right leaders at a press conference following their launch of their Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) political party in the European Parliament in 2015. Credit: AP / Virginia Mayo

destroying the liberal international order that his predecessors created – from within. Likewise, the likes of Orban seek to capture first the EPP and then EU institutions and thus advance their agenda from within. Already, many EPP members take a much more hardline, Orban-like approach on migration than Orban’s nemesis Angela Merkel does. Sceptics point out that Europe’s nationalists disagree on many things and often don’t get along. For instance, Salvini wants the EU to take more responsibility for relocating unwanted asylum seekers who arrived on Italian shores; Orban vehemently rejects an enhanced role for the EU and refuses point blank to accept more refugees. Yet each benefits from the deep divisions on migration within the EU and the EU’s inability to craft an effective common policy. Salvini can rage at the EU’s lack of solidarity for Italy, while Orban can rant against the foreign threats that Brussels wishes to impose on Hungarians. Politicians, who are set against the current EU, benefit from its dysfunction.

Addressing the status quo European politicians need to wake up to this insidious threat and combat it far more vigorously. EU politics typically works by co-opting outsiders into a broad consensus. But sometimes the enemy within is far more dangerous. The EPP needs to inoculate itself against the far-right threat by expelling Orban’s Fidesz party. The likes of Sebastian Kurz should also end their flirtation with the far-right.

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“Looking forward, far-right nationalists aim to achieve a “Europe of nations” by hijacking the EU institutions from within.” At the same time, pro-Europeans of all parties cannot simply fall back on defending the deeply flawed status quo. While nationalists’ solutions are misguided, the EU does face very real problems that need addressing, such as a dysfunctional eurozone, an unresolved crisis over refugees, a lack of democracy, accountability and choice, and an inadequate defence. More broadly, many voters feel threatened by the rise of other superpowers, the disruption of digital technologies and the many threats to Europeans’ security. To his credit, President Macron hopes to disrupt the cosy cartel in the European Parliament by running on a robustly pro-European platform that explicitly seeks to combat the likes of Orban, Salvini and Le Pen. But the danger is that Macron, who ran as an unlikely outsider to win the French presidency, is now seen as an insider who wants to defend the flawed EU status quo. In the face of resistance in Berlin and elsewhere, he has watered down his demands for EU and eurozone reform. Will he be seen as storming the barricades, or shoring them up? To be effective, Macron would need to attack both the Merkelist status quo and the nationalists’ false prospectus. Will he dare?

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Philippe Van Parijs is a philosopher and a Brusseler. He teaches at the Universities of Louvain and Leuven, and is a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

FIVE QUESTIONS TO PHILOSOPHER PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS ON A FAIR BREXIT

It is difficult to predict what a fair Brexit entails. Both negotiating parties have their respective internal pressures on what may be conceded and what is ultimately acceptable.

rexit: no word has made a more spectacular irruption into the Brussels vocabulary in the last two years. Is this a subject for philosophers?

It is. Philosophers have been discussing about justice for 25 centuries. They may therefore easily be prompted to think about what a fair Brexit might be like. One economist colleague dismissed this question as meaningless. A fair

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Philosophers have been discussing about justice for 25 centuries. They may therefore easily be prompted to think about what a fair Brexit might be like.â&#x20AC;?

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Hundreds of thousands marched through central London on 20 October 2018 to protest against Brexit, in what organisers say was the biggest protest of its kind to date.

deal, he told me, is simply a deal that is acceptable for both parties. And what is acceptable can only be discovered by looking at what ends up being accepted. A fair Brexit deal, according to this view, is not something that could be characterized a priori. It is simply a deal acceptable by both the UK and the EU, and the only proof of acceptability is acceptance. This is a superficial view, however. Many experiments have shown that human beings — and even some other primates — reject offers from which they would benefit because they find them unfairly stingy. “No deal” is then the outcome because outrage trumps self-interest. This happens in experiments, but also, for example, in real-life negotiations between employers and unions. And it could happen with Brexit.

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So, the agreement reached does not define fairness but is affected by prior conceptions of fairness. How is a fair deal then to be conceived? There are some minimal conditions that are uncontroversial but insufficient. One of them is “pacta sunt servanda”: if you made commitments, you must honour them. This applies for example to the pension rights of all EU public servants, whatever their nationality, who served during the period in which the UK was a member of the European Union. It also applies to the commitments made for the current budget period. Even though there are some grey areas, it is not too difficult to get an estimate of the UK’s corresponding liabilities. But this leaves the shape to be taken by the “future relations” between the EU and the UK completely open.

characterization of fairness, what stronger condition do you think should be imposed on the Brexit deal for it to count as fair? One condition that is said to have circulated in European circles after the Brexit vote is “Qui casse paye”: if you voluntarily destroy something of value to other people, you have to compensate them for the loss. This conception can appeal to an analogy with the alimony to be paid in cases of unilateral divorce. Fairness arguably requires that a husband leaving his poorer wife, or vice versa, should leave the spouse no worse off in material terms than they were during the marriage. Overall, the EU is much wealthier than the UK, but per capita, the UK’s GDP is about 15% higher than the EU’s, which is why the UK is among the net contributors to the EU budget. On this account, not unlike the divorcing husband, the UK will need to keep paying far more than what follows from “pacta sunt servanda”, perhaps an amount equivalent to its current net contribution.

Another uncontroversial constraint is that the deal must be symmetric. For example, if the UK grants certain rights to EU citizens on British soil, the EU must grant the same rights to British citizens on EU soil. But this is a very weak constraint. Suppose, for example, that there are high tariffs on the EU-UK trade of wine and none on the EU-UK trade of whisky, in each case in both directions. This would be perfectly compatible with the symmetry condition, but so would the converse situation, in which high tariffs would apply to whisky, with a very different impact on the interest of the EU and the UK.

If the honouring of commitments is too short-term and symmetry too weak for a full

“Many experiments have shown that human beings — and even some other primates — reject offers from which they would benefit because they find them unfairly stingy. “No deal” is then the outcome because outrage trumps self-interest. This happens in experiments, but also, for example, in real-life negotiations between employers and unions. And it could happen with Brexit.” But even this may underestimate the compensation owed. Depending on how “hard” the Brexit is, there will be a cost in material welfare on both sides. In all likelihood, this cost will be proportionally much higher for the UK than for the EU because its trade is more dependent on the EU than the trade of the EU is dependent on the UK. On an inclusive interpretation of

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“Depending on how “hard” the Brexit is, there will be a cost in material welfare on both sides. In all likelihood this cost will be proportionally much higher for the UK than for the EU because its trade is more dependent on the EU than the trade of the EU is dependent on the UK.”

“qui casse paye”, the UK should not only bear its direct economic losses from reduced trade. In addition, it should compensate the EU for the losses it suffered as a result of the British decision.

In other words, the culprits must pay for all the damage they caused. This sounds like a pretty harsh conception of fairness. Harsh, but also not very plausible when you think about what it implies. If fairness requires that the UK should compensate the EU for the cost of its withdrawal, shouldn’t, say, Switzerland compensate the EU for the cost of it not joining it? Far more plausible and important, in my view, is an altogether different interpretation of a fair Brexit. It focuses on the likely consequences for the pursuit of greater social justice in both the EU and the UK. Greater social justice can be roughly understood as the equalization of opportunities. The freedom of movement and the ban on nationality-based discrimination contribute to it by neutralizing the impact on people’s opportunities of the nationality with which they happen to be born. But they also put pressure on the operation of the various redistributive mechanisms that member states have been using for decades to help equalize opportunities among their native populations: publicly funded education and health care, social insurance and assistance. Part of the roots of anti-European sentiment, not least among the pro-Brexit voters, is that the single market’s four freedoms undermine

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these mechanisms. If it is to properly address such concerns, the EU must transform itself into a “caring Union”, proactively supporting social policies.

Isn’t this precisely something that Brexit will facilitate? The UK has been among the member states most opposed to the development of such a “social Europe”. True, but Brexit, and especially a soft Brexit, could also be a mortal blow to this project. Just imagine that Brexit becomes, as the UK’s Brexit minister Dominic Raab recently put it, “a springboard to a buccaneering global embrace of free trade.” The wider the access of this “Global Britain” to the European single market, the more easily it could defeat any effort towards a more caring Europe. How? Through the cumulative effects of competitive devaluation of the pound, of tax and social competition, of free riding on the global public goods generated by the EU and of further increasing the current massive net brain drain of more than 600.000 people at the expense of the rest of the EU. “We’re delivering Brexit to control immigration”, Raab said, “but also to expand our global horizon, so we attract the best and the brightest from around the world.” And with the London metropolis, its top-ranking universities and the world’s lingua franca as its vernacular, the UK is in a good position to do so. A cherry-picking immigration policy, coupled with an enticing tax policy for high-potential expats will do the rest. As to desperate refugees, eager but unskilled “transmigrants” stuck on the continent on their way to Britain, and the hundreds of thousands of economic and ecological migrants managing or trying to cross the Mediterranean, this will no longer be the UK’s problem. Willing or not, the EU and its member states will then be dragged into tax and social competition, forced to make material prospects better for the better off and worse for the worse off — the opposite of a caring Europe. A fair Brexit would above all be one that prevents such a process. To achieve this, either it must constrain the weapons at the disposal of “buccaneering” Britain at least as much as if the UK had remained in the EU or it must deny the UK unimpeded access to the single market, at a significant cost to both parties. “Fair deal” is not synonymous with “easy deal”.

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Your grants, subsidies and tax benefits in the spotlight Are you a homeowner in Brussels? Congratulations! Living in our constantly buzzing capital is a unique and seductive experience. But its cultural richness is not its only advantage. Many grants and subsidies are available to Brussels property owners. In this series, the housing experts of KBC Brussels will give you a short overview of both tax benefits and renovation allowances. In this edition, we will speak about the Energy allowances and Community allowances.

Energy allowances A whole series of energy grants have been put in place by the Brussels-Capital Region Government in order to improve the energy performance of Brussels homes. These grants mainly cover inspection (grant A), insulation (grant B) and heating (grant C). Brussels residents spend an average of €1,400 a year on energy bills, of which 60% is for heating. Investing in good insulation and means of producing heat efficiently will enable you to not only make significant savings, but will also add value to your home.

What type of work is covered? The grants focus on three priorities: • A full energy inspection of your home carried out by a specialist, in order to identify any weaknesses in the building and to list work to be done to rectify them. • Insulation of all elements of the home that can lead to heat loss (roof, walls, flooring, doors and windows) and optimisation of interior ventilation. • Energy-efficient heating, using a modern boiler connected to a thermostat but also the use of natural resources by means of a heat pump or solar panels.

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Eligibility conditions Any private individual or legal entity (homeowner, manager or tenant) with property in the Brussels-Capital Region can apply for an energy grant. Important: Before commencing work, it is important to make sure that you are entitled to a grant and that your application for a subsidy has been accepted.

Community allowances In addition to allowances granted by the Brussels-Capital Region (regional renovation allowance, regional facade enhancement allowance, regional energy grant, etc.), certain Brussels communes also grant community allowances to their residents. These community allowances vary depending on the commune: • Additional allowance to the regional renovation allowance • Additional allowance to the regional facade enhancement allowance • Additional allowance to the regional energy grant • Allowance for water-heating • Allowance for solar panels • Allowance for tank • Allowance for green roofing • Allowance for compost bin • Allowances for installation of additional sanitary facilities • ... Interested in owning or renovating a house in Brussels? Contact KBC Brussels Live by phone on 02 303 31 60 (Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. or on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), by mail info@kbcbrussels.be or visit www.kbcbrussels.be/immo

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FROM SOMALIA TO BELGIUM TREKKING THROUGH HELL TO FLEE FROM AL-SHABAB By Jelter Meers with additional reporting by Adrien Cardon.

aid, a young Somalian man, left his home in 2015 to escape recruitment by jihadist group al-Shabab. After journeying for nearly a year – during which he was tortured in a Libyan slave camp, saw many of his fellow travellers die, and crossed the Mediterranean in a rubber boat – he finally made it to Belgium. This is his story.

Said’s mother was the first to say it: “You have to leave the country! Tonight!”

Said was enjoying the February sunset and drinking tea with his family in his small Somalian village, when the local imam approached his hut with two guards and instructions: The 22-year-old was to join the Salafist jihadist group al-Shabab as soon as tomorrow.

According to the World Food Program, 73 per�cent of Somalis live on under $2 per day. If Said’s mother had a job, she would have had to work for over four years to collect such a large sum.

It was almost a death sentence. “They just take you to the front and give you a gun. If you don’t shoot, you die,” Said explained. After the imam left, the family sat speechless.

Two years later, Said is safe in Belgium but the agonizing ten-month trip took a toll. He paid US$ 3,000 to get here but also to be beaten, forced into slave labour, and confronted with rape, torture, and death.

And needless to say, though Said is now out of harm’s way, his family is not. To ensure their safety back in Somalia, he asked us not to disclose his full name. “The journey we take as refugees destroys us physically and morally,” he said.

Said safe in his apartment in Belgium. Though Said is now out of harm’s way, his family is not.

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The Somalian countryside, hit by severe drought, where Said started his ten-month gruelling journey to Belgium.

“The agonizing ten-month trip took a toll. He paid US$ 3,000 to get here but also to be beaten, forced into slave labour, and confronted with rape, torture, and death.”

affiliated with al-Qaeda and has between 7,000 and 9,000 members. In 2006, its fighters started taking over large areas of chaotic and war-torn Somalia, which has had fourteen governments between 1991 and 2010. “Where I’m from, al-Shabab is really big,” Said said. “They use our village to train recruits and almost everyone I know is connected to them.”

Nowhere to Go

The Shabab’s fundamentalist precepts control every aspect of village life.

Said is from a small village in the semiarid grasslands of southern Somalia, where goats wander looking for grass and water between scattered acacias and traditional huts made of branches, cloth, and hides. Most of its inhabitants make money selling goat milk and wood to merchants who bring their products to the port city of Kismayo, some dozen miles to the east.

“You have to go to every prayer and you can’t cut your hair,” Said said. “They’ll kill you if they catch you drinking or chewing khat. You have to wear white clothes and a taqiyah, and you’re forced to grow a beard. They wouldn’t even allow me to hold hands with my kid sister because of their rules about men and women.”

Said was nine when his father left the village, never to return, putting him in charge of providing for his family. He chopped trees and shrubs with his machete, sold the wood to buy tea, brewed the tea, and sold it to villagers. While they drank, Said shined their shoes. Al-Shabab, which means “The Youth,” recruits young men from the countryside to fight the Somali government and the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The group describes its war as a jihad against the "enemies of Islam." According to the Council on Foreign Relations, al-Shabab is

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The evening before the imam’s visit, Said had been cutting trees with his friends. They chewed khat, a plant with amphetamine-like effects, so they could work longer. Caught in a haze, they lost track of time and were late for prayer. By the time they got to the mosque, the two guards at the entrance said they were too late and couldn’t go inside. It was the same two guards who came to the family hut with the imam later that night. At prayer, the community leaders take note of who shows up, when they arrive, and where they sit. Because he was late, Said had caught the attention of the mosque’s imam, Abu Sidow,

who had taught him the Quran. Said believes that’s why he was picked for recruitment. Said credits his mother with teaching him to be critical of al-Shabab’s recruitment efforts. The group tells people that “UNICEF and Red Cross give you poisoned food” and that the Somali government will “rape your families,” Said explained. Some Somalis believe that al-Shabab contaminates the food they dole out with black magic, which allows them to control people’s minds. “They brainwash you and make you blow yourself up, which I don’t understand,” he said. “I think it must be black magic. My mom told me that I don’t have to believe them, those killers.”

Leaving Somalia In 2016, almost one fifth of Somalia’s population lived abroad, according to estimates by the United Nations and the PEW Research Center. For many Somalis, leaving the country is the only way to escape al-Shabab, drought-induced famine, and violent clannism. “The first thing Somalis want to know is which clan you belong to,” Said said. Somalia’s clan system is called “four point five,” he said. Four big clans control most of the country and have the most seats in parliament. The many other small clans together are only worth half of one of the big ones — the “point five.” Said’s family belongs to a marginalized clan called the Ajuran, which can’t protect him from the other clans — or from al-Shabab. Now it was time for Said to join his compatriots in the diaspora. After the imam’s visit, Said’s mother contacted a friend of the family named Ahmed, who transported wood and milk in his pickup truck. Nicknamed “the khat-eating camel,” Ahmed regularly bought the wood Said collected and sold it to charcoal producers in Kismayo. Perhaps Said could hide in his truck on the way to the port city, his mother suggested. Transporting Said would be dangerous. Ahmed would have to hide him not only from al-Shabab, but also from soldiers of the African Union Mission to Somalia, who might accuse him of smuggling an al-Shabab member.

“For many Somalis, leaving the country is the only way to escape al-Shabab, droughtinduced famine, and violent clannism.” They agreed that Said would stand on the bed of Ahmed’s truck, hidden between the crates and on the lookout for al-Shabab and the African Union soldiers. When they saw checkpoints or troops, Said would jump out and hide in the bushes. Once Ahmed had passed the checkpoint, Said would climb back in. The ploy worked, but the journey had just begun. After reaching Kismayo, Said crossed into Ethiopia, where soldiers stopped and searched another truck that was taking him across the country. Luckily, he had 50 Ethiopian Birr (about two dollars), which he paid just to have them send him back to Kismayo instead of arresting him or worse. He called his mom, who didn’t have good news. “‘Al-Shabab are looking for you,’ she told me ‘They already know your name, why you left, and where you went,’” Said said. “I couldn’t go back.” Said’s mother asked for advice from an acquaintance named Haxwo, who had also left Somalia and made it to Belgium. Haxwo advised her that Said should head for Kenya next. “I paid a fisherman to take me to Mombasa on his boat. I disguised myself as a fisherman and kept quiet when we came across others,” Said said. “I stayed in Mombasa for four months, serving chips in a restaurant. That’s where I learned English.” But it wasn’t an easy stay. Said was a frequent target for corrupt police officials, since he was in the city illegally and spoke no Swahili. He was arrested almost every day, and each time he had to spend some of the little money he had made to pay his way out.

Across the Sahara Once he had gathered enough money, Said took a minibus across Kenya and crossed into Sudan.

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the fumes that rose from spilled petrol and open jerry cans. Some of the passengers “never woke up,” Said recalls. “In Sudan, the Sahara is bigger and more dangerous than in Libya,” he said. “You hear nothing, there is nothing. The smugglers often stop the truck and call to ask for directions because it’s so easy to get lost.”

Migrants on their way towards Libya. Monday, June 4, 2018. Credit: AP Photo / Jerome Delay

On his cellphone, Said showed a video made by another group of refugees on their way through the Sudanese desert. It showed a stalled pickup truck with the mummified corpse of a smuggler in the back. The dead man is still holding a stick he had used to fight off refugees who had tried to get inside, away from the sun. The truck is surrounded by dozens of sand-covered corpses, blackened and dried out. “This is what happens when you get lost,” Said said.

“Al-Shabab are looking for you. They already know your name, why you left, and where you went.” That’s where he ran into what he calls a magafe — a person who looks for refugees on the street, tries to gain their trust, and promises to help them on their journey. The word means ‘one who never misses.’ In reality, the magafes sell refugees to human traffickers who lock them up, use them as slaves, and demand exorbitant fees for onward passage to the Mediterranean Sea. “The magafe lures you, he gives you food and clothes and a place to sleep,” Said said. “He says it’s free to come, but actually he’s a smuggler. [At first] everything is free and you’re happy, but you don’t know what’s going to happen. When you get to Libya, they’ll make you pay.” The magafe brought Said to his base in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, where he stayed almost a month. It was a collection of shanty houses with mats to sleep on that, as time went on, was filled with more and more refugees, some coming from as far as Syria, Chad, and Afghanistan. When the magafe had collected almost 200 refugees, he called his Libyan contacts and told them to bring their truck. The smugglers took Said and about 100 others across the Sudanese Sahara towards the Libyan border. The refugees sat cramped together in the back of the old military truck. Some passed out from

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According to his account, 27 people in his group died while crossing the desert. The traffickers forced him to dig shallow graves for his companions. “The girls in the truck were crying at the sight of the dead peoples’ legs sticking out.” After several days of driving, the truck stopped in the middle of the desert. Two smugglers got out and ordered the refugees to do the same. The truck turned around and drove away to pick up more people. Meanwhile, the smugglers set up a tent and smoked shisha from a water pipe. For days, the refugees had to sit in the sand, exposed to the desert’s blazing sun and its cold nights. They were only given half a cup of water and one piece of bread per day. At times, Sudanese locals came and handed out water and blankets. “It was really cold at night,” Said recalled. “I had a small plastic bottle with water from which I would only drink at night, because during the day the water gets hot, which upsets your empty stomach.” Said would put his clothes around his head and sit completely still. When you talk in those conditions, he said, “you waste a lot of energy and get sand in your mouth.” “You also get beaten,” he added. After waiting in the desert for five days, more pickups arrived to take them across the border. The traffickers, who sat in the cabs, used a well-practiced method to fill the beds of the trucks with as many people as possible.

Migrants have to cross the Sahara desert in order to get to the Mediterranean Sea.

“If the first guy goes, you go, so you have to hold on to him. If you fall out, the driver doesn’t stop and you die in the desert. You might also fall under the truck, and he will run you over.”

“Magafes sell refugees to human traffickers who lock them up, use them as slaves, and demand exorbitant fees for onward passage to the Mediterranean Sea.”

In the Slave Camp

you by your leg, hang you upside-down, and beat you until you give them the numbers,” he said.

The smugglers dropped the refugees off in Sabha, an oasis city in the middle of the Libyan desert. They were halfway to the sea.

The smugglers were keeping the refugees hostage until they or their families paid their fees — and they were steep.

“Sabha was ruled by Daesh [the Islamic State], and at that moment there was a lot of fighting. You would hear gunshots every night,” Said recalls.

“At first, they said we had to pay $6,000, but later they lowered it to $3,000,” Said said. “They told us nobody could leave if we didn’t all pay. If you don’t pay, you’ll die there. And while you’re there, they make you work like a slave.”

“The girls lie down in the middle of the bed. The guys sit around them with their legs over the railing. On top of each guy sit up to two other guys and they hold on to each other” to not fall off.

He and about 600 others were put in a large hangar and forced to write down their names and the phone numbers of friends and relatives. “If you don’t want to call your family, they take

While waiting for the money to trickle in, the captors made the refugees unload guns and dig trenches.

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“At first, they said we had to pay $6,000, but later they lowered it to $3,000. They told us nobody could leave if we didn’t all pay. If you don’t pay, you’ll die there. And while you’re there, they make you work like a slave.” This is what happens to many refugees, says William Spindler, the UN Refugee Agency’s senior communications officer for North Africa and Yemen. “A lot of refugees are brought to Libya and held there,” Spindler said. “The smugglers basically extort their clients. They keep them as prisoners and beat them up and force them to call or write their families.” “There was one Somali man who had been there for eight months,” Said said. “He was already finished, half-dead. They put electric wires on his testicles and told us that if we didn’t pay, we would end up like him.” Once, three men tried to escape, climbing out of the building through a small air vent. “One of them was driven over by a car after he jumped from the vent, and he died. When they caught the other two, they beat them. Then they separated them from the group and made them work.” In the mornings, the smugglers gave their captives about 10 ounces of water for the day and threw pieces of bread into the crowd. “Whether you get some is up to you,” Said said. There were no hygienic facilities or beds. “They give you half a small bottle of water and that’s all the water you get for the entire day. When you need to pee or shit, you do it in front of them,” Said recalled. “There was no room to lie down, so we slept sitting with our knees to our chins.” In the evenings, the refugees were told to huddle in groups of ten and given plain pasta to eat. Many fought to get as much as they could. “If you want to survive, you grab the food. You don’t talk and you don’t spit. You try not to make the smugglers angry and you do what they tell you.” For Said, the hardest moment was having to

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remain quiet while witnessing rape. “At night, these people would chew khat and get drunk. There was one big guy, he was Chadian or Nigerian, with very dark skin,” he said. “At night he would open the big door and take one girl. The first night, he took an Eritrean girl. He just picked her up by the arm and carried her with him.” On the second night, a friend of Said’s tried to stand up against the rapist. “Mahad and I were sitting with our backs touching when the big guy picked up a Somali girl who was sitting next to us. The girl shouted, ‘Muslima, Muslima!’ but the guy didn’t care. Mahad tried to stop him and take the girl away from him. Then they beat all of us.” Mahad’s attempt was brave, but in vain. “He raped the Somali girl right in front of us. Like, he was doing it right here. Nobody could do anything.” Talking about that night, Said’s voice grew quiet. He feels ashamed. “For me, as a man, it’s … I couldn’t fight him. Understand me, I can’t go and fight him, but it’s really shameful for me that she’s a Somali girl being raped in front of me.” The girl’s screams, he said, will stay with him for the rest of his life. “The Eritreans, they don't scream. But the Somali girl, she did. The worst part is the screaming, because maybe you can forget seeing what happened, but the scream, you will remember it. Always!” “She screamed out for help in Somali,” Said recalled with tears in his eyes. “But we didn’t have the heart. It may have been 300 of us men, and we did nothing.” Every night, the same man would rape a different girl, marking them with cigarette burns so he wouldn’t go after the same one twice. Gradually, the group’s living conditions deteriorated. Since they were always kept together and had no way to clean up, nits and lice spread across the prisoners. Said still has scars on his hands from the bug bites. “The bugs were everywhere. I saw some guys cut their penises apart from scratching where the bugs bit them,” he said.

The Christians were treated even worse. “There were a lot of Christian Eritreans and some of them wore their crosses, which Daesh would rip off their necks. If they didn’t wear a cross, they would ask them what time the morning prayer is or how it goes, which the Christians don’t know.” Once identified as Christians, “90 percent of the time, they kill the men and take the girls as sex slaves,” Said said. But it’s not just Christians. According to a 2016 report by the International Organization for Migration, 71 percent of refugees who travel across the Mediterranean Sea or through the surrounding countries have experienced abuse, mostly in Libya.

To the Sea The human traffickers fight each other for clients, who thus run the risk of having to pay for their passage twice. So many refugees try to pay the smugglers as late as possible. “If you pay a smuggler and then there is another guy who shoots him and takes you, you have to pay again. That’s why it’s always better to pay late, even if they beat you,” Said said. The hangar in Sabha where Said was being kept started to fill up as more refugees were brought in every day. At one point, it held over 600 people. One of the leaders, who called himself “Hadji Esmael,” announced that they no longer had to wait until everybody had paid. Those who had paid would be taken to Tripoli. By way of celebration, Hadji Esmael slaughtered a goat and gave the refugees their first slice of meat since they had arrived. “It was the best food we got when we were there,” Said said. Until he got to Sabha, Said didn’t know that he would have to pay $3,000. The money he had on him didn’t come close. His only chance to leave the camp lay with his mother somehow being able to gather the unimaginably huge amount. Desperate to leave, Said contacted her by calling his village's “tar”, a common village radiotelephone answered by an operator. “My mother cried when she answered the phone,” Said said. “She asked if they beat me. I said that I’m okay, I am a man.”

Said’s mother called everyone who came to mind. Eventually Haxwo, the family acquaintance from Belgium, came up with the funds. The smugglers instructed that the money be transferred to a man in Sudan, who then informed the Libyans that the payment for Said had been made. Along with others who had managed to make their payments, Said was taken from the base and once again packed into a truck. The refugees were hidden between layers of hay and told to keep quiet so other traffickers wouldn’t find them. After driving for a day and a night, the truck arrived near Tripoli. The traffickers didn’t take their captives into the city, which was at that time wracked by civil war. The smugglers took them to a big building that had been partially destroyed by the fighting. “We had to lie down on our stomachs,” Said recalled. “We were only allowed to raise our heads when the food came. I think it was more than 500 of us.” After five days, a caravan of cars came to take them to the Mediterranean Sea.

Two Trips Across On shore, the smugglers split the refugees into groups. They gave them four small boats and filled each one with as many refugees as possible. There was little room left for supplies. Then they asked who could drive a boat and two men from Said’s group raised their hands. The smugglers showed the men how to steer but provided no navigational tools. They were simply told to “keep going straight.” Families and children were let on first. The dinghy quickly filled and people started panicking. Afraid that they would be left behind, some pushed others aside to get in. Many had been waiting in Sabha and Tripoli for months. As one of the few who knew how to swim, Said swam around the crowd and was pulled up by a Senegalese man who had volunteered to drive. He sat down in the dinghy and started contemplating the group’s chances. According to the UNHCR, some 4,000 refugees drowned trying to cross to Europe just in 2015. The number rose to 5,000 by the following year. And by August 2018, according to statistics from the UN Refugee Agency, 11,700 refugees died or went missing in the Mediterranean.

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100 per boat. They were sitting on each other’s legs and some were screaming from the pain.” After three days at sea without any provisions, they encountered a bad sign: Tunisian coastguards passed by and threw them some food. A little later, some fishermen stopped and shouted that the currents had taken them west to Tunisia instead of north towards Italy.

Photo released by the Libyan Coast Guard on June 24, 2018 shows migrants on a ship intercepted offshore near the town of Gohneima, east of the capital, Tripoli. Smugglers overload the boats with people. Said explained they were sitting on each other’s legs and some were screaming from the pain. Two out of the four boats in Said’s group were lost at sea.

“According to the UNHCR, some 4,000 refugees drowned trying to cross to Europe just in 2015. The number rose to 5,000 by the following year. And by August 2018, 11,700 refugees died or went missing in the Mediterranean.” Said may not have known these statistics at the time, but the odds were clear. It was either risking his life in the crossing or going back to hell. “The moment you look out at the sea, you think, ‘If I am going to die in this water, that’s better than dying in Libya,’” he said. A smuggler instructed the group to call the coast guard as soon as they got within reach of their radio signal. “He gave us a big phone with an antenna and a number to call. He told us, ‘when you are on the ocean for maybe a night, you call the number and the big ship will come to save you.’” After waiting for the right current, the dinghy started heading north. Soon many in the group became seasick. Everyone was “either crying, praying or completely turned into themselves, like me,” said Said. “People started throwing up and babies started crying. People were crammed together, over

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“Everybody became demoralized, we were down. We had been lost at sea with nothing to eat. Mentally your mind is finished, you can’t think of anything. You want to make it or die. You don’t want to go back to Libya. You’d rather be dead, because you know what they would do to you there. Libya is hell.” Lost and exhausted, they tried to get back to where they came from. Two of the four boats made it back to where they had started. The other two were lost at sea. Back on the beach, they came across a Kurd who knew Hadji Esmael. He gave Said’s group a wider boat, an extra motor, and added more refugees. He was accompanied by four guards carrying automatic rifles. They started threatening the already demoralised refugees. “He told us, ‘If you come back, you have to pay again,’ Said said. “The Senegalese man who had steered before sat down in shame and someone else volunteered to drive.” Off they went again, in a bigger boat with an extra motor, more people, and increasingly desperate.

A Norwegian Rescue The exposure to the waves, the wind, and the salt water had exhausted and weakened the group. “When you’re sitting in the dinghy, the water hits you from behind and you have to vomit from seasickness,” Said said. “At the same time, the boat is filling with water. We would cup our hands to take the water out of the boat. The salt hurts you everywhere and after a few days on the sea, you look like someone else. I don’t know how I survived, but for seven days I just drank sea water.” Due to his exhaustion, Said “couldn’t tell day from night.” He thinks that after about three days they ended up near Malta. There the group was picked up by a Norwegian ship. “We saw a big ship,” Said said. “We thought it was a warship but it was the Norwegian coast guard.

“At five in the morning on 22 November 2015 – ten gruelling months after leaving Somalia – Said stepped out of the bus in Brussels and asked two men how to get to the immigration office.”

They started throwing lifebuoys and jackets and a big rope.” The personnel on the ship fed the refugees and gave them water and blankets. “I was struck by what they told us: ‘you are safe, we’ll take care of you. Sleep well and rest up.’ After Libya, I never expected anyone to care about us.” The ship took them to Lampedusa and then to Sicily. The Norwegian government has one ship, the Siem Pilot, which carries out such rescue operations near the Libyan coast. It is manned by Norwegian Navy and justice department personnel. According to Axel Due, communications adviser of Norway’s National Crime Investigation Service, the dinghies were probably still closer to the Libyan coast than to Malta. “The Siem Pilot only stops near Lampedusa sometimes,” Due said. “Lampedusa’s port is too small for the boat to embark, so they only stop there to drop off very sick or pregnant people who need immediate attention.” Due confirms that the ship would have taken the refugees to Sicily.

“If Someone Gives You Water, Give Them Milk” Said stayed in Sicily for two and a half weeks. One day, he was walking to a food drive at a church with a Somali friend he knew from the slave camp in Sabha. They came across an older Somali man who had been living in Sicily for years. “This man said he could see we are sick and that we could stay at his house in Sicily,” Said said. “We automatically trusted him because he was

Somali. He said that if we gave him 800 euro, he would take us to Germany.” Said knew that his acquaintance in Belgium, Haxwo, didn’t have any money left. His friend, however, knew someone in England who could send them the money. But it was a cruel deception. “Once we gave the money to the man, we never saw him again,” Said said. A Somali woman who lived next door gave Said and Ahmed 100 euro each so they could take a bus to Rome and head onward to Belgium and Germany, respectively. Said wanted to go to Belgium to be with Haxwo and because the asylum procedure there only takes a few months. In other countries it can last for years. He and Ahmed parted ways in Germany, where Said travelled through Nuremberg, Munich, and Frankfurt. From there he took a bus to Brussels. At five in the morning on 22 November 2015 – ten gruelling months after leaving Somalia – Said stepped out of the bus in Brussels and asked two men how to get to the immigration office. “I remember the date because it’s written in my ID,” Said said. After spending some time in an immigration centre and after being interviewed, Said had to wait for two months to get the verdict. In April 2016, he learned that he had been granted a five-year refugee visa. “They said my appeal was positive because I was a refugee and they gave me a permit to stay for five years. I called my ‘sister’ Haxwo to tell her the news and went to the city where she lived.” When Said spoke about the reception he received in Belgium, his eyes filled with tears. “I’m crying because I’m so grateful. My mom always told me that if someone gives you water, you give them milk. I want to get an education and work here, I want to learn the values and have a family, so my son can go to school here,” he said. Said hopes that one day he can go back and tell his friends and family about the West and how different it is from what they are told by al-Shabab. “If my village is ever liberated, I want to go back and tell my mother, if she is still alive, what the Western people are like.”

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WHAT MAKES UZ BRUSSEL DIFFERENT? Being a patient, you want the best possible treatment, care and service. You also want to be treated like a human being, in an egalitarian way, with respect. And you count on caregivers motivated to restore your balance of life. This is what the Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel (University Hospital Brussels) offers. UZ Brussel provides a complete array of medical care, across the spectrum of various specialisations of which there are many international references. Moreover, UZ Brussel develops its offer based on a humanistic approach that considers the patient a partner in his own healthcare.

The offer of UZ Brussel is based on a humanistic approach

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Complex and top-class clinical care provided by highly qualified experts UZ Brussel provides complex, top-class clinical care of the very highest standard. The medical professionals of university hospitals hold stateof-the-art qualifications. Hospital physicians nominated or designated on the recommendation of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels/VUB) manage and support the medical staff. UZ Brussel also disposes of high-tech

equipment, allowing the hospital to promote the effective use and dissemination of new medical technologies. The hospital strives to be a frontrunner in this area, but only applies technology when it represents added value to the patient.

Scientific and clinical research closely tied The purpose of pure scientific research is to understand and unravel mechanisms that play a role in disorders and finding ways and means of treating them (such as medication). Clinical research starts once the results of pure scientific research are considered sufficient to be able to progress. The close permanent ties that exist between fundamental research conducted at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of the VUB and clinical research performed at UZ Brussel assure the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic techniques and create pools of advanced scientific knowledge. There is long-standing close collaboration between them on specific subjects. In terms of developing and perfecting innovative techniques and treatments, UZ Brussel plays an important role in evaluating them once they start being used. Its role is clearly visible in three fields: health technology assessment, evidence-based medicine and evidence-based healthcare.

Driven by continuous innovation If clinical research produces concrete results, or if a new medical technology is perfected, the researchers at UZ Brussel disclose their findings in Belgium and beyond. This occurs in various ways: by publishing articles in authoritative scientific journals, by speaking at scientific conferences or by tutoring, teaching and training in Belgium and abroad. These activities account for a substantial part of the workload of these researchers, who meanwhile perform their regular daily clinical duties as consultants at the university hospital. Its sustained efforts mean UZ Brussel is constantly evolving in the R&D field. Over the years this approach has led to the emergence of several medico-scientific areas of expertise. It has produced world firsts in medical diagnosis and treatment, such as the Centre for Reproductive Medicine, the Oncology Centre, the Diabetes Research Centre, the Centre for Medical Imaging and the Centre for Heart and Vascular Diseases. The proven top-quality work of the various research centres of UZ Brussel, conducted in a stimulating spirit of openness, independence and candid investigation, is the reason why the hospital ranks alongside other leading university hospitals.

The oncology research team develops cutting edge experimental therapies

Proven quality The UZ Brussel acquired the JCI-accreditation (Joint Commission International). This is important to patients since it guarantees patient safety and the quality of care. Even more, it makes the healthcare quality demonstrable through amongst others clear and efficient procedures. JCI also evaluated UZ Brussel’s quality of scientific research and training. The accreditation joins the many more specific quality labels and recognitions the hospital acquired as for example for its Centre of Reproductive Medicine, its medical laboratories, its radiotherapy, catering, ….

The patient is a partner As a patient you probably consider the quality of care an evidence in a university hospital. And you are right, it should be. What marks the UZ Brussel is its human approach. It does not judge, it listens. It tries to understand. Even though we are a Dutch hospital, we speak the language of the patient. We are multicultural. We propose the solution that suits you the best. We collaborate. With the patient obviously, but also with other disciplines and experts. Because together we can achieve more. The patient is involved, you are involved. That too should be evident, but it is not the case everywhere. It is in the UZ Brussel. Because it is your health, your healthcare and your life. More information is available at www.uzbrussel.be or you can follow the activities of UZ Brussel on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. International Patients can contact the ‘Service and International Patients’ by phone at +32 2 474 91 20 (from 8 am - 5.30 pm) or by mail at international.patients@uzbrussel.be

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THE HOUSING CRISIS PARADOX HOW THE CITIZENS OF BRUSSELS ARE RECLAIMING UNUSED SPACE By Alexandre Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;hoore

russels has about 6.5 million square metres of unused real-estate space. Office buildings, abandoned lots, vacant houses and unleased apartments make up what is effectively usable space.

Some of these vacancies are due to the natural ebb and flow of landlords finding leasers or developing new projects. Other vacancies are kept empty artificially by property managers and owners in order to maintain high rental

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“Despite all this unused space, Brussels, like other cities, is experiencing what many are calling a housing crisis. Estimates put the number of unused housing units at anywhere between 15 and 30 thousand, as well as 2 million square meters of unused office space. ”

The issue is incredibly sensitive, with far right politicians, to great effect, leveraging the idea that a refugee could be placed in social housing before a “native” Belgian. The underlying statistical reality is that only 6% of Belgium’s housing landscape consists of subsidized housing, less than a third and fifth of France and Holland respectively. The pressure doesn’t come from outside our borders, but rather from decisions taken within our borders.

prices. This can leave otherwise usable living space vacant for years at a time. For property managers, responsible for enormous portfolios, lowering prices just doesn’t make sense.

A systematic problem

Despite all this unused space, Brussels, like other cities, is experiencing what many are calling a housing crisis. Estimates put the number of unused housing units at anywhere between 15 and 30 thousand, as well as 2 million square metres of unused office space. Recent studies suggest that the number of homeless has doubled in the last 10 years. 41,000 people are currently waiting for lowincome housing in Brussels (many applying for their entire families), while up to 30% of Brussels residents pay upwards of two fifths of their income towards lodging. The average waiting time for social housing Brussels is between seven years for a studio and ten years for a multi-bedroom lodging. In Flanders, the amount of applications for low-income housing has increased 20% in the last years. All the indicators point to increased demand for affordable housing, something that most would consider fundamental to contemporary human life.

How Did We Get Here? On one hand, the average Belgian resident has not seen an increase in purchasing power in over a decade, while on the other, property and rental prices have increased substantially. The growing demand for social housing is not the result of increased population either. The net migration rate has halved, from around 80,000 in 2010 to about 44,000 in 2017, and population growth is stable.

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While spending on social housing has increased in recent years (though just barely, not matching the increase in demand), perhaps the most important driver of the housing crisis is the lack of political will in order to replicate a housing market that resembles one of our neighbouring countries.

Karl Marx said of Belgium that it was “…the snug, well-hedged, little paradise of the landlord, the capitalist, and the priest.” Land ownership, and indeed the landed class in Belgium is a sacred construct. Belgians love to own and build their houses. Rows of unique facades with their curiously long and narrow gardens dot the awkward, grey countryside, interrupted by industrial terrains, and curiously located farms. The problem is not that the space is lacking, but rather that political pressure is oriented towards facilitating property ownership, and not necessarily providing affordable housing for people. Since the financial crisis, Belgian investment in real estate has increased dramatically, thus compounding one of the factors that have led to the current crisis. The rights of individuals has also been reigned in, with squatting being formally illegalized in October 2017, allowing police to physically remove squatters from vacant buildings. Brussels’ most

“The average waiting time for social housing Brussels is between seven years for a studio and ten years for a multi-bedroom lodging. In Flanders, the amount of applications for low-income housing has increased 20% in the last years.”

With over 6.5 million square metres of unused real-estate space, Brussels is nevertheless facing a serious housing crisis as various factors prevent vacant real estate from being used and allocated more efficiently.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Vacancies are kept empty artificially by property managers and owners in order to maintain high rental prices.â&#x20AC;? famous squat, Rue Royale 123, an office building formerly owned by the Government of Wallonia, where several dozen people had been squatting for over a decade, was sold at the same time as this court ruling. Despite protests, the residents resigned to their fate in July of this year, when judges ruled that they would have to leave by 31 October 2018. Clearly the economic system applied to housing in Brussels is not the optimal system for matching supply to demand. The reasoning behind this lack of efficiency is that most individuals lack the organization or capital required to pay for space, with the cost of a square meter of Brussels real estate doubling in the last

decade. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t appear therefore as though the current model for allocation of real estate resources is capable of meeting the needs of the majority of people, if we presume those needs to mean safe, affordable and decent housing. What makes this even more problematic is that the goal is not simply to stuff people into buildings like sardines, but rather to provide people with the resources they need to live enjoyable, dignified lives. The idea that human dignity is sacrosanct thus further compounds the fundamental issue, namely that there is a tremendous imbalance between what exists, and what ordinary people may have access to.

Addressing a systemic inefficiency A handful of initiatives in Brussels have addressed this imbalance with a certain Belgian ingenuity. The aforementioned Rue Royale 123 is organized around Woningen 123 Logements, who are currently looking for another squat to help relocate people from the homes they just

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“The underlying statistical reality is that only 6% of Belgium’s housing landscape consists of subsidized housing, less than a third and fifth of France and Holland respectively.” One early success was a school building in the Brussels suburb of Vilvoorde. The school was scheduled for renovations, and the local authorities were open to the idea of using the space in a way that would spruce up the community. There were dance parties, painting classes and numerous events throughout the summer.

Squatting in Belgium was formally made illegal last year. Rue Royale 123, a former government office building, where several dozen people had been squatting for over a decade, was vacated in October 2018, despite many protests.

lost and the spaces they shared publicly for the creation of art and music. One of the most visible initiatives is Recylart. When Belgian Rail decommissioned Bruxelles-Chappelle, the station between Gare du Nord and Central, a group of young creatives took over the space and turned it into a combination of venue/practice space, skatepark and bar. The space had an almost dream-like aura to it. In March of this year, Belgian Rail, who still owned the venue, determined that a public space sitting above the now defunct station was a security risk and forced the residents out. After an outpouring of local support, a new location was procured for Recyclart, and plans to reopen near the canal area are set for the end of 2018. An organisation that has taken a more head on and systematic approach to reclaiming unused real estate is the non-profit Toestand. Rumour has it that Toestand’s origins lay in a secret party held in an abandoned movie theatre some years ago, but co-founder Pepijn Kennis can neither confirm nor deny the allegations. The organization was founded on the principles of shared experience and inclusiveness. It calls for the efficient allocation of space in Brussels. They spent their first years seeking out places where they could organize events.

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Since then, Toestand has grown into an organization that organizes over a hundred events in countless spaces, spurring activities ranging from women’s group meetings for tea to skateboarding. They receive requests daily for space. If the request corresponds to their mission, and if there is space available, they work with applicants to help them create spaces where people can gather. In 2017, they managed to organize 100 events, with the vast majority being offered for free. Several years ago, they took their show on the road, and it has since become an annual tradition. Their longest-lasting mission to date was Termokiss in Pristina, Kosovo, a project which still runs to this day. They receive a small European subsidy for the work they do across Europe. Such has been their success on the continent that they even attracted the attention of several international newspapers. Back in Belgium, the work and the scale at which they link people with usable space is broadening. Their most famous project is the Allee du Kaai, a multi-use space that runs along the canal across from Tour et Taxi. While they have been tremendously effective, the chronic failures of our current real estate models to address the needs of all people have not gone unnoticed. The issue is as social as it is humanitarian, how can a society allow for large groups of people to sleep in the open, when providing them simple shelter would have no effect on any individual or society at large? It is by proving the viability of these initiatives that these organizations spur a public discourse that may one day improve the liveability of cities across Europe and lead to a shift in public perception that regards a person’s right to sleep with a roof over their head, as a critical function of government.

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UKRAINE THE NEXT INVESTMENT DESTINATION Ukraine’s investment opportunities in agriculture, energy, information technology, infrastructure and manufacturing have grown lately too large for international investors to ignore. When combined with a highly skilled workforce, cost-efficiency, strategic geographic location and a rapidly improving business climate, Ukraine has much to offer.

With unprecedented comprehensive reforms in the course of the last 3 years, Ukraine has quickly turned into a new, uncharted investment opportunity right at Europe’s doorstep. The economy made an astounding turnaround from the runaway decline of 9% of GDP in 2014 and 6,8% in 2015, toward 2,3% in 2016 and 2,5% in 2017. The government stabilization efforts, supported by international financial institutions enabled the World Bank to improve its forecast for Ukraine’s growth in 2018 to 3.5% from 3%, while the forecast for 2019 has been revised upwards to 4%. In the course of 3 years, Ukraine moved up 17 places, to 24th in A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index 2016. The EY’s 2017 Attractiveness Survey Europe places the country in the top 20 destinations by foreign direct investment and its impact in terms of job creation and raising social standards. Head of Ukraine’s Mission to the EU, Ambassador Mykola Tochytskyi said: “Despite the Russian aggression in Donbas and occupation of Crimea, Ukraine implements ambitious reforms aimed at strengthening democracy and rule of law, ensuring economic prosperity, modernisation and well-being of citizens. Over the last 4 years, we have done more than over the previous 23”. Key reforms undertaken and completed so far have included: • establishment of comprehensive anti-corruption infrastructure, encompassing national anti-corruption bureau, separate

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“Ukraine offers a unique combination of traditional and emerging industries, which are aligning to establish the next phase of the development of the Ukrainian economy in line with the rapid pace of modern technological innovation (Industry 4.0).” anti-corruption prosecution office and specialized anti-corruption court; • restructuring and privatization of remaining state-owned enterprises, including privatization of state-owned SMEs via transparent, electronic auctioning system, introduction of modern corporate governance into stateowned giants like State Railway Company (UkrZaliznytsia) and the Postal Service; • implementation of the Deregulation legislative package of 35 laws, aimed at liberalizing capital movements, improving creditor protection, ‘single-window’ approach in customs clearances, automatic VAT refund, simplifying administrative procedures for the use of utilities in FDI greenfield projects.

Ukraine offers a unique combination of traditional and emerging industries, which are aligning to establish the next phase of the development of the Ukrainian economy in line with the rapid pace of modern technological innovation (Industry 4.0). They include manufacturing (automotive, agri-food, aerospace), creative (fashion, graphic design, film-making), digital and energy (solar, wind, bioenergy). Ukraine achieved significant progress on the European path, resulting in entry into force and implementation of the Association Agreement, establishment of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), and introduction of a Visa-Free regime with the EU. Ukraine also made historic changes in its trade geography. Now the EU is Ukraine’s largest trading partner. The value of investing in Ukraine is augmented by its geographical location and transport infrastructure. Ukraine is centrally positioned in Europe, with direct transport access to Asia via the Black Sea, making it ideally situated for manufacturing and trade. With over 170,000 km of roadways, 22,000 km of rail lines and 13 sea ports, Ukraine has the infrastructure to quickly move goods – from grain to auto parts – within the country or beyond borders. Major destinations in Europe can be reached in 2 days by truck, giving Ukraine a competitive edge, particularly for manufacturing and food distribution.

The EU-Ukraine DCFTA as well as a network of running or upcoming bilateral free trade deals with other key markets (EFTA, Turkey, key CIS countries, Canada, Israel) makes Ukraine a prime destination for trade-oriented foreign direct investment seeking to make the most of its unique advantages.

“Head of Ukraine’s Mission to the EU Mykola Tochytskyi: Ukraine implements ambitious reforms aimed at strengthening democracy and rule of law, ensuring economic prosperity, modernisation and well-being of citizens. Over the last 4 years, we have done more than over the previous 23.”

More information about Ukraine’s investment opportunities is available at https://ukraineinvest.com https://ukraine-eu.mfa.gov.ua/en

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HOW TO BECOME A BELGIAN CITIZEN RED TAPE, INCONSISTENCIES AND CHANGING LAWS By Mose Apelblat

The number of people who have obtained Belgian citizenship has been steadily increasing since 2014. Figures from Myria, the federal migration centre, show that the number reached about 37,500 in 2017, an increase of 15% compared to 2016. It is still much less than in the beginning of the 2000s. Myria expects a significant decrease in the numbers once the backlog of files under older legislation has been processed.

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On the other hand, amendments in 2017 to the Belgian nationality law and recent court rulings might make it easier for applicants to navigate through the legislation, which even Myria admits is complex, and obtain Belgian citizenship. There seems to be a growing interest in applying for Belgian citizenship among both non-European and European foreigners, not the least worried Britons facing the consequences of Brexit.

“37,500 people became Belgian citizens in 2017, of which 29% were from EU countries and the rest from non-EU countries.” Last year, 37,500 applicants obtained Belgian citizenship.

An information seminar arranged recently by the Expat Welcome Desk of the Brussels Commissioner for Europe and International Organisations gathered a huge crowd, representing various countries, all eager to become Belgian citizens. A team of lawyers from Brussels law firm Altea did their best to clarify the legislation and advise people how to apply for citizenship. The Brussels Times took the opportunity to ask the team to explain the application process for our readers. Most applicants know by now that they need to submit their applications to one of the 19 communes of Brussels where they reside. They might also have encountered difficulties in doing this or felt that their commune is treating them unfairly compared to practice in other communes. It might therefore come as a surprise to them that there is another important entity called the Office of the Public Prosecutor. “The Office of the Prosecutor plays indeed an important role,” confirms Céline Verbrouck, one of the lawyers in the Altea team. “The communes play more the role of ’mailbox’. They are in the front line receiving the application but are not supposed to take any decision on the substance of the case.“ Céline adds that some communes, erroneously, refused some months ago to register and transfer files to the Prosecutor’s office, claiming that the applicants had not attached the required documents to prove their legal stay in Belgium. This was illegal and the civil Court of First Instance confirmed that by passing judgement against the communes.

Unfair play and discrimination It is now clear that the communes only have to check that the file is complete without checking the validity of the documents. Applicants must add any missing documents within two months. As soon as the file is complete, the communes send the files to the Prosecutor’s office. Thereafter, the communes play no other part in the decision-making process. The Prosecutor is the only authority competent to make a decision on Belgian citizenship. The Prosecutor analyses the applications, verifies whether the applicant meets the conditions of the Belgian nationality law, and has four months to give an opinion on the application. If a positive decision is taken or if no decision is taken within the prescribed time limit, Belgian citizenship is granted. In case of a negative opinion, applicants can appeal to the Court of

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The interest in applying for Belgian citizenship has been growing in recent years. However, red tape, new legislations and other forms of obstacles can be difficult to navigate through.

“Some communes, erroneously, refused some months ago to register and transfer files to the Prosecutor’s office, claiming that the applicants had not attached the required documents to prove their legal stay in Belgium. This was illegal and the civil Court of First Instance confirmed that by passing judgement against the communes.” First Instance within 15 days. It can take up to six months for a hearing in Brussels. At the hearing, the judge will re-analyse the file and consider

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whether the negative opinion of the Prosecutor is justified. A condition for applying for citizenship is of course first to have a valid residency permit of unlimited duration. The commune can in some cases issue or renew residency permits directly, but in most of the cases the communes send the application to the Immigration Office, which takes the decision. We asked Altea if it could name those communes that are more restrictive in handling residency permits and citizenship applications. “We don’t have a list of such communes,” Céline replied. “In the past, it was quite difficult for people in Ixelles holding a special identity card (working for example in the European institutions) to submit an application for Belgian citizenship, but this problem is now resolved. Other communes, even if there might be some reluctance in some cases, end up agreeing to forward the file to the Prosecutor’s office.” EU officials receive a special identity card from the Belgian ministry of foreign affairs during

“The law recognizes self-employment and employment in the private or public sector, but the Prosecutor’s office refused to consider work at the European institutions because they are exempt from paying social contributions.”

their employment. As having a municipal residency card is one of the pre-conditions for applying for citizenship, they have been disadvantaged when counting the required number of years of legal stay and work in Belgium. However, the Court of Appeal in Brussels ruled on 29 March 2018 that this amounted to discrimination, since it differentiated, without justification, between European citizens holding different residency permits in Belgium. According to Altea, the decision is definite in Brussels and indicative for other appeal courts and courts of first instance in Belgium. The Prosecutor cannot appeal against the ruling anymore and is supposed to change his practice concerning the special identity card or risk being sentenced by the Court.

The Conditions What are then the conditions to become a Belgian citizen? This depends on whether the applicant is a minor below the age of 18 or an adult. For a minor, the process is easier and almost automatic. For an adult, there are two procedures – naturalisation or declaration - and among them different routes. Altea underlines that every situation is unique and applicants should consider carefully which legal basis to choose. Children born in Belgium to a parent or adoptive parent also born here, who has had his/her principal residence in the country for five years during the ten years immediately preceding the birth of the child, automatically become citizens. If none of the parents were born in Belgium, they must make a declaration before the child is 12 years old, provided they have been living in Belgium for at least 10 years preceding the

application. If parents become Belgian or recover Belgian citizenship while their children are still minors, the children will automatically become Belgian if they have their residence in Belgium at the time of acquiring or recovering Belgian citizenship. For adults to become a citizen by naturalisation has become rare since it is a favour, not a right, for those who meet the condition of legal stay in Belgium. Applicants must show exceptional merits in the scientific, sports or socio-cultural fields, which contribute to Belgium’s reputation in the world. The number of naturalised citizens still amounted to about 3,800 in 2017, but only 34 were based on new legislation from 2012. Adults born in Belgium have basically only to show a birth certificate and prove that they have been living in Belgium since birth without interruption. The majority of adult applicants are not born in Belgium and can choose between a long or short route to become a citizen by declaration. Some of the conditions are common but there are also significant differences. There are two short procedures depending on whether

Conditions for citizenship by declaration, short route - Age 18 or above - Legal stay of 5 years without interruption - Residence permit of unlimited duration - Knowledge of one of the three national languages - Economic participation - Social integration

Conditions for citizenship by declaration, long route - Age 18 or above - Legal stay of 10 years without interruption - Residence permit of unlimited duration - Knowledge of one of the three national languages - Participation in the life of the host community

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“For adults to become a citizen by naturalisation has become rare since it is a favour, not a right, for those who meet the condition of legal stay in Belgium. Applicants must show exceptional merits in the scientific, sports or socio-cultural fields, which contribute to Belgium’s reputation in the world.”

you are married to a Belgian or have Belgian children. If this is the case, and you have lived together for at least three years in Belgium, you are exempt from proving “economic participation”. Proof of uninterrupted residence in Belgium can be tricky but absences for periods of up to six months for personal, professional and academic reasons are allowed, provided that the total period outside the country is no more than 20% of the required time, i.e. maximum one year in the short route and two years in the long route. There is also an obligation to inform the commune before the start of the temporary absence from Belgium. Removal from the registry is considered as an interruption. For European citizens, the good news is that the period between the date of submission of their application for a residence permit and the date on which the right of residence is granted shall be considered as legal stay in Belgium. In fact, the right of residence of EU citizens is a right conferred to them directly by the EU Treaty (Court of Justice, 21 July 2011). A residence permit merely certifies a right that already exists. The work condition in the short route refers to 468 days of work in the five years before the introduction of the application, but the duration of any prior training can be deducted from the required period. The condition is proven by certificates or individual accounts and pay slips for the current year from employers or, as regards the self-employed, by evidence of payments of social charges. The law recognizes self-employment and employment in the private or public sector. In the

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past, the Prosecutor’s office refused to accept work at the European institutions because they are exempt from paying social contributions but this is likely to change now. The language condition can be verified by diploma or a language test. It is not knowledge of the language spoken in the commune that has to be proven but knowledge of one of the national languages (French, Dutch, and German) at speaking level A2, which is considered as elementary or “survival” level. If this seems too difficult, five years of continuous employment is recognized as proof of sufficient language knowledge. Participation in the life of the host community (long route) does not require the applicant to be very socially active and can be proven by all legal means, even by a property deed or testimonial of friends. Evidence of socio-cultural activities or involvement in Belgian civil society is of course useful. Social integration (short route) can be proven by one of the following means: Belgian education diploma (at least secondary level), professional training, integration course or uninterrupted work for at least five years.

“The Prosecutor analyses the applications, verifies whether the applicant meets the conditions of the Belgian nationality law, and has four months to give an opinion on the application. If a positive decision is taken or if no decision is taken within the prescribed time limit, Belgian citizenship is granted.”

Complicated? Figures on the number of applications and rejections are missing, but the fact remains that despite the complex legislation and decentralised organisation, 37,500 people became Belgian citizens in 2017, of which 29% were from EU countries and the rest from nonEU countries. The commune will not invite you to a ceremony to celebrate your Belgian citizenship, but you can continue to keep your original citizenship and enjoy both.

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THE 2018 CHINA OPEN HOUSE DAY AT THE CHINESE MISSION On 15 September 2018, the China Open House Day was held at the Chinese Mission, with the participation of about 800 people from all walks of life. Ambassador Zhang Ming, together with his wife, extended a warm welcome to all guests. In his remarks, Ambassador Zhang said that a lot has changed in China over the past 40 years. Through an event like this, people could see an open, friendly, fast-changing and diverse China with a great culture. Ambassador Zhang invited the guests to go to China themselves and see more of this country, as the China-EU Tourism Year is being celebrated. He said that China and the EU could set an example for cooperation and friendship despite linguistic and cultural differences.

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The event was full of elements and symbols typical of China, like giant panda costumes, lion dance, Qigong performance, mooncake and dumpling making, face painting, etc. Female diplomats from the Chinese Mission presented a Tibetan folk dance to kick off the

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show, followed by a traditional Chinese fan dance by students of the EU School, recitation of the Three Character Classic by children of Chinese diplomats, acrobatics and face-changing performances by artists of Chinese descent.

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The famous Belgian athletes, the Saive Brothers, excited the audiences with an expo table tennis match. The event also featured AI and VR demonstrations and a photo expo on the 40th anniversary of Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reform and opening-up. Guests spoke highly of the event, saying that it allowed them to gain a better understanding of China. Mr. Eric Philippart, Special Counselor of the China-EU Tourism Year, said that the event is widely welcomed and is a good opportunity for China-EU people-to-people exchanges.

A Belgian Qigong performer said that a growing number of Europeans are showing interest in Chinese history and culture. European and Chinese children had great fun playing the seven-piece puzzle and quiz games.

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RA T, P

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Denis Maksimov is a critic, curator, consultant and educator of art and politics.

POLIAESTHETICA CONTEMPORARY ART, POLITICS & CULTURE

BEYOND KLIMT. NEW HORIZONS IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1914-1938 AT BOZAR // until 19 January open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am - 6 pm, Thursdays until 9 pm @ Rue Ravenstein 23, 1000 Brussels € 16 admission; € 14, 2 concessions BOZAR offers a delightful programme for the Bruxellois and visitors to the European and Belgian capital this autumn-winter season. The exhibition Beyond Klimt. New Horizons in Central Europe, 1914-1938 traces the major developments in the artistic and political world of the continent in the turbulent and controversial interwar period. Unprecedented political shifts, with the arrival in power of Fascist regimes in Europe, coexisted with the major developments in artistic styles. Artists formed numerous art centres, associations, groups and movements, drafted political manifestos and created projects beyond the political borders imposed on them. The first truly transnational ideas that were voiced by political progressives in the aftermath of the horrific

World War I were supported en masse by artistic initiatives. Artists started to publish magazines and generally experimented with new media, such as poster-making, propaganda, transdisciplinary theory and cultural critique. Moreover, the fundamental question of identity was elaborated in a desire to abandon national and imperial cultures in favour of humanist universalism. This paved the way for the creation of an aesthetic base for the pan-European project. Departing from the practice of one of the bestknown artists of the turn of the 20th century, Austrian Gustav Klimt, the exhibition features the works of Josef Capek, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, László Moholy-Nagy and 75 other artists. There is a special focus on the transdisciplinary developments in Europe in the interwar period, specifically, the emergence of political aesthetics in the context of the rise of the Nazi regime, as well as counter-movements of intellectuals in building Bauhaus as a way of life, school and design universe. The exhibition allows the visitor to walk though all this complexity in condensed, well-curated rooms and to experience the vividness of the time of flux that seems so far, yet near in the current political climate.

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CHRIS MARKER. MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE AT BOZAR // until 6 January open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am - 6 pm, Thursdays until 9 pm @ Rue Ravenstein 23, 1000 Brussels € 8 admission; € 6, 2 concessions The second truly bombastic exhibition – I would go so far as to say maybe the best exhibition in BOZAR I have seen – is the posthumous solo show of French polymath Chris Marker. A filmmaker, musician, photographer, globetrotter, conceptual artist, poet, archivist, designer, theorist of culture, media, the computational networks and the Internet; the number of roles he either played or epitomised himself seems endless. Together with La Cinématèque Française, BOZAR brought the world of Chris Marker to the audience in Belgium through analysis of these archives, filmography, collages, notes and other materials that he left behind. His revolutionary and currently cult film La Jetée (1962) is screened in one of the exhibition rooms with English and French subtitles. It had inspired David Bowie and Terry Gilliam, to name a few, to advance their creative practices beyond the expectations and standardisations of the respective industries of music and filmmaking. Set as a slide show of photographs, La Jetée is a legendary science fiction film about time and memory after a nuclear apocalypse. The melancholy, coupled with the existential questions about sense and meaning, is delivered by Marker in a uniquely subtle form that brings the viewer much beyond the given narrative. Other film works and experiments by Marker and his accomplices and friends are presented throughout the intellectually vast and thick matter of knowledge, information and aesthetics, varying sometimes radically from deep seriousness like in La Jetée to softer and lighter political irony, like in his collages on subjects such as world politics and philosophy. Alain Resnais, an influential Nouvelle Vague film director, called Chris Marker “the prototype of the twenty-first-century man”: a hyper-versatile cosmopolite, who defied any closed definitions and interpretations. His practice can be summarised by Oscar Wilde’s “to define is to limit”. This impossibility to define him creates the very strength of the unique character of this multifaceted man.

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15122018 MUSEUM HOF VAN BUSLEYDEN >1252019 MECHELEN

It almost seemed a lily Berlinde De Bruyckere

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KOENRAAD DEDOBBELEER: KUNSTSTOFF - GALLERY OF MATERIAL CULTURE AT WIELS // until 6 January open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am - 6 pm @ Av. Van Volxemlaan 354, 1190 Forest € 10 admission; € 7, 4 concessions How is value created, ascribed, changed, corrected, demolished, abandoned and re-introduced again in our complex socio-political world? The work of Belgian artist Koenraad Dedobbeleer addresses this question in multimedia forms. His exhibition, Kunststoff, translates from German to “plastic” - but composed of the words “art” and “material”. The linguistic play is certainly intentional: contemporary mass culture is based on constant reproduction, at ever cheaper cost, of the copies of the objects that signify political, economic and social status that allow people to identify themselves through a specific set of ideologies. Dedobbeleer is focused on the current trend among museums of attributing significance to

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“material culture” and an understanding of what is worth to be preserved and passed on to the next generation as totems and representations of the cultural zeitgeist. The exhibition collects 40 artworks, including 15 new productions for WIELS, and includes sculptures, photographs, a slide projection, a collection of books and works on paper. How to devalue something of seeming value? How to de-objectify the thing? Dedobbeleer’s practice provides a good springboard for thought on the subject.

CINQUANTENAIRE BRUSSELS

OBNOXIOUSLY HAPPY BY :MENTALKLINIK AT LA PATINOIRE ROYALE // until 8 December open Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am till 6 pm @ rue Veydt 15, 1060 Saint-Gilles free admission

Irony seems to have made a comeback. Can that be a sign of hopelessness or rather revival of the strategy of mocking the power and value as a critical weapon against the violent homogenisation of lifestyles? The collective “:mentalKLINIK” offers its own take on the subject of critical deciphering of contemporary living. :mentalKLINIK is a Brussels-based artist duo composed of Yasemin Baydar and Birol Demir, who began their collaborative practice in 1998 in Istanbul. They mainly work with massive, immersive installations and also experiment with the medium of sculpture. Conundrums, paradoxes, oxymorons and other ‘cracks’ in the seemingly logical nature of the reality are something that the artists are focused on. The critique of the neoliberal capitalist omnipresence in defining the value of everything, including human life, is one of the central subjects in their works. By employing language, they emphasise the relevance of conversation about totality of the experience of the present in today’s society: where everything has a measure in a particular form of value exchange (money) and where the means of exchange (again: money) are becoming the ultimate item of accumulation, focus and purpose. At the same time, despite approaching such a heavy and problematic issue as today’s empty existentialism, they use a humorous and seemingly self-critical approach to the subject. In the end, the gallery in which they exhibit makes money by selling their work to the very wealthy that are the targets of their ironic criticism. That’s probably a good reflection to concern yourself with while walking through :mentalKLINIK installations.

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BEYOND BORDERS AT VILLA EMPAIN BOGHOSSIAN FOUNDATION

Rebecca Horn, Mounir Fatmi, Jan Fabre, Ali Cherri, Pierre Bismuth, Alighiero Boetti, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Anri Sala, Wael Shawky and Jannis Kounellis, among others.

// until 24 February open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am - 6 pm @ Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 67, 1000 Brussels € 10 admission; € 8, 4 concessions

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, the UK Home Office concerned itself with understanding the concept of border from all possible angles, including theoretical and artistic. The question of the Irish border can bring a breakthrough in legal terms of defining the idea of border and might even shift the conversation about sovereignty to a new level. On the other hand, if approached conservatively, it can bring about the situation that existed prior to the Good Friday Agreement.

How has the ephemeral, political and fictional nature of the border become so material in our minds that we value its ‘safety’ more than concerns like human life? This is a very important question in contemporary Europe, torn apart by the rising radical Right and trying to resist the surge of its Left. The reflection on the subject from Boghossian Foundation in the form of a group exhibition opens with a quote of Victor Hugo:

Maybe it would be a good idea to bring the EU and the UK negotiating delegations to the exhibition to open up their perspectives on the issues.

“Who needs borders? Kings. To divide in order to reign. A border entails a sentry box, a sentry box entails a soldier. We do not cross, words that embody all privileges, all prohibitions, all censures, all tyrannies.” The works of 37 artists from Europe and the Arab world are juxtaposed in the dialogue on the subject of the representation of the essence and etymology of the concept of the border. In their visualisations, there is a clear ambition to reveal the hidden nature of what border really means for those possessing the power. The Head of Arts of the European Investment Bank Delphine Munro selected the works from the European collection while the guest curator Michket Krifa chose the pieces from the Middle East and the Maghreb region. The exhibition shows the works of Anish Kapoor, Sean Scully,

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A FOREST AT ISELP, INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR POUR L’ÉTUDE DU LANGAGE PLASTIQUE // until 15 December open Tuesday to Saturday, 9.30 am - 5.30 pm @ Boulevard de Waterloo 31, 1000 Brussels € 6 admission; € 4, 3 concessions One of the most present geopolitical conversations in the world is the one about Gaia herself, the planet Earth. Climate change is present. The reasons for it are debatable on the political level, while scientifically the human carbon footprint is recognised, by an overwhelming majority of researchers, as the leading cause. What can art add into this conversation besides trying to resist the political denialism? A Forest, a group exhibition in ISELP, united artists working with the plant world through research: trying to understand the complex organisation systems of ecology. Leading theorists like Bruno Latour has for some time been advocating for the necessity to engage in thought about ‘political ecology’. The ecology of the forest with its complex exchange of resources, mutual support and the sophisticated communication systems of trees, plants, moss and lichens can teach us a lot about the resilience, reproduction, survival, multiplication and growth strategies from rather fresh (or maybe just forgotten) philosophical perspectives. Some of the selected artists address the issue of knowledge representation in nature directly in their works and research. Curated by Laurent Courtens, the exhibition unites the contributions of Maria Thereza Alves, Olga Kisseleva, Yogan Muller, Pep Vidal, Lise Duclaux and others who are concerned about the failure of politics to recognise the catastrophic nature of short-term thinking about the issues on a planetary scale.

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THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA AT THE ROYAL MUSEUMS OF FINE ARTS // until 27 January open Wednesday to Sunday, 10.30 am - 6 pm @ Rue de la Régence 3, 1000 Brussels € 15 admission; € 10, 8, 3 concessions Knowing each other already as members of the CoBRa group (1948-1951), Serge Vandercam (1924-2005) and Hugo Claus (1929-2008) got into contact again at the beginning of the 1960s. The French naval frigate Méduse went under water off the coast of today’s Mauritania on 2 July 1816. On 5 July 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a badly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before the rescue was organised. Those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and also reportedly practised cannibalism in order to survive. The event became an international scandal, partly due to its cause, which was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French

captain. The French romantic painter Théodore Géricault immortalised the shock of this event in his famous painting, which vividly presented the hopelessness and the animality of human nature in the face of the catastrophe. This very universal and timeless theme became the subject of interest of many artists after the painting was presented to the public. The Belgian artists and members of CoBRa group, Serge Vandercan and Hugo Clauss, are among those who were influenced by the raft of the Méduse. Both of them were active in painting and writing on the complex ethical and ontological problems of human existence in a brutal environment and at some point in their career they even switched roles: while one was more concerned with painting, the other switched to writing. Specifically interesting in the exhibition is a series of five paintings by Claus and Vandercam, which highlight the insurrectional and libertarian spirit of the CoBRa movement. The synthesis of their creative practices shows the power of creating and developing collective identities in order to understand the issues that are much larger than the life of a single individual.

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SPONSORED

CLUB CULTURE AND DESIGN IN BELGIUM FROM PAST TO PRESENT work of the famous Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck, so maybe it is appropriate to tell something more about his designs. Clothing is maybe not directly associated with club design, but it was, next to dancing and drugs, an important emancipatory means for young people to escape everyday life and temporarily enter a shared universe. In the late 1980s, slow, heavy dance beats deluged the Belgian underground scene and created a different popular sound called “new beat”.

“Night Fever. Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today” is the first large-scale examination of the relationship between club culture and design, throughout the past few decades until today. The exhibition presents nightclubs as spaces that merge architecture and interior design with sound, light, fashion, graphics, and visual effects to create a modern Gesamtkunstwerk. The nightclub served as a laboratory for designers and artists to experiment with different media, contexts and social codes. We spoke to Katarina Serulus (co-curator of the exhibition, which is a coproduction between ADAM - Brussels Design Museum and the Vitra Design Museum. What is your favorite object of the show? It is very hard to choose a favorite object. The exhibition includes some many great objects from furniture and fashion, to graphics and lighting. For the catalogue, I wrote an essay on the connections between the world of music, clubs, and fashion, and how they came together in Belgium during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In writing this piece, I came across the wonderful

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The Antwerp Six had their definitive international breakthrough in 1988, just around the same time that the new beat hype was peaking. New Beat music can be best described as a dark of down-tempo house sound that characterised the Belgian underground scene in the late 1980s. Although new beat was not directly responsible for the success of the Antwerp Six, this music subculture was important for the booming Belgian fashion industry. It was Van Beirendonck in particular, with his loud and colourful creations, who was quickly embraced by the club crowd and consequently coined by the press—quite against his own will— the fashion guru of new beat. He playfully made reference to the new music culture, integrating it into his collections during those years. His Autumn/Winter collection of 1989 was titled “Hard Beat”, a word play on “new beat”. As he himself described it, this was his first “modern” collection, because it moved away from his early work. It had a romantic atmosphere and made use of craft techniques, tending towards a more futuristic feel and experimentation with new fabric technologies. He created unusual combinations of knitted textile and innovative materials from the sports and safety industries, such as latex and reflective fabrics: some of the garments were even equipped with a Sony Walkman.

Hard Beat was also the first collection for which masks were used by Van Beirendonck, exploring what became important themes in his work— sadomasochism and fetishism. Latex, knee-high laced boots, bondage techniques, and graphic slogans like “Fetish for Main Course” characterised the collection. In this regard, Van Beirendonck’s fashion was more than new clothes for new music. His fashion enabled the wearer to become a co-designer of the club’s architectural atmosphere: to become one of the designers of nightlife. And what about the connection with Brussels? A second smaller object that I also love in the exhibition is the flyer for the ‘Disco Futura’ party at Le Canotier in Brussels, designed by the talented Aldo Gigli in 1979. Often a flyer or poster is the only physical reminder of the party the night before. Once fast consumed communication tools to gather people in clubs, these graphic ephemera reveal the wide range of lifestyles, graphic strategies, subcultures, music genres, identities and creativity fostered by the Belgian club life.

This particular flyer by Aldo Gigli shows futuristic creatures shooting laser guns while with space ships racing above their head. All this on a beautiful shimmering golden background with fluo details bearing the instruction: “Habillez-vous futurist et n’oubliez pas vos gadgets lumineux”. This visual language followed completely the disco spirit of that age. By the end of the 1970s, Le Canotier developed a sound reputation as disco revelation. It was the first club in Brussels to install a laser in 1979 – an absolute novelty – since before this time, the laser had only been used for scientific purposes. The inspiration came from the famous Paris club Le Palace, which opened in 1978, and where architect Patrick Berger used new technology like neon and lasers as architectural tools to shape the space. Elements that Gigli translated in this flyer. The disco experiments of the small creative family of Le Canotier with graphic artist Aldo Gigli, creative Marco Rolland, DJ Jean-Claude Maury and entrepreneur Paul Sterckx laid the foundation for the later disco temple: Mirano.

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THE LADIES OF THE BAROQUE

ARTEMISIA_POSTER_A2_G7.indd 7

Women painters in 16th and 17th century Italy

20.10.18â&#x20AC;&#x201C; mskgent.be 20.01.19

5/10/18 15:38

SURREAL CITY IN TRANSITION Interview with Belgian Photographer

BRAM PENNINCKX By BorĂŠ Kedober

ram Penninckx is a Brussels-based photographer. His documentary work focuses on the different aspects of this bustling and fickle city. Brussels En Route is his latest project and culmination of a year-and-a-half of journeys on Brusselsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; public transport.

During this period, the photographer travelled on every bus, tram and metro line at least once, from terminal to terminal. The images and text

show a cross section of Brussels, while also managing to give a brief glimpse into the lives of the anonymous fellow passengers that cross our path every day. A photobook was published and images from the project are exhibited at three different metro stations. Visitors, travellers and random passersby can view the images on the walls of the Ribaucourt, Botanique and Roodebeek stations.

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“The daily situations, how people interact - or not - say a lot about the society we live in.” What inspired you to carry out this project? It really started in 2010, after I had taken a photo of a person on a unicycle. I had been thinking of the idea for a while back then, but after I took that photo, I knew that the project had to be done. The idea was to document Brussels, but from the perspective of a traveller on public transport. Usually nobody suspects you’re taking photos when you’re inside. Your angles and perspectives are also different, as you are higher up than when outside on the street. This gives the pictures a unique ‘higher’ perspective. Not to mention the inspiration from the situations you find yourself in. You see everything right in front of you as the vehicle drives through the city. You get to see the city in all its nuances, its residents and communities, and the different urban neighbourhoods. When you travel on public transport, one in fact obtains a lot of information about the city. The daily situations, how people interact - or not - say a lot about the society we live in. Some photographers like to seek dramatic or exotic projects, “l’exotique ca pique” (the exotic stings). However, this project is the opposite of that, more mundane, although the scenes are very informative and, some, quite dramatic.

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Take a look at the picture of the Roma family for instance, sleeping on the street, and the tourists standing just next to them looking at postcards. Or the pigeon walking past the broken metal bar with the military vehicles in the background after the terror attacks. It’s quite surreal sometimes, but not always bad. These scenes remind me of the worlds of Kafka, Magritte and Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’, or a combination of the three. Another aspect that made a strong impression on me was the sense that the city is not finished and never will be. It gives the young generation the opportunity to take the initiative, and that’s what I like about the city: it’s always in transition. It will never be finished and no city will. But Brussels with its many diverse communities, living with each other, next to each other, or to the back of each other, with the particular tensions among them makes it quite unique. Overall, it’s a difficult city to capture, and I think it is quite misunderstood, both in Belgium and abroad. For instance, many Belgians, living outside the city, think that Brussels is dangerous. But it’s not. I took hundreds of journeys, travelling from dusk till dawn and crossed every part of the city without any major problems.

“Brussels with its many diverse communities, living with each other, next to each other, or to the back of each other, with the particular tensions among them makes it quite unique.”

Was the outcome different from your expectations? No, because I didn’t start with any. Usually, the more you look for something the less likely you’ll find it. This would be true at least for this kind

of work. So, I started with a “blank canvas”. The only thing I knew and planned for were the trams, buses and metro lines that I’d take, as I needed to ask STIB for permission. At the end of the day, my objective was to simply show the city the way I experienced it.

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Riding on every tram, bus, metro line in the city, what is your impression of Brussels public transport? And if needed, how could it be improved? The documentary is not about public transport, but about what these daily scenes tell us about this city and our society. However, I did get

some insight of course into the mobility in Brussels. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve lived and grown up in Brussels all my life, and if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d compare the public transport to when I was a kid, twenty years ago, the city has made a transformation for the better. There are more bus and tramlines, the STIB has really embraced the city and the travellers. Although a lot has been done, the road to a new urban mobility policy is still very long and filled with potholes. However, observing how people get from home to work, I was struck by the many cars on the streets and that in 90-95%, there was only one lone driver. That is what is most inefficient about the mobility and what also pollutes the city. Everyone has the right to breathe clean air, which is a big part of our quality of life. In that respect, public transportation plays a very important role. The issue on transport communication is bigger than just Brussels and also involves the Flemish and Wallon governments. Every day, hundreds of thousands of commuters living outside Brussels, drive into the city by car. There should be other solutions for them, for example, better and faster trains. But again, my focus with the project was about the city and its people, rather than about the public transport.

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What was your impression of the commuters from the journeys? The most important thing for them is to get from point A to B without any problem. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a daily habit, so it has to work smoothly. I also noticed

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the many good deeds travellers would do. There is a saying that a good Samaritan comes in any shape, colour and size. This was definitely true from my experience and what I observed. The kind gestures would oftentimes come from the least expected person.

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“Many Belgians, living outside the city, think that Brussels is dangerous. But it’s not. I took hundreds of journeys, travelling from dusk till dawn and crossed every part of the city without any major problems.”

Which mode of public transportation do you prefer the most in Brussels? There is not anyone which I would prefer over the other. They all have their interesting characteristics. As a photographer, the different means and options forced me to adapt my work. In a bus for example, everyone notices and sees you, while in a tram, one is a bit more anonymous.

If you take the bus or tram, you get to see a cross-section of the city as you travel from one side to the other. In one end, you see the art nouveau mansions and in the other, big apartment blocks. It’s like a sightseeing tour, only a real one. It’s not like going to the Manneken Pis. Brussels is not just about “moules frites” or what Trump infamously referred to a “hellhole”, but there are so many different nuances to the city, and that comes across in my project.

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“I also noticed the many good deeds travellers would do. There is a saying that a good Samaritan comes in any shape, colour and size. This was definitely true from my experience and what I observed. The kind gestures would oftentimes come from the least expected.”

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Did you feel safe? Yes, I did. I never felt insecure. Of course, Brussels is a big city and things happen. Also, as a photographer, I attract attention. Sometimes a passenger would take offence from me taking a picture. But if it would ever get unpleasant, I’d solve it by talking and explaining my work, and that sufficed. There were some altercations between commuters, but in those cases, other passengers would interfere to de-escalate the situation. It’s not the optimal solution, but a good one. It was heartening to see fellow passengers showing moral courage and choosing to stand up and outnumber protagonists. Small gestures and actions we do to help can have a major impact. However, I rarely came across any aggressive incidents, and when it did happen, it was really by coincidence and not related to a particular neighbourhood.

“If you take the bus or tram, you get to see a cross-section of the city as you travel from one side to the other. In one end you see the art nouveau mansions and in the other, big apartment blocks. It’s like a sightseeing tour, only a real one. It’s not like going to the Manneken Pis. Brussels is not just about “moules frites” or what Trump infamously referred to a “hellhole”, but there are so many different nuances to the city, and that comes across in my project.”

Which was your most memorable journey? There were so many. I remember one journey when I had a good conversation and connected well with the driver. It was at a night bus journey. He told me a story of how he one day had accidentally hit a child. He was approaching a red light but saw a van parked just in front, so he had to swerve to the other side of the road and hit the child. The incident resulted in a lawsuit. Despite what happened to him, I was surprised to hear how optimistic he was about his job.

From talking to him, I realised how we tend to forget how hard their jobs really are. Every day, they face traffic congestion, road works and other stressful situations, but they stoically carry on with their work. Not just for the salary, but because they like doing it. I was impressed by how much they go through on a daily basis, yet manage to keep their cool. They feel that they fulfil an important role in the city, and they don’t ask for a lot, just a simple recognition, a greeting or “bonjour”. For more information about the project and the book: www.enroute.brussels

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PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE AND HISTORY 83-112 p Belgians standing next to ruins of an old cathedral, only a few weeks before the First World War would end. 11 November 2018 marked 100 years since the end of the war. Ceremonies are carried out throughout Belgium to commemorate the millions of casualties. The conflict hit Belgium when German troops crossed the border on 4 August 1914, and Kaiser Wilhelm II demanded that King Albert allow its troops free passage so that they could attack French troops from the rear. The King refused. After 10 days of courageous defence, LiĂ¨ge was the first city to fall, followed soon after by Leuven and Antwerp.

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Lecture Sophie De Schaepdrijver ‘Remembering the Great War in Public Spaces’

6/12

Brussels nocturnes

HOW BELGIANS BECAME REFUGEES DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR By Martin Banks

he “war to end all wars” officially ended on 11 November 1918. The centenary of the Armistice is marked by numerous commemorations around Europe. On the same day, St Symphorien Military Cemetery near Mons held its commemorative service. This is where the war began in 1914 and where the first and last casualties of the battle lie. The Armistice is an opportunity to remember the sacrifices made in the conflict. WW1 was one of the deadliest conflicts in the history of mankind, in which an estimated 16 million people died, among them six million civilians and 10 million military personnel. As much of the fighting took place on Belgian territory, this country has arguably more reason than many to recall the painful events of the “Great War”. One of the lesser-known and less-spokenabout features of the war was the plight of Belgians who were forced to flee their homeland.

Belgian refugees at the onset of the war.

“Between August and October 1914, more than 1.5 million Belgians left their country, driven out by a fear of German atrocities and the violent combat that was about to engulf their homeland.”

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Belgians detraining in Northampton were met by kind-hearted ladies who were ready at the station with steaming coffee, buns and sweets. Such refugees arriving in the English Midlands brought home to us the tragedy of their martyred country.”

Approximately 250,000 Belgians sought refuge in the UK.

“In the UK, the Belgians set up Belgian Refugee Committees and even had their own purpose-built villages with their own schools, newspapers, shops, hospitals, churches, prisons and police.”

The outbreak of war in 1914 left many Belgians homeless and penniless. The historian Tony Kushner estimates that over 1 million fled the country, approximately one-sixth of the Belgian population. It is a fascinating story that, with the continuing asylum and migrant crisis still high on the political agenda, has particular resonance in 2018. Just as today, the continent back then was awash with waves of refugees seeking safety and sanctuary. Back in 1914, a large part of the refugees were Belgians escaping to other countries, including the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands, to flee the German troops. Given that it remained out of German clutches many of them – an estimated 250,000 – headed to the United Kingdom for safety. In fact, the Belgians in wartime Britain constituted the biggest single ethnic influx of refugees into Britain to date. Some of those who didn’t head to Britain made the relative short journey over the border to France, parts of which were occupied during WW1.

First welcome At first, the Belgian refugees were greeted with open arms. In “The Reception of Belgian Refugees in Europe”, UK-based author Pierre Purseigle recalls how “a group of

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A source at the Belgian ministry of federal foreign affairs says that between August and October 1914, more than 1 million Belgians left their country, driven out by a fear of German atrocities and the violent combat that was about to engulf their homeland. These refugees were initially welcomed with a surge of generosity, whether they arrived in France, England or the Netherlands. Many Belgians crossed the Channel for safety in England. About one in three stayed in London or its environs. The number of refugees in Wales, Scotland and Ireland together was never more than ten percent of the total Belgian community in exile in the British Isles. In the UK, the Belgians set up Belgian Refugee Committees and even had their own purpose-built villages with their own schools, newspapers, shops, hospitals, churches, prisons and police. One such community of perhaps 6,000 was based in London’s Richmond and East

Twickenham, where many were employed in the munitions factory built in what is now Cleveland Park alongside Richmond Bridge. The large number of Belgian refugees caused East Twickenham to be known as the Belgian Village on the Thames. Another was Birtley in County Durham. This small industrial village became a central hub for thousands of Belgian soldiers and their families. The residents of Birtley gained over 4,000 new Belgian neighbours during the war. Birtley was chosen as the site of two munitions factories, staffed entirely by Belgian soldiers, their families and other refugees. The resulting community was nicknamed “Elisabethville”, after the Belgian queen Elisabeth of Bavaria. Elisabethville was the product of a unique diplomatic collaboration between the British and Belgian governments. The British built the munitions factories and the workers’ accommodation, and then turned the entire site over to the Belgian government, who then provided the workforce. What made Elisabethville different from other factories was the intention behind it. In return for the munitions from the factories, the British government allowed a sovereign Belgian “col-

ony” to be temporarily established in Durham. These areas were considered Belgian territory and run by the Belgian government. They even used the franc, the Belgian currency at the time. Many British factories, particularly the war industry, employed Belgian labourers while some Belgian refugees set up their own factories such as ‘Pelabon’ in Richmond. Belgian artists, like the sculptor George Minne and the painters Valerius de Saedeleer and Gustave van de Woestijne sought refuge in Wales where they settled and worked. The symbolist poet and art critic Emile Verhaeren also found his way to Wales.

A personal story The story of Brussels botanist Jean Massart is particularly intriguing. Ruth Pirlet, who has carried out in-depth research on the impact of WW1 on Belgium for the Ostend-based Flanders Marine Institute, said that a few months after the start of hostilities, Massart, from the Brussels commune of Etterbeek, suspended all his botanical studies because he believed “there was no time to lose yourself in speculations of pure science when the entire word’s political geography was at stake.”

German troops crossing the frontier into Belgium, 4 August 1914.

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Ruth said, “He subsequently devoted his time to writing and distributing all kinds of anti-German propaganda.” But his “illegal” activities did not pass unnoticed by the German forces who kept an increasingly close eye on his family. Ruth adds, “His children had been able to leave Belgium for the Netherlands under the pretext of health problems but things were not so easy for Massart and his wife. After several failed attempts they eventually succeeded in crossing the border with the Netherlands near Bree in Limburg on 14 August 1914 under disguise and with the cooperation of an obliging customs officer.” The couple moved to Amsterdam where they were reunited with their children and his valuable collection of information was also smuggled into the Netherlands by means of a suitcase along with clothes for Belgian refugees, says Ruth. “The whole family soon moved on to England and eventually ended up in the coastal municipality of Antibes in the south of France in autumn 1915.” Massart edited various pamphlets to “boost the morale” of the Belgian people and troops. Other Belgian scientists spent the war in France, including biologists August Lameere and Marc de Salys Longchamps. In the summer of 1914, both went on a short working trip to the Station Biologique de Roscoff in Brittany with their families but the outbreak of war meant they could not return home. The holiday turned into a “four-year exile”.

Survival The practicalities of just surviving were, of course, uppermost in the minds of the Belgian refugees. In France, they could obtain “reimbursements” for their savings and were allowed to use Belgian francs. Many were given accommodation for a modest rent, and they were offered jobs, often in factories. This also helped the “host” country hire low cost replacement manpower for the men who’d gone to fight. In France, for instance, there were some 10,500 Belgians employed in the metallurgical sector, so the huge influx of Belgians during WW1 also helped local economies ticking over. France and England also received a lot of Belgian fishermen who were unable to keep on fishing and their stories have been superbly documented by the Flemish Marine Institute (VLIZ). Writing for “De Grote Rede”, Brecht Demasure said ships were commandeered and fishing boat

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“In return for the munitions from the factories, the British government allowed a sovereign Belgian “colony” to be temporarily established in Durham. These areas were considered Belgian territory and run by the Belgian government. They even used the franc, the Belgian currency at the time.” crews effectively forced to work in shipyards in Scotland. The Belgian fishermen who had fled were divided into three groups and continued to practice their trade both in France and Britain. “Sometimes they actively took part in the war or provisioning the Belgian troops. They may have also been involved in clearing mines or escorting submarines,” says Brecht. Belgian crews also rescued shipwrecked British sailors, often in dangerous circumstances. The war hit society at all levels. On 13 October 1914, the day before Ostend was overrun by the Germans, staff and pupils at Koninklijk Werk IBS, a local school, fled on IBIS VI, a steam trawler, to Milford Haven in Wales, which was to provide a refuge for them throughout the war. During the war, specialised media was set up to keep exiled Belgians in touch with things back home. “Journal des Refugies” was one such paper for Belgian refugees in the Netherlands. Belgian historian Marie Cappart says this publication, later re-named “La Belgigue” and other similar ones played a crucial role in trying to reunite families and loved ones separated by the war. “No mention could be made of military operations, but they provided news and other information from the occupied country,” she says. “The existence of this media was short lived but important.” The refugees’ thoughts naturally also turned to relatives who had remained in Belgium. In the wartime diary that Belgian refugee Irene Norga kept, she wrote, “If only I could have news of my parents. Where are they? Have they been mistreated? Are they unhappy? This idea fills my days and nights.”

Belgian refugees in Somerset, England.

Feelings of mistrust But while at the start of the war, the local populations in the host countries were favourable to the refugees from “Poor Little Belgium”, public opinion gradually turned into mistrust and distance. The UK and France had a different attitude towards the Belgians than the Dutch. In WW1, the Netherlands was neutral. This was part of a strict policy of neutrality in international affairs that started in 1830 with the secession of Belgium, and the Dutch were seen as being more “suspicious” of the Belgian refugees. The Belgian foreign ministry says that at the start of the hostilities, the Belgian immigrants were generally seen as survivors of brutality and representatives of a small martyred country that had resisted a largely superior invader, in terms of both men and equipment. Some newspapers at the time compared King Albert I and his troops to King Leonidas who, with his 300 Spartan warriors, stood up to the vast Persian army in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. But this empathy diminished over time. And as the war dragged on, Belgian citizens lost the goodwill of the locals and began to be considered as living at a comfortable distance from the battle fields, while their own sons and fathers were fighting on the front-line. Many had expected the war to be over by Christmas but it soon became clear that it wouldn’t. Housing and jobs became an issue.

“While at the start of the war, the local populations in the host countries were favourable to the refugees from “Poor Little Belgium”, public opinion gradually turned into mistrust and distance.” Belgians in the purpose built villages in England had running water and electricity while their British neighbours did not. A feeling of mistrust and remoteness set in and even riots broke out in the UK in 1916. In a reminder of current feelings towards migrants, the local populations thought that integrating Belgian workers into the British labour market threatened their own jobs. This reproach was based on the fact that Belgian workers accepted lower salaries than the locals, as well as longer days and working on Sundays and public holidays. Belgian refugees, having managed to flee the Germans, faced another “handicap”: they were also increasingly resented by those who’d been left behind in Belgium to face the atrocities of the occupier. “This feeling dominated throughout the rest of the conflict and beyond,” said Cappart.

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Woman looking at the destruction of Leuven. For five consecutive days, the city was burned and looted. Up to a 5th of all buildings in the town were destroyed in what was thought to be a strategy to intimidate the Belgian civilian population.

“As the war dragged on, Belgian citizens lost the goodwill of the locals and began to be considered as living at a comfortable distance from the battle fields, while their own sons and fathers were fighting on the front-line.”

Returning home Towards the end of the war, some 140,000 Belgians were still in the UK and some decided to remain in the country that had welcomed them. But within a year of the war ending on 11 November 1918, more than 90 per cent had returned home. Those in the UK were known as the “British Belgians” and many left as quickly as they came, leaving little time to establish any significant legacy. Tony Kushner, a UK-based professor of modern history, said “They were pushed out of the country and it was not very dignified. The

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UK government was happy for the nation to forget and it suited the Belgian government who needed people to return to rebuild the country.” Those who came back hoped to farm the rich Flanders fields but some were even driven to commit suicide when they saw what had happened to their farms and villages. Others simply went to work rebuilding, relying heavily on German war reparations, which arrived by train in the form of fruit trees and cattle. The Belgian government during the war was itself exiled in Le Havre, and it seriously considered having to cross the Channel to England. They never had to follow the example of many of their compatriots. A simple but poignant reminder of their sacrifice lies in a humble graveyard in Tiverton, a village in Devon in south west England. It is here where little Pieter Verlaecke, aged just seven, was buried. Back at the start of the Great War, Pieter did not survive the rough crossing of the English Channel with his parents. His family did make it to Devon where they stayed until the end of the war before returning to Ostend to resume the family fishing business. But, for them, there will always be a little bit of England that is Belgium.

26 JAN-- 03 FEB 2019

BRUSSELS

GUEST OF HONOUR : GILBERT & GEORGE

Alicja Gescinska is a Polish-Belgian philosopher and novelist.

FEMALE FIGURES IN BELGIAN POLITICS THE INEQUALITY THAT REMAINS

“If all men are born equal, how is it that all women are born slaves?” After the local elections on 14 October, that resulted in only one of the nineteen new mayors of the Brussels Capital region being female, I couldn’t help but think of Mary Astell’s famous words. Ages have passed and much has changed since Astell denounced the discrimination against women. We can now vote, open our own bank accounts. We are not the possession of our husbands anymore. We have a voice and we can raise it, and, in fact, many of us do. We have indeed come a long way. But even if the majority of Western women are no longer treated as slaves, that does not mean we are all equal and free.

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“Without equality, freedom is the privilege of the powerful, not the right of all. Nowadays women might have the formal freedom to become a Brussels mayor, but the enormous gender discrepancy suggests the existence of a structural sort of inequality.”

Astell wrote her most important works at the end of the 17th century and is often considered to be the first English feminist. She was an outspoken defender of equality and freedom. That is: freedom conceived of as not merely the formal permission to do something, but as having the actual power to do it. Such freedom requires non-domination; equality, a power balance. Without equality, freedom is the privilege of the powerful, not the right of all. Nowadays women might have the formal freedom to become a Brussels mayor, but the enormous gender discrepancy suggests the existence of a sort of structural inequality.

Top of the list Several reasons for the political underrepresentation of women at the highest level of municipal government can be given. It begins with the fact that men dramatically outscore women in list leadership. In Flanders, only one in four list leaders for the recent elections were women. That in itself is a structural disadvantage. It creates no condition of non-domination, but an unequal power relation that undermines the freedom of women.

Unemancipated minds A second factor that contributes to the power imbalance between men and women is that many people have become convinced that there is no imbalance at all. Increasingly popular is the belief, especially in highly liberal countries like Belgium and Holland, that the process of emancipation has been completed, and that only the most stubborn of feminists still complain about gender inequality in politics, science, the arts and other domains of our social and professional lives. Yet, there is so much statistical evidence of this inequality, that only an unemancipated mind can believe the process of emancipation has been completed. What is troublesome with this widespread perspective is of course that you can only deal with a problem when you recognize it exists.

A victory that tastes like defeat The fact that the underrepresentation of women in charge of the Brussels municipalities

“Increasingly popular is the belief, especially in highly liberal countries like Belgium and Holland, that the process of emancipation has been completed, and that only the most stubborn of feminists still complain about gender inequality in politics, science, the arts and other domains of our social and professional lives.”

sparked little debate, let alone outrage, shows how complacent we’ve become. All is fine, nothing to worry about. In the meanwhile, we can give ourselves a self-congratulatory pat on the shoulder for the fact that Pierre Kompany, father of the famous football player, is the new mayor of Ganshoren, and as such has become the first black mayor in the Brussels region. This has been hailed as a “victory of diversity”, and rightly so. But if we take gender into account, there is little reason to be triumphant.

Qualities over gender Some women went into the elections with the conviction that one should vote only for women if one wants to change the position of women in politics. This is a step too far for many, even for certain progressives and feminists. How on earth can you act so discriminatively towards men? Should one not be voting for the best candidate, for the one who made the best promises and the one that will represent us in the best way possible? Of course we should. But do we also want to say that for each competent woman there are 18 competent men? Does only 1 woman per 19 mayors have those qualities, or should we admit that something is wrong at a deeper level? I don’t know the solution, but I do know that admitting there is a problem and being ashamed of it, not only in Brussels, but in the whole of Belgium, is a first step to be taken.

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Dr. Catherine Moureaux from the Socialist Party was elected as Molenbeek’s mayor in the local elections on 14 October 2018. She is the only female mayor in all 19 communes of Brussels.

The fact that the underrepresentation of women in charge of the Brussels municipalities sparked little debate, let alone outrage, shows how complacent we’ve become.

The curse of motherhood Another underlying reason for the political underrepresentation of women is that they are born with a womb. For some reason, society still believes that having a womb and having a wonderful career are at odds. It is something all women with very busy professional lives are confronted with. Whether they have children or not, inevitably they are confronted with the question of whether motherhood and a career can be combined. The answer to that question is still strikingly often no. It is motherhood, or excelling at your work; the one or the other. A few years ago, Connie Palmen, the leading lady of Dutch literature, wrote an interesting essay in which she explores the lives of four exceptional women, who all paid a huge price for their successful careers. Their successes went hand in hand with troublesome relationships

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with parents, partners and alcohol, and motherhood was also part of the sacrifice they made to establish a great career.

Creativity and the placenta Perhaps a pattern can be discerned here, but for each example, there is of course a counterexample. If you examine the position of women in world literature, indeed it is easy to find many great female writers who didn’t bear children. And even if they had children, that didn’t always go quite well; think of Sylvia Plath. But equally relevant in this regard are authors like Doris Lessing and Alice Monroe – who both had three children – and who show that mothers too can master the art of the written word. The creativity of a woman does not vanish with the placenta. Yet the myth persists that successful careers and motherhood aren’t compatible. As a consequence, women are not being treated as the equals of men. We still haven’t liberated ourselves from the stereotype of the great artist, political leader, scientist or entrepreneur being by definition, male. It is only when we have freed ourselves from that prejudice that true equality and freedom will be possible. Till then, it is very likely that we will have to wait for a woman to become the first female prime minister of Belgium, and for Brussels to have as many female as male mayors. That might seem to be merely a symbolic matter. But precisely because it is so symbolic, it is actually of the greatest importance.

BELGIUM

EXORCISING THE GHOSTS OF BELGIUM’S COLONIAL PAST A MUSEUM FROZEN IN TIME TRANSFORMS By Marianna Hunt Sixty years exactly since Belgium hosted a human zoo of its Congolese “conquests”, the country is confronting its African history.

n 1958, Belgium hosted the world fair, a chance for the nation to dazzle the international stage with displays of post-war progress across technology, society and the arts. The glittering orbs of the Atomium are one of the most iconic legacies of the Expo 58. However, another of the exhibits, for years brushed over by the history books, casts a much longer, much darker shadow over the event.

At the foot of the Atomium was an enclosure. Behind its bamboo fence, hundreds of Congolese men, women and children were put on display for the amusement of European visitors. From dusk till dawn for the two hundred days of the fair’s duration, thousands came to ogle black families in their “traditional” dress. Brussels’ Kongorama, as it was known, was the world’s last human zoo.

Congolese men circling the waters of the royal parks in Belgium. In 1897, King Leopold II brought 267 Congolese to his Palace of the Colonies, to be part of a “human zoo”. During the course of the exhibition, seven people died due to colds and flu, only dressed in their traditional clothing.

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The Royal Museum for Central Africa has undergone a major transformation and is set to reopen on 9 December 2018. The €75 million renovation has almost doubled the museum’s size, and aims to provide a new and more honest and transparent narrative of Belgium’s colonial past. Credit: © David Plas

“At the foot of the Atomium was an enclosure. Behind its bamboo fence, hundreds of Congolese men, women and children were put on display for the amusement of European visitors.” These zoos were no new form of entertainment either to Belgium or to the rest of the world. Paris, London, and New York have all hosted their share of indigenous peoples over the years: from Samoans to Sami and the Inuit. Belgium’s own history of human zoos began in 1897 when King Leopold II brought 267 Congolese to his Palace of the Colonies, located to the east of Brussels in Tervuren. These artefacts of flesh and bone were put on show alongside other “imports” from the Congo that included ethnographic objects and prized commodities such as coffee and cacao. Over a million Belgians (more than a quarter of the country’s then population) came to witness the curiosity, observing the Congolese dancing

and drumming in their makeshift village in the palace’s park or paddling their canoes across the royal lake. Over the course of the exhibit, seven of the tribesmen died from colds and flu – the traditional garments they were instructed to wear providing them with little protection from the European winter.

The last colonial museum in the world Nevertheless the Belgian state considered the exhibition such a success that in 1898 a permanent display dedicated to Belgium’s colonies was established on the site of the palace: the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Its collection was gathered together from various sources including the spoils of military campaigns, objects confiscated as “heathen” by missionaries and the hoards of traders. According to the museum’s current director Guido Gryseels: “We were essentially a propaganda institution for the government’s colonial policy. For most visitors, the museum provided their first vision of Africa, and we have to take responsibility for the prejudices that we helped create during that time.”

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A sleek new visitor centre, constructed entirely of glass, which also includes a restaurant and shop has been built. The modern, transparent facade aims to reflect the museum’s transformation from an institution stuck in the past to a world centre of learning and research. Credit: © RMCA, Tervuren

“The museum was frozen in time for many years. When I took over 17 years ago, the permanent exhibition hadn’t changed since the 1950s. That made us the last colonial museum in the world.”

For decades, visitors entering the palace were met by a huge golden statue of a European missionary towering over an African boy clinging to his feet. The plaque underneath read: “Belgium brings civilization to Congo”. Gryseels admits: “The museum was frozen in time for many years. When I took over 17 years ago, the permanent exhibition hadn’t changed since the 1950s (before Congo gained independence). That made us the last colonial museum in the world.”

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Taking responsibility and facing the truth Gryseels and his team decided it was time to shake the dust off the museum’s old exhibits and prejudices. “We wanted to create a new, more honest narrative. So we gathered lots of research and in 2005 organised an exhibition. This was the first time Belgium really entered into discussion about its colonial past. Many were surprised by the violence they discovered.” The team then set about dragging the museum into the 21st century. In 2013, the building was closed and started to be emptied of its 560 stuffed animals and 1460 ethnographic objects and musical instruments. Transformation began. So how do you turn a colonial institution into a modern museum on Africa, past and present? In its previous issue, this very magazine featured an article, which called for Belgium to face up to its complicity in the death of Congolese statesman and independence leader, Patrice Lumumba. But dealing with the

“For decades, visitors entering the palace were met by a huge golden statue of a European missionary towering over an African boy clinging to his feet. The plaque underneath read: “Belgium brings civilization to Congo”.” complex legacy of colonialism is no simple matter of renaming a handful of squares and erecting a few statues. As France prepares to send back hundreds of artefacts to Africa, looted during its colonial era, and Britain enters talks to lend stolen Nigerian bronzes back to the country, we must ask: how can Belgium step forward and face up to its past? Some radical groups call for all statues dedicated to colonial leaders to be pulled down. At the Royal Museum for Central Africa, they are seeking alternatives: rather than tearing down relics, they look to recontextualise them. On 9 December 2018, the museum will reopen its doors to the public, revealing what its website describes as an all-new “contemporary and decolonised vision of Africa”. Colonial artefacts remain, yet are presented alongside an explanation of their context and how they came to be part of the museum. Visitors will also learn how these items were used to form and reinforce stereotypes about Africa. One new exhibit looks at reality and fiction in ethnographic photography of the 1950s. This series of photos, commissioned by the Ministry of Colonies, aimed to offer a positive image of colonial order. The original photographs are accompanied by descriptions of how the traditional dances and rituals they depicted were often staged by the photographers themselves, who had been given a budget for sponsoring spontaneous performances. Not only has the old political narrative been rerouted, so too has the entrance to the museum. Rather than accessing the collections via the palace’s magnificent main entrance, now visitors will be lead through an underground tunnel and a series of rooms recounting the history of the institution itself.

Gryseels’s team offered contemporary African artists the chance to respond artistically to the colonial messages of the original collection. Each room contains one of their creations. “We also included the African diaspora in Belgium in the decision making process; we consulted them on what they wanted to see in a museum about contemporary Africa,” Gryseels explains. Far from being a freeze frame of the past, the institution hopes to engage dynamically with the current situation. One part of this is its “AfricaTube” project led entirely by young people. They plan to organise screenings of films and discussions on Africa, as well as opportunities for young Belgians to come and speak via Skype to members of youth cultural centres in various African countries. The €75 million renovation has almost doubled the museum’s size and added a sleek new visitor centre, constructed entirely of glass, which also includes a restaurant and shop. The modern, transparent facade reflects perfectly the museum’s transformation from an institution promoting ignorance to a world centre of learning.

“We wanted to create a new, more honest narrative. So we gathered lots of research and in 2005 organised an exhibition. This was the first time Belgium really entered into discussion about its colonial past. Many were surprised by the violence they discovered.”

“Two thirds of our staff and budget are dedicated to furthering scientific research into African culture and history,” Gryseels adds proudly. “Attitudes are changing but education is crucial – especially for the younger generations, many of whom aren’t aware of Belgium’s role in the Congo.” What has been achieved by the Royal Museum of Central Africa is a clear example of how, by looking back, we are able to take a dozen steps forward.

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LIGHT FESTIVAL KNOKKE-HEIST

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FROM THE LOW LANDS TO THE HIGH SEAS BELGIAN PIRATE RADIOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RISE AND DEMISE By Jelter Meers

fter the Second World War, the Belgian government wanted to have complete control over the airwaves. They consequently seized and destroyed any radio station that did not have a license. For a long time, Belgians could only listen to public radio, which had very limited programming. Tired of government-approved music, monolingual programs

and establishment views, activists and music lovers set up hidden stations in garages, basements, church towers and garden sheds. Some even took to boats in order to escape authoritiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efforts to shut them down. While there are almost no Belgian pirate radio stations left today, history shows that despite the odds, a new wave of clandestine radios can conquer the air any time.

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“They organized themselves like the resistance radio of the Second World War. One volunteer would create a 10-minute programme at home using a tape recorder and drop the cassette in a mailbox where another volunteer picked it up. A third volunteer placed an antenna in a tree and a fourth started the generator, ran the radio transmitter and aired the recording.”

Humble origins The first antenna to send out radio signals in Belgium was built in 1908 on top of the Palace of Justice. The historic building’s entire roof was covered with antenna cables sending radio signals as far as Liège. Five years later, an Italian engineer developed a low-power wave transmitter in a garden shed of the Castle of Laeken. Together with a few other employees of the Royal Court, he sent experimental broadcasts with voices and music from eight pillars over 100 meters tall in the royal gardens. Inspired by Queen Elizabeth’s passion for music, King Albert I requested a radio receiver. The first ever radio concert in Europe was transmitted in Belgium on a March night in 1914, when the king and queen listened to an aria of the opera Tosca on their radio. After the first royal success, the newly formed Ministry of Telephony and Telegraphy, RTT, started transmitting spoken messages and live concerts. With only a dozen radios in Belgium, the programmes were occasions for groups of wealthy friends to gather around the radio for an hour and marvel at the new and exclusive technology. During the Great War, King Albert wanted the antennas at the palace and royal gardens to be Palais de Justice covered in radio antenna and cables in 1908.

destroyed, fearing the Prussian Army would take them. The sense of fear continued through the aftermath of the war, when officials regarded sending and receiving radio signals as a potential danger for national security. Everyone who wanted a radio needed to get permission from the RTT, and in 1920 there were only 26 registered radios in Belgium. One of the main radio producers, Société Belge Radio-électrique, based in Brussels, decided to create its own radio station to boost sales. Their station, Radio Bruxelles, went on air in 1922 with classical music recordings and programs in French discussing the weather, news and sports. But it was not easy to listen to the station if you lived outside of Brussels. One enthusiast sent the following letter about his trials to get a good signal to Belgium’s monthly Radio Magazine: “I bought a small radio with a galena stone. I live at least 60 kilometres from Brussels. I made an air wire that I hung outside, seven to eight metres high and 25 metres long. Then I added another 20 metres of wire and another one of 33 metres.” When this elaborate construction did not result in a better signal, the man built another antenna: “Then I made a construction hidden from my neighbours, spanning four wires in my attic of all kinds: fine, coarse, zinc, copper, iron; a mixture of everything, soldered and tied together. With this wire, I have the best connection one can imagine.” Now, the Brussels broadcasts came in clear, and the enthusiast even picked up foreign signals. “After the concerts at 10 o’clock I can still silently hear people talking, but also singing and music. I don’t know where it is coming from; it’s on the same wavelength as Brussels. I thought I heard English. Is that possible?” In the 1920s and early 1930s, Flemish enthusiasts who wanted an alternative to the solely French programming installed transmitters in church towers, mills and potato fields to air their own programs. By 1932, the government decided to limit these free radio enterprises and shut down at least 37 illegal radio stations. Seven years later, there were over one million radios in Belgium.

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Group of men gathering to listen to radio in Brussels, early 20th century.

“The first antenna to send out radio signals in Belgium was built in 1908 on top of the Palace of Justice. The historic building’s entire roof was covered with antenna cables sending radio signals as far as Liège.” Monopoly During the German occupation of the Second World War, only Radio Bruxelles was allowed to transmit programs, which all consisted of Nazi propaganda. Many Belgians secretly turned to listening to the UK’s BBC transmissions. Belgian public broadcasters cooperated with the resistance to set up clandestine radio stations. The secret radio broadcasting operation was called Samoyede. At one point, German forces tried to irrevocably damage the Flagey building in Brussels, which had a radio studio used by the resistance. German soldiers poured in oil, started a fire and tried to flood the building. As soon as the Nazi soldiers left, Samoyede member Jozef van Gaelen got into the building through a small basement entrance, put out the fires and closed the water and oil valves. He reopened the building for the public and started repairing the studio. Before finishing the repairs, Van Gaelen was

stopped by German troops at the Namur Gate. He was carrying radio equipment and the soldiers shot him dead.

To the Seas After the Second World War, the Belgian government decided to keep the radio monopoly instated by the German occupiers. None of the free radio stations from before the war were allowed to air any programmes, so many went underground. Georges de Caluwé, who had founded one of the first free Flemish radio stations in the 1920s, which he transmitted from a church tower, established a political party to fight for the rights of independent radio. In 1955, he started his own illegal post-war broadcasting station, which was shut down in a matter of days. Belgian public broadcasters were legally designated to be the sole transmitters of radio and TV programmes. Untouchable, their programmes did not need to appeal to the public and became vehicles for the state and politicians. De Caluwé and his party sent an ultimatum to the ministry of radio: either they allowed free private radio or he would position a ship in front of the Belgian coast and broadcast his programmes from there. Seeing that the government was not ready to budge, De Caluwé, who was in his seventies by then, bought an old 585-tonne ship from the French Marines called

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“During the German occupation of the Second World War, only Radio Bruxelles was allowed to transmit programs, which all consisted of Nazi propaganda.”

Le Crocodile for 2.5 million old Belgian Francs (60,000 euro). In October 1962, Belgium’s first pirate radio, Radio Antwerpen, was transmitted from the ship, redubbed the “Uilenspiegel,” on the North Sea near Knokke-Heist. The crew recorded the programs on shore and brought them to the ship using a small boat called “Nele”. Just like he had climbed the church tower in the 1920s to make sure his radio programs could be transmitted, De Caluwé climbed from ship to ship every day at the age of 73.

On Dec. 17, 1962, a heavy storm with wind gusts of over 100 kilometres per hour broke the radio equipment and anchor of the Uilenspiegel. The crew couldn’t send out a distress signal because the generators broke as well. Floating around in the storm, they shot off flares, which got the attention of an English ferryboat that, in turn, notified the coast guard. The rescue operation did not go well. One person died after getting injured when jumping from the radio ship to the coast guard’s rescue boat. Even the ship did not make it to safety. While dragging the Uilenspiegel towards shore and fighting the strong current, a towboat‘s towing cable broke. The rogue vessel reached its final resting place after drifting onto a Dutch beach near Cadzand. Four days before the demise of his ship, De Caluwé had passed away in Antwerp after being hospitalised. His condition had been deteriorating. “He had lost a lot of weight, you saw he was tired and in pain,” his granddaughter told public broadcasters. A few days after the ship had stranded, the Belgian parliament passed a law forbidding anyone to work on radio transmissions from sea. The ship became a tourist destination until it fell into disrepair and became dangerous for the public. In 1971, the Dutch government blew up the ship.

Onshore

Broadcaster at Radio Bruxelles studio in 1924.

Besides airing Flemish, French and classical music programs, Radio Antwerpen also played popular music and oldies, and had an afternoon slot for requests. A few weeks after they started broadcasting, the pirates invested in short wave transmission equipment, and Radio Antwerpen could be picked up as far as Canada. After authorities organized multiple raids at their on-shore recording studio, the crew decided to record their programs on the go. They regularly changed their meeting place and everyone brought a separate piece of equipment.

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After the success of Radio Antwerpen in 1962, many onshore enthusiasts went on air, using medium wave radio transmitters. Most programmes were on at night and in the weekend. They usually played requests, which in the sixties meant a lot of The Beatles, The Shadows and Belgian singer Will Tura. The radio stations also organized humanitarian actions such as collecting toys for children in hospitals. Immensely popular, free radio became a competitor to national broadcasters. While the Dutch government quickly created a popular radio station of their own, Belgian public broadcaster BRT was so tangled in its own red tape that they couldn’t get one on air in time. The government cracked down on the new wave of free radio in 1965 and most of the free stations were seized. After many of the radio owners and presenters were convicted in 1966, authorities re-established their control over what Belgians could listen to. But by the summer of 1973, another Belgian pirate radio came on air. An Antwerp businessman

Georges de Caluwé on his ship, Uilenspiegel. Determined to fight for the right to broadcast independent radio, he created Belgium’s first pirate radio in October 1962, Radio Antwerpen.

had bought one of the ships that had been used to broadcast the famous British pirate station Radio Caroline. The ship transmitted Radio Atlantis, a popular music station that later turned into Radio Mi Amigo, which would become Belgium’s most listened to pirate radio. Radio Mi Amigo, airing Dutch-speaking singers shunned by public broadcasters, had a rocky history of changing ships, crew and locales – at one point it was even broadcasting from Spain. It went off the air many times but always came back and cooperated with various other pirate radios, including Radio Caroline, until the station’s ship was seized in 1979.

Protest Radios By the late 1970s, a movement of political pirate radios took over the airwaves. Run by environmental groups, student organizations and activists, many had subversive political agendas. The stations were strictly covert operations; broadcasting at irregular times and from different locations. Most of them evaded seizure by the RTT, Belgium’s radio agency that was initially founded to transmit the country’s first radio signals from a royal garden shed. The first protest radio station came on air in 1978 to stop the construction of a dam on a

“In October 1962, Belgium’s first pirate radio, Radio Antwerpen, was transmitted from a ship, the “Uilenspiegel,” on the North Sea near Knokke-Heist.” small river in Wallonia. The environmentalists behind Radio Couvin and Radio Eau Noire knew the RTT would try to shut them down, so they organized themselves like the resistance radio of the Second World War. One volunteer would create a 10-minute programme at home using a tape recorder and drop the cassette in a mailbox where another volunteer picked it up. A third volunteer placed an antenna in a tree and a fourth started the generator, ran the radio transmitter and aired the recording. Many others followed, such as Radio Noir, Radio Verte and Radio Tam Tam. Most were based in Wallonia and had talk shows discussing nuclear power plants and soft drugs. Around the same time, student movements created radio stations to protest against an increase in tuition fees. When police trucks and RTT authorities were seen near their campus, Radio Louvain-laNeuve asked their listeners to step in. Within five minutes, 1,500 students were blocking the

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Radio Capitale aired live shows from the Martini Tower at Place Rogier, which was demolished in 2004. Three days a week, the programming was in Dutch and the other half of the week, presenters spoke in French and English. The station played a lot of New Wave, Reggae and Ska, and interviewed famous artists such as Marvin Gaye and Mike Oldfield, until it was seized by the authorities.

Uilenspiegel was bought from the French Marines for 2.5 million Belgian Francs (60,000 euro at the time). It was an old 585-tonne ship previously called Le Crocodile.

“The early 1980s saw an explosion of free and independent radio stations across Belgium. Brussels airwaves in particular were filled with dozens of radio stations from Radio Plus’ alternative rock and anti-hit list programming to the collective Radio z’Alternatives.” authorities’ access to the campus buildings and some started throwing bricks and pieces of wood. The police and the RTT left the campus without seizing anything or questioning anyone. At other manifest radio stations, authorities were welcomed with buckets of hot water or a hunting shotgun.

Radio Rubbish At the free University of Brussels, students started Radio Brol, meaning Radio Rubbish, in 1978 to protest tuition increases. The university also aired anti-nuclear and anti-racism radio stations run by students. While these political stations had irregular and temporary schedules, by 1979, Brussels also had many pirate radio stations that were on air all day. These free radios brought together Dutch-speaking, French-speaking and international listeners and played the popular hits people were eager to hear.

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The early 1980s saw an explosion of free and independent radio stations across Belgium. Brussels airwaves in particular were filled with dozens of radio stations from Radio Plus’ alternative rock and anti-hit list programming to the collective Radio z’Alternatives, which described itself as a station of “art, alternative music, noise and sounds.” The times were marked by RTT raids, a race to dominate frequencies, increasingly strong transmitters, sabotage by competing stations, home-made studios, and experimental programming including absurd, nonsensical talk shows and niche genres such as Cold Wave. When the mayor of Schaarbeek pushed for anti-immigrant policies in 1983, Radio Panik was created to give a voice to minorities. After short stints at two houses in Schaerbeek, Radio Panik moved to an abandoned military barrack at Place Dailly. The building had been in disrepair for ten years and a group of immigrants fixed the water, electricity, gas, walls and rooms. The multicultural station aired Albanian, Belgian, Congolese, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish shows.

Radio Contact Based in a basement accessible only through a maze of corridors behind a row of blighted houses near the Atomium, Radio Contact aired continuous music broadcasts across Brussels for 16 hours a day. One month later, they started producing their own bilingual shows with radio presenters in both Dutch and French. When the station organized a concert in June 1980, they invited popular bands of the time, such as Plastic Bertrand, and created a temporary pirate TV station to air the concerts. Between 1980 and 1987, the station was seized 17 times. In 1987, it was officially recognized and no longer a pirate radio. Today it is one of the most listened to radio station in Belgium. The hundreds of pirate radios established in the 1980s, when almost every village had its own station, died off after government crackdowns or running out of money. Those that transitioned to licensed and commercial broadcasting lost their initial subversive character. While Belgian regulatory and government agencies exert rigid control over the airwaves at the moment, the next group of pirate radios might just be around the corner.

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THE STORY OF HOW LEUVEN’S JEWEL WAS TWICE DESTROYED AND REBUILT By Mose Apelblat

ew libraries in the world have experienced such a dramatic history as the library of the university in Leuven (KU Leuven). Established only a few years after the founding of the university in 1425, it collected rare books and manuscripts over the centuries, only to lose them to France after the French revolution. But much worse was to come during the two world wars in 1914 and 1940.

The great hall of the of the old library in 1914, before it was destroyed.

The original university library building has been located since 1636 in the old cloth hall (currently the University Hall). During the First World War, German soldiers put fire to the building and its precious collections. After the war, a new library with a bell tower was built with American support, with a greater magnificence, and was almost turned into a war memorial. The library was destroyed again directly after Nazi-Germany’s invasion of Belgium in the next world war and rebuilt brick by brick after the war as a sign of Leuven’s resilience and spirit.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;During the First World War, German soldiers put fire to the building and its precious collections. After the war, a new library with a bell tower was built with American support, with a greater magnificence.â&#x20AC;?

Today, the library is a modern humanities library, the main one in a complex of 24 university libraries and learning centres, which attracts both students and tourists. The dramatic history started in 1795-1797 when thousands of books were confiscated and brought to France. Unlike the Grand Beguinage in Leuven, a kind of religious retreat for women that was dissolved after the French revolution, the library was not a religious institution but it belonged to a catholic university, which was closed down by the French revolutionaries.

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were deported to Germany in railway cattle cars. In the fire, around 300,000 books, 800 incunabula (books printed until 1500 in the first years after the invention of typographic printing) and 1,000 manuscripts were lost forever.

The interwar period

Leuven, 1914: Illustration depicting Belgian citizens resisting German soldiers. © Ullstein Bild

The first destruction “One of our professors is currently trying to locate the books in France,” says Hilde van Kiel, director of KU Leuven Libraries, but she is not optimistic about returning them to where they belong. We focused instead on the two calamities in the world wars. There is no doubt that the destruction of the library in WW1 was a wanton and deliberate act by the German army. A permanent exhibition in the bell tower of the library building – admittedly coloured by Belgian patriotism – tells the tragic story that gave rise to German denials in the heat of the war and an outpouring of international solidarity with Belgium. A propaganda war, with cartoons and statements by intellectuals for and against militarism, started directly after the fire. What happened then in Leuven seems to be, in retrospect, a warning about what would happen on a much larger scale during WW2. On 4 August 1914, Germany invaded neutral Belgium. In Leuven, a Belgian counterattack had come to a halt just before the town on 25 August. At dusk, German soldiers fired on each other in panic and blamed the shooting on civilians. On the night of 25-26 August, German troops set fire to part of the town in retaliation for an alleged attack by snipers, according to the exhibition. “This was the beginning of terror that went into history as the sacking of Leuven. When the smoke cleared, it turned out that 2,000 buildings had been reduced to ashes and 248 civilians had been killed.” Leuven was subject to plundering and murder, writes journalist Jan van Impe in a booklet (2012) on the history of the library, which is for sale at the ticket office. Hundreds of civilians

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As soon as the news spread about the destruction of the library, the outside world, especially the US, expressed solidarity with Leuven. An American committee was formed in 1918 after the end of the war, followed later by a relief committee for Belgium. They raised the necessary funding for the rebuilding, promising that donors would be immortalized by inscriptions on the walls. “The task to design the new library building was given to American architect Whitney Warren, known for the Grand Central Terminal in New York. The work took seven years (19211928) and was inspired by imaginary Flemish neo-renaissance architecture in an American style,” says Van Kiel. The new library, located next to Mgr. Ladueuzeplein at the highest point in the city centre, was meant to be become a display of friendship between the US and Belgium. This is still seen in the façade of the front of the building with plaques bearing the names of American universities and sculptures of the American eagle. American presidents and their wives used to pay visits to the library and the American flag is still hoisted over the building every 4th of July. The current president has not visited the library yet, but it is a compulsory stop for any American tourist coming to Leuven. The other

On the night of 25-26 August 1914, German troops set Leuven on fire in retaliation for civilian resistance against their invasion. Half of the city was destroyed.

www.juwelenvanderavort.be

“One of our professors is currently trying to locate the books in France, but she is not optimistic about returning them to where they belong.”

The burnt-out great hall of the old library in 1914. Credit: Leuven University Archives

the library today will be asked to start the tour with exiting the building to have a good look at the façade with all its symbols.

allied powers that defeated Germany are also represented by their national symbols.

Destroyed and rebuilt for a second time

The centre gable of the building is adorned with a four-and-a-half metre tall statue of a militant Madonna, surrounded by two saints slaying dragons, symbolizing evil. A visitor to

The new book repositories under construction after WW2. Credit: Leuven University Archives

But the building today is not the original one reconstructed after WW1. After acquiring more than 900,000 volumes, the library suffered a new disaster in mid-May 1940, just a few days after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Belgium. Again the library was completely destroyed by fire and only 15,000 volumes survived the disaster. Jan van Impe writes that the cause of the second fire continues to be a source of controversy until today. It might have been bombed by mistake by the Allies or deliberately destroyed by the Nazis, who saw it as an anti-German monument. Repairs started as soon as Belgium was liberated in 1944 and resulted in a new building modelled after the old one. The main reading room, full with students and open to visitors, is 44 metres long and 13 metres wide, with two smaller reading rooms left and right. The room was completely destroyed in 1940, with the exception of the original American oak chairs, and had to be refurbished. Hilde van Kiel showed us a display of burned books, a reminder of the fires that destroyed the library twice. The words of the German poet Heinrich Heine springs to mind: “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” The second main attraction for the visitor is the 74-metre tall bell tower. A model of the tower is found in the gallery on the ground floor. A winding spiral staircase, consisting of about 200 steps, brings the visitor to the top balcony where he/she is rewarded with an astonishing view of Leuven.

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“The cause of the second fire continues to be a source of controversy until today. It might have been bombed by mistake by the Allies or deliberately destroyed by the Nazis, who saw it as an anti-German monument.” No wonder that Hilde van Kiel is proud of the library, a true jewel among the many KU Leuven Libraries. “It is a classical and still modern institution,” she summarizes. “The library is overcrowded with students and researchers, who appreciate the atmosphere in the reading room and come there for individual studies and research. Also the public can borrow books after registration.”

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Visiting the University Library Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein 21, 3000 Leuven Opening hours: Mondays to Fridays: 10 am - 7 pm Saturdays & Sundays: 10 am - 5 pm

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HEALING DIVIDING

LIFESTYLE 116-146 p

A new trend has taken off in Brussels. Following citizen initiatives, more and more neighbourhoods experiment with urban gardening, now with over 400 and counting urban farming projects dotted throughout the city. Brusselsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Ministry of Environment even provides guidance, training and money. The initiatives have been praised for providing a positive effect on the environment, health and social integration. The zones absorb sun and produce oxygen, contributing to better air quality, and there is also the added benefit of satisfaction for city dwellers to harvest the fruits of their labour and learn new important skills.

A JUNGLE IN THE CITY BRUSSELS’ URBAN FARMING PHENOMENON By Hughes Belin

russels is much more than a capital with half its territory made up of public parks and private gardens: it is actually a playground for more and more citizens willing to grow their own food, individually or collectively. And more and more businesses are taking advantage of a steady ‘eat local’ trend. How big is urban agriculture in Brussels, and what kind of environmental, social and economic benefits does it bring? “Hello everyone! What about leaves? In view of mulching the containers, a few dozen bags of leaves will be necessary. Leaves in excess will be used to complete our stock of brown matter at the compost. Thierry will soon harvest

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a few bags from his own garden. Ellen suggested getting leaves from Avenue Lambeau: a genuine yellow carpet is covering the pavement. I suggest putting the bags next to the compost at Parc Timmermans….” I get these kind of emails every other day since I’m part of a neighbourhood garden in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. When I registered a year ago, I was looking for some physical activity rather than integrating into a new community or making new friends. But I did, like thousands of other Brussels residents, who devote a few afternoons a month to plough, cut, prune, seed, water, mulch, build and harvest in one of the city’s 400 urban gardens.

“They had their heroine: Liz Christy, an artist, who was throwing seed bombs over fences to transform the areas into gardens. Citizens organised and formed green guerrillas, until the municipality launched a programme to boost the development of these green spots. Today, there are more than a thousand in the Big Apple, and they have spread around the world: Montreal, Tokyo, Berlin, Lille, Paris and… Brussels.”

A new guide to Brussels' urban gardens, recently published by Christophe and Jacques Mercier, describes some of them: Paysages citoyens à Bruxelles – 50 lieux où la nature et l’humanité

ont repris leurs droits (Citizens’ landscapes in Brussels – 50 spots where nature and humanity have reclaimed their rights). The book is a non-exhaustive breath of fresh air and shows the diversity of urban farming and citizens’ initiatives in Brussels. The authors recall the concept's origins in Manhattan’s East Side in New York. Some inhabitants there occupied urban wastelands abandoned by estate speculation. That’s where the first community gardens were born.

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“All in all, some 172 urban gardening projects have been supported in Brussels since the end of 2015.” And they had their heroine: Liz Christy, an artist, who was throwing seed bombs over fences to transform the areas into gardens. Citizens organised and formed green guerrillas, until the municipality launched a programme called Green Thumb to boost the development of these green spots. Today, there are more than a thousand in the Big Apple, and they have spread around the world: Montreal, Tokyo, Berlin, Lille, Paris and… Brussels.

Making the city more edible According to Marc Dufrêne, specialist of ecosystem services and innovation at the Gembloux Faculty (University of Liège), which specialises in agriculture, urban farming ticks the three pillars of sustainable development: it contributes to production, it boosts social integration and it improves the environment and health.

“Colonisation by vegetation of wastelands, rooftops and vertical areas leads to a significant improvement of climate regulation and air quality in cities,” he explains. These zones absorb a lot of sun, produce oxygen, capture dust and help to recycle a big part of organic waste – half of the 400kg of domestic waste produced annually by each inhabitant, in the case of Brussels. More vegetal cover also helps soak up steady rain and mitigate flooding peaks. “Thanks to this living epidermis, the city not only breathes but it sweats,” Dufrêne sums up. But one of the most positive and interesting aspects of urban gardening is its socio-cultural dimension. “It is well known that the presence of green areas in an urban landscape contributes a lot to physical and mental health, rehabilitation after a disease and even life expectancy,” Dufrêne continues. The physical activity linked to gardening improves general health. It helps one become aware of how nature works and conscious of the human impact on it: consumption patterns, eating habits, and waste management.

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But it goes further than that, since harvesting and sharing the fruits of the effort also brings a sense of fulfilment: “The psychological benefits are significant,” Dufrêne says. Urban agriculture won’t solve all of a city's problems, but it can help. “The future of cities will depend upon our capacity to create and innovate to make it more bearable, more edible,” he concludes. As far as economic benefits are concerned, Haïssam Jijakli, who heads the Centre of Research in Urban Agriculture at Gembloux (C-RAU), praises the quality of production from urban agriculture. “It is value creation, since you transform unexploited areas into quality products, within an endogenous economy where money stays local for longer,” he explains. The jobs created primarily benefit a low-skilled workforce, who not only learn new skills, but also reintegrate into society. Public authorities encourage these kinds of initiatives more and more because it increases the value of their territory. The C-RAU recently drafted a 'Good Food' plan for the Brussels Region plus a strategy to integrate urban agriculture, proof that its economic potential is being taken seriously by the authorities.

Grow your own Urban agriculture in Brussels is made of a buoyant network of institutions, associations, lobbies, citizens and start-ups. Let’s explore this lush ecosystem despite the lack of centralised data, given the multitude of players. What is clear is that things have been changing over the last five years, as shown by the number (+33%) and diversity of initiatives. The Brussels Region's Ministry of Environment (Bruxelles Environnement) tries to coordinate the development of urban agriculture by providing guidance, tools, training, advisors, basic information and even money. Their website www.potagersurbains.be seeks to be the focal point for all urban gardens in the region. The Ministry also provides some guidance for setting up gardens in schools, which has seen 84 new projects since 2015. The association Le Début des Haricots has published a guide on starting a collective garden. To grow your own, you first need a place. On its own website, the Ministry displays a unique interactive map, the carte de l’état du sol (a ‘state-of-the-ground’ map).

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This provides a lot of information about each unconstructed spot in the region, which has been validated by the Ministry. It is very useful to know if a certain patch of soil is polluted. Le Début des Haricots advises looking for unoccupied public spaces, urban wastelands next to railroad tracks, unauthorised landfills or flat roofs – and their owners. Then you need organic fertilizer. Bruxelles Environnement launched a network of master composters in 1998. Trained by the association Worms, some 180 volunteers stand ready to share their passion and knowledge of composting. Every year, around 15 collective compost heaps are created – there are 165 in Brussels today.

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Next you need some advice on how to grow your own. The 100+ maîtres-maraîchers (master gardeners) of Brussels are here to help. They are also volunteers and they are coordinated and trained by the association Tournesol (sunflower). Finally, you may want some guidance on how to run your collective garden, which will bring you back to Le Début des Haricots. Since 2007, they have accompanied the creation of dozens of collective gardens in Brussels’ communes. They even set up a unique nursery garden in Saint-Gilles to boost gardening on balconies. Some associations are active specifically in the sector of fruits, because there are already lots of fruit trees in Brussels. The Flemish-Dutch association Velt has mapped out the region’s 100+

“Urban farming ticks the three pillars of sustainable development: it contributes to production, it boosts social integration and it improves the environment and health.”

As far as financial support is concerned, collective gardens in Brussels run the gamut from pure self-management to full support from local associations. Bruxelles Environnement offers up to €3,000 to five projects a year in the framework of its call for projects Inspirons le Quartier (Inspire the Neighbourhood). The Roi Beaudouin Foundation also provides some financing. And finally, the communes themselves are a possible source of help since a collective garden is generally a project to help create or maintain social cohesion in a neighbourhood and usually leads to many satellite activities. All in all, some 172 urban gardening projects have been supported in Brussels since the end of 2015.

Green biz

orchards. They help some gardens in Brussels to grow fruits, such as at Parckfarm at Tour & Taxis (Molenbeek). You can register your tree to get guidance for pruning and help for harvesting within the framework Verger partagé (shared orchard). Flore et Pomone, from Wallonia, take care of the collective gardens of Etterbeek, run by the commune, with the help of a dozen partner associations. FruitCollect harvests fruits from all over Brussels and Wallonia, to give them to social organisations: “We are the link between people who have too much and people who don’t have enough,” says Maxime Niego, FruitCollect’s Founder. They communicate a lot via social networks to make sure they are in orchard owners’ minds when harvesting time comes.

If 79 hectares of land are occupied by urban gardens, the Brussels Region has a total potential of 240 hectares of agricultural land to feed its population. There were 30 professional agriculture projects in the region in 2018, almost twice the number of 2015. Bruxelles Environnement offers training and a chance to experiment to wannabe farmers through the EU-sponsored project BoereBruxselPaysans. Thanks to a few pioneers, the Region already hosts genuine farms such as La Ferme Nos Pilifs in Neder-over-Hembeek (private), La Ferme Urbaine in Neder-over-Hembeek (run by Le Début des Haricots), La Ferme du Chant des Cailles in Watermael-Boitsfort (run by a cooperative of inhabitants and professional farmers), and Betteraves Enz and InnRgreen in Anderlecht (run by Vert d’Iris). Usually these bigger projects are at the heart of many other initiatives regarding fresh food, such as education, training, social, shops, cultural, events, breeding, fruit production, beehives, etc. The overall supply of fresh food is still very small compared to demand in the region (1.1 million inhabitants). Nevertheless, some supply paths are

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“These zones absorb a lot of sun, produce oxygen, capture dust and help to recycle a big part of organic waste – half of the 400kg of domestic waste produced annually by each inhabitant, in the case of Brussels.” professionally organised, either through GASAPs (collective purchasing groups) or directly to shops (e.g. TAN, Färm) or even to restaurants such as Le Max (Schaerbeek) or ChezWawa (Ixelles). Vert d’Iris also has a unique collaboration with Brasserie Cantillon: they have planted a whole orchard of cherry trees which will supply the brewery’s raw material for its kriek beer. And did you know that there’s a sheep farm behind the Erasmus Hospital? Besides the above-mentioned farms, private projects aimed at doing business around urban agriculture are booming in Brussels. Flat rooftops have a bright future, provided the constraints of accessibility, resistance and safety are overcome. “Some companies that own buildings want to give something more to their employees and are setting up vegetable gardens where they can socialise,” explains Stéphane De Swaef from Nimaculteurs. He advises and trains private people and companies on how to set up permaculture gardens. “I train city dwellers who have no knowledge of the agricultural universe,” he says. The association Groupe One, financed by the regions of Brussels and Wallonia, offers guidance to sustainable entrepreneurs with a module on urban farming. Fifty wannabe entrepreneurs are trained annually at their small aquapony farm in Saint-Gilles. Skyfarms, another outfit that offers guidance to future urban farmers, be they private or corporate, has already installed its bags and containers on several roofs or in some courtyards in Brussels. And in 2016, Haïssam Jijakli and Candice Leloup created a Gembloux spin-off called Green SURF, which offers guidance on any urban farming project. Amongst others, they worked on a project at the brand new Delta hospital in Auderghem. Peas & Love, founded by the consultancy Urban Farm Company, has inaugurated an interesting business model on the rooftop of fashion outlet Caméléon in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert. You can rent one of the 71 three-square metre slots for less than

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€9 a week and harvest fresh vegetables and fruits all year long – while a community farmer takes care of the hard work. Finally, even futurist farms without soil are bursting forth in Brussels. BIGH’s 2,000m2 farm, on the roof of Anderlecht’s slaughterhouse, will produce vegetables and fish through aquapony. Meanwhile, Le Champignon de Bruxelles grows Japanese mushrooms on spent brewery grains in the 750m2 Caves de Cureghem underneath the slaughterhouse. And Urbi Leaf grows sprouts with LEDs in a cellar under Ateliers des Tanneurs in the city centre.

Act of rebellion “It’s a strong but fragile movement,” says Christophe Mercier, co-author of the recent new guide to Brussels’ urban gardens. “Today, the situation is a happy one. But to keep the momentum up, we need to be vigilant, because Brussels’ population is growing and it’s profitable to build housing. A lot of urban wasteland will be built upon in the years to come and it will erase some spaces, which have become essential for social and environmental cohesion.” “Public authorities should review their priorities: shouldn’t we first densify already-built areas before throwing ourselves at greenfield building plots? Because most of them have become green spots, necessary to the ecosystem and to the social functioning of the city,” Mercier warns. Soil sealing was the number one environmental theme at the local elections in October because extending the residential environment provokes floods when it’s raining and heat islands during summer. “Kids grow up surrounded by concrete. The playgrounds are overpopulated and often too artificial,” according to the Blog des Jardiniers (Gardeners’ Blog – tuiniersforumdesjardiniers.be) in its ‘Appeal to stop the destruction of the soils’. “It is necessary to recreate new natural areas rather than allow speculative construction.” Coming from the countryside, I didn’t know that city gardening was an act of rebellion. For me, it was natural to maintain a physical contact with earth and nature. But here in Brussels, it’s a challenge and even a political statement. For Mercier, “the metropole has always been agitated by urban fights” such as in the Marolles in the ‘70s and more recently in the run-up to the rehabilitation of Flagey square. “The current re-conquest of green landscapes fits into this historical narrative,” he says.

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Hughes Belin is the author of the first-ever gastronomic guide to Brussels’ European Quarter. After covering EU energy policy for 18 years, he now writes about food and personal development. He won the Louise Weiss prize for European journalism in 2007.

THE BELGIAN GOURMET CORNER

ne of the great things about food is that there is always something new, even with old things. It’s a matter of trend, hype or genuine innovation. You can even innovate and stay traditional. For this winter issue, I propose taking you to Woluwe-Saint-Pierre to discover what a team of passionate people have done with a 1748 farmhouse (clue: a very trendy place). Let’s go afterwards to one of the breweries of Brussels. Not the

oldest, but a modern one that nonetheless makes great traditional Belgian beers. We’ll taste an emblematic food that Brusseleirs are proud of, because it carries the Brussels name to all corners of the world. Finally, winter is the perfect time to stay inside and nibble wonderful creations based on one delicious Portuguese pastry. Food can always surprise us, even with the most traditional of products.

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THE RESTAURANT

L’AUBERGE DES MAÏEURS Brussels has not had any first-class organic restaurant. By ‘first-class’, I mean a restaurant where you can host business meetings or invite VIPs because the food and decor are of the highest quality. This was true until now. So welcome, L’Auberge des Maïeurs! This listed building in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, dating back to 1748, has just got a new lease of life. The municipality has entirely renovated it, after a fire destroyed it in 2009. The décor is beautiful and the mix of old wood and stone makes it very cosy. The chairs in the main room (40 seats) are very comfortable, but I prefer the four benches facing the stunning brass bar in the next room. A third room can be privately booked for thirty people for banquets or business meetings. The kitchen is open: chef Dimitri Strasser (ex-Maison du Cygne) has nothing to hide. Everything is transparent here – it’s a certified organic restaurant, after all. The (French) wines come from Tarzan and Titulus, top addresses for organic and natural wines in Brussels.

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All of the menu’s ingredients are sourced from La Finca, an organic farm-grocery in Wezembeek-Oppem launched in 2012, which also owns the restaurant. Indeed, its slogan is: “From our field to your plate”. The barn at the back of the building will soon offer La Finca products grown in Wezembeek-Oppem and from Walloon organic farmers. The renovated farmhouse is worlds away from what it was before, namely decrepit and dark. But it’s been open for such a short time that it’s difficult to ‘feel’ any soul here yet. At least the marketing – automated booking options, storytelling, a visual identity and even a menu written by copywriters – shows that the restaurant is managed by professionals. Now it’s up to the owners, Sarah Potvin and Jérémy Verhelst and their team, to own the place and give it a new soul. Sarah designed the décor of the restaurant and the bar, which is already a good sign. Quality has a price and the new team has set its sights high.

L’Auberge des Maïeurs Parvis Saint Pierre, 1 1150 Woluwe-Saint-Pierre tel: +32 2 850 40 57

THE BEVERAGE

WINTER MESS Let’s make things clear: we’re talking about Christmas beer. But brewers have noticed that when they call it Christmas beer, they don’t sell it after New Year’s Eve, although it’s perfectly drinkable. Traditionally, Christmas beer was brewed in October (it was even called ‘October beer’ when first brewed) and arrived at full maturity around Christmas because of the colder temperatures. The beer was typically offered to the brewer’s best clients and to its staff. For this special brew, artisan brewers used to exhaust all the malt and hops they had in stock to make space for the new harvest, even using some of it. Hence they created a full-bodied, rich, dark, strong ale-type (high fermentation) beer, which they even spiced up to adjust the taste.

The founders of Brasserie de la Senne, Bernard Leboucq (standing) and Yvan De Baets (sitting). Credit: Alexandre Bibaut

“We brew beers that we like to drink,” says Bernard Leboucq, La Senne’s co-founder. As far as he can remember, he has always brewed a Christmas beer because he can’t imagine Christmas by the chimney without it. It’s available in many Brussels bars either on tap or in bottles and from specialised beer shops. And sold until well after Christmas.

Once it became associated with Christmas, the choice of spices was usually cinnamon, ginger and liquorice – in line with traditional tastes for Christmas pudding, speculoos and mulled wine. The Christmas beer tradition was maintained even when brewing became industrial, which removed the constraints of harvest, storage and preservation. Today, almost all breweries have their own Christmas beer and try to differentiate it by playing with processes and ingredients. It’s become both a marketing product and an opportunity for the master brewer to offer a signature beer. Brussels’ second oldest brewery, Brasserie de la Senne, has its own Christmas beer. It’s called Winter Mess. The label looks like the brewery’s other labels designed by Jean Goovaerts, this time with a personal reinterpretation of the nativity theme. Here baby Jesus comes straight from Picasso’s Guernica painting, surrounded by a mother-donkey and a father-ox. This beer isn’t spiced, but special malts give it its characteristic hint of liquorice and hops along with a citrus finish. For a Christmas beer, it’s on the bitter side, though much less so than a classic ale. This is a genuine Christmas beer perfect to accompany boudin-compote (blood-sausage and stewed apples), quails cooked with juniper berries or braised pheasant in sweet-and-sour sauce.

Brasserie de la Senne Chaussée de Gand 565, 1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean tel: +32 2 465 07 51

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Today, the biggest producer of Brussels sprouts in Europe is the Netherlands. Each plant can produce 1kg of sprouts, harvested in several cycles for optimum ripeness. And that’s by hand - the industrial harvest consists of simply cutting down the entire plant and harvesting all the sprouts at once. Low-calorie, low-carb, rich in vitamin C and K, sulphur and potassium like all cabbages, sprouts are a healthy vegetable. They are harvested from September to March, making them a traditional winter accompaniment. Buy the best ones just after the first frost. They can easily be frozen themselves too, after having been blanched. To prepare them, discard the yellow outer leaves, cut off the hard stem and one or two leaves around it, and wash them in water to which you add a spoonful of vinegar.

THE FOOD PRODUCT

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

Blanch them before cooking, but never eat them raw. They usually accompany meat but they can be pureed and even baked. They don’t need much attention to grow in your (urban) garden, and they are adaptable to any type of cuisine. Did you know that there are even dark red Brussels sprouts named red bull? Have fun cooking them!

You have certainly seen the sticker “Sprout to be Brussels” around town. It stands for the idea that Brussels can offer much more than you think. These mini-cabbages of 2-4cm in diameter were indeed born in Brussels in the fourteenth century. True, ancient types were probably cultivated in Italy in Roman times and subsequently imported to Belgium, but the culture of the sprout, as we know it, officially started in Saint-Gilles. There, gardeners had to increase the yield of their plants to keep up with the rapid increase of the population, which grew much faster than the arable land obtained by draining swamps around the city.

SAUTÉED BRUSSELS SPROUTS A great recipe exclusively for The Brussels Times readers from Catherine Piette, ex-owner of Trop Bon, who is now a coach in healthy, well-organised cuisine. She offers us a very simple and delicious way to enjoy Brussels sprouts. Ingredients: 250g Brussels sprouts, 250g mushrooms, 1 Belgian chasseur sausage (Polish or Morteau sausages are also fine), 1 onion, 1 clove of garlic, 1 tbsp olive oil, salt & pepper. Process: Peel and chop the onion and garlic and cook them gently in a pan with the olive oil. While they are softening but not colouring, clean and chop the mushrooms. Turn off the stove. Prepare the sprouts (see above) and cut them in two halves. Switch on the stove again and add the mushrooms and sprouts to the onion and garlic. Stir well. Cut the sausage in 0.5cm-thick slices and add it to your pan. Stir, cover and cook gently. After 15 minutes, check a sprout: if it’s too crunchy for your taste, give it 5 more minutes of cooking. Serve immediately.

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THE BAR

FORCADO PASTELERIA You don’t need to be Portuguese to appreciate one of their prize food products: the world-famous pastel de nata. The best ones are crispy enough to make a sharp contrast with the pudding inside. Joaquim Braz de Oliveira is an artist in many ways. First, he simply cooks the best pasteis de nata of Brussels (and well beyond). They can be eaten cold or warm and they can be frozen. Second, he’s able to innovate, so he’s not limited by tradition. Thus he proposes many tastes according to his inspiration: lemon, speculoos, raspberry, you name it – personally my favourite is the chocolate one.

These days his son Joaquim (it’s Portuguese tradition to name a male descendent after the father) is managing the place. The décor is minimalist, but the lighting is excellent. If you are a nomad worker, it’s very cosy here with the free wifi while you sip your coffee (another strong Portuguese tradition) and indulge yourself on Joaquim’s sweet creations. Other premium Portuguese products are also on sale: oil, wine, jams, etc. It’s very convenient to get to: take tram 92 to Uccle or tram 81 from Merode. Don’t hesitate to drop in after having visited the nearby Maison Horta.

But he also creates other delicious Portuguese-style pastries. Perhaps it is useful to tell you at this stage that ‘Portuguese-style’ means lots of sugar and egg yolks. So don’t come here if you are on a low-carb, low-fat diet – though he has alternatives for those who are lactose or gluten intolerant. Third, Joaquim has a strong personality. Like it or not, he’s not going to try to please you. But he’s passionate about pastry, you can feel it. I met him a few years ago at his former small pastry shop nearby, opened after the closure of his restaurant next door.

Forcado Pasteleria Chaussée de Charleroi 196, 1060 Saint-Gilles – tel: +32 2 539 00 19 Open Tue-Sun 10am-6pm

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Be connected to life in Brussels Use the Expats In Brussels platforms YOU MAY: • ORDER YOUR GUIDE • CONSULT THE GUIDE • DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE • PLACE AND CONSULT SMALL ADS • ENJOY «NEWS» & «GOOD TO KNOW» ABOUT BRUSSELS

WWW.EXPATSINBRUSSELS.BE

Liz Newmark is a Brussels-based journalist. She is the former Editor of European Environment & Packaging Law and currently works for International News Agency and a number of different Belgian publications.

DISCOVERING THE ARCHITECTURE OF BRUSSELS

Saint-Josse Laeken

Saint-Josse’s stately white town hall - where violinist Charles de Bériot once lived. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse / Serge Brison

o close and yet so far – Saint-Josse, only one kilometre (km) north of the Grand Place, is a different world. Brussels’ smallest, youngest and poorest commune, some 27,000 people live in only 1.1km2 – a population density similar to Bombay’s. But forget the stereotypes. Certainly, many small terraced houses in the rabbit warren of steeply ascending streets from Gare du Nord – rue de l’Ascension sums it up… and the shops and apartment blocks near place Saint-Josse, including 1960s Résidence Aigle and 24-story Tour Pacifique are dilapidated. But walk 500 metres up chaussée de Louvain and you meet a gorgeous array of grand Art Deco flats,

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Résidence Pôle opposite the Observatory is a very impressive Art Deco apartment block complete with expressionist stone reliefs. Credit: Liz Newmark

eclectic maison de maîtres, the odd Art Nouveau gem and grand tree-lined avenues like Paul Deschanel surrounding beautiful place Armand Steurs. Saint-Josse is also surprisingly green. It boasts at least eight parks and gardens, including hidden oases like Jardin Maelbeek, as well as leafy, park-benched streets like rue Bossuet. And the commune, a business centre, buzzes by day. Commuters to Rogier business district or place Madou with its gleaming 34-storey Madou Tower (European Commission) and nearby Fedris and arresting Astro (Actiris) Towers means the population swells to at least 100,000 in working hours, said Laïla El Bied, responsible for tourism in the commune. St Josse is also number two on Brussels’ accommodation hit-list. Its 15+ hotels include architectural Art Deco gems like white pencil-towered Hotel Siru and hyper trendy design hotel Bloom. Saint-Josse is further associated with famous people from revolutionaries Marx and Engels to singer Bénabar – now an honorary citizen. An artists’ enclave, in the late nineteenth century it attracted Gustave Stevens, Constantin Meunier, Auguste Oleffe, even Vincent Van Gogh. In 1881,

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his workshop was at the youth hostel now bearing his name (rue Traversière 8). Another big name is astronomer Adolphe Quêtelet, director of Belgium’s first observatory at place Quêtelet (1826-1832). Surrounding street names like Cadran, Comète, Méridien and Astronomie reflect this. And violinist Charles de Bériot, who married famous singer Maria ‘La Malibran’ of Ixelles, lived at what became SaintJosse town hall. Saint-Josse, which became a separate commune in 1799, was once a rural village around the Senne near place Houwaert, rue Verte and rue Potagère. It even had sheep and a windmill – as rues du Mérinos and Moulin show. “It was a territory of fields for a very long time,” director of the commune’s impressive Francophone library, Dominique Dognié, said. Its boundaries once extended to Ixelles and Etterbeek, including the Cinquantenaire park and European quarter. But in 1853, financial problems forced the commune to sell over half of its territory to Brussels city. Architecturally, the commune is “quite eclectic”, El Bied said. “There are several Neoclassical

Saint-Josse boasts a fascinating bande-dessinée (comic strip) trail, including Vanna Vinci’s delightful ’This is not a BD’ fresco. Credit: Liz Newmark

buildings, but also Art Nouveau, Modernism and new constructions like Tour Actiris and the Covent Garden skyscraper at brand new place Rogier.” Indeed, most of Brussels’ towers are in Saint-Josse. In the 19th century, Neoclassicism ruled supreme. The commune contains many grand houses like Hôtel Puccini (rue Royale 294-296), where the composer stayed, or Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar’s residence avenue des Arts 10-11. Impressive bour� -

geois houses still line rues Marie-Thérèse and des Deux Eglises. The commune also possesses neo-Renaissance Flemish gems, notably the station turned templeof-jazz, the Jazz Station (Chaussée de Louvain 193-195). But Jules Van Ysendijck’s impressive covered market in this style, near Saint-Josse’s neo-Baroque church (place Saint-Josse), was demolished, Dognié told The Brussels Times sadly.

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Léon Govaert’s gorgeous polychrome and sgraffitoed Art Nouveau home. Credit: Liz Newmark

Beaux-Arts buildings also abound, notably the stately, white maison communale (Léon Govaerts) with its conical tower and black fish-scaletiled roof. Victor Hugo’s son got married here. Others include nearby Ecole des Beaux Arts, Ecole de Musique and prestigious mansions like hôtel Vaxelaire (Avenue de l’Astronomie). Turning to Art Nouveau, the Michel Mayeres house (rue de la Potagère 150) enjoys a beautiful bow window and Moorish arch. And Govaert’s gorgeous home (rue de Liedekerke 112) with its polychrome, Art Nouveau sgraffitoed façade even has a winter garden. A few Gustave Strauven houses grace the chaussée de Louvain, while a Léon Sneyers ensemble (22-28 rue de Vallon) exudes Viennese Secession style. Meanwhile, father of Art Nouveau Victor Horta designed the interior of wonderfully intimate Musée Charlier. Its unsurpassed late 19th and early 20th century art collection includes Ensors, Laermans and Wytsmans. My favourite is Jenny Montigny’s charming painting of children playing in a park.

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The Michel Mayeres house is one of Saint-Josse’s Art Nouveau highlights. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

knocked down in 1955) has retro charm with its Brutalist block lettering. And don’t miss the charm�ing Jean-Michel Folon statue ‘La Ville En Marche’ nearby (rue du Progrès). Other Saint-Josse signature buildings are no more. Many saw the bulldozing of the Martini tower, its destruction (2001) poignantly captured daily by famous photographer Marie Plissart – just to build, well, another huge tower (the all-glass Tour Dexia, now Rogier in 2003-2006) as a tragedy. The chaussée de Louvain also suffered. Iconic Art Deco (1927) ‘La Maison Hayoit’ – a striking home textiles shop set up 1927 with its green balconies, gold lettering and original signage (Bonneterie, Ameublement) – shut its doors recently. It followed in the sad footsteps of Michel Deligne’s Curiosity House, Belgium’s first bande-dessinée bookshop. Even clothing discount store Dod has gone.

Cinéma Mirano’s wonderfully retro Modernist façade. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

Art Deco houses are not that common, El Bied said. But there are stunning late Art Nouveau and Art Deco hotels around place Rogier – notably the Palace (Antoine Pompe and Adhemar Lener), Siru (Marcel Chabot, 1932) and Albert (now Hilton Brussels City, Michel Polak). Art Deco further features in beautiful apartment blocks around place Armand Steurs. Résidence Pôle (avenue Galilée, opposite the Observatory), is also impressive, Dognié said, with its Expressionist figure decorated façade.

Nearby, gorgeously Modernist reinforced concrete Mirano and Marignan cinemas (chaussée de Louvain 38-40, 33) are little more than building sites. And the Century (160), after a fire, went years ago. All three were designed by René Ajoux in the 1930s. Striking details like block lettering and bright colours were added in the 1950s. But the future looks bright, El Bied said. SaintJosse has always been a cultural hub, with its theatres (Le Public, Théâtre de la Vie and Ciné Bunker),

Sadly deserted, Antoine Courtens’ Eglise Gésu with its circular tower is a Modernist architecture lover’s dream. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

Stark, red-brick Eglise Gésu – awaiting a hotel conversion project – with its rose window, bleak cross and circular stone-pillared tower is more Modernist. However, this was also built (by Antoine Courtens) in the 1930s. In the 1950s and peak “Brusselisation”, the tower reigned. Successful examples of New York-style skyscrapers with window-walls were Centre Rogier (Jacques Cuisinier and Serge Lebrun, 1958), with its iconic Martini Tower and the Parti Socialiste (now P&V insurance) glass, aluminium and concrete building (Hugo van Kuijk, 1954). Come the 1970s and a lively workers’ district was destroyed to create the “Manhattan” business area. Soulless towers followed, like the characterless IBM building or giant, now deserted, 1970s Sheraton Hotel. At least what remains of the 1952-built “new” Gare du Nord (the red-brick 1851 predecessor was

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Place Armand Steurs is a beautiful square containing the famous sculptures ’Les Carrières’ by Guillaume Charlier and ’La Source’ by Jules Dillens. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

le Botanique, Jazz Station, Charlier Museum, Claridge night club and Arabic Cultural Centre. Its major new architectural project, to incorporate to-be-renovated Mirano and Marignan cinemas, Jean-Michel Folon’s arresting statue ’La Ville En Marche’ near Gare du Nord. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

will capitalise on this reputation. “The Maison des Cultures et de la Cohésion Sociale will open during 2020, rue Scailquin,” she said. “This will offer a multi-functional hall, restaurant and housing – all on 3,000 m2.” This follows the commune’s recent award-winning project – the superb Selimye Mosque (rue SaintJosse 7-11). This has a tower, “in harmony with the architecture of Brussels,” architect Bernard Colin said at its June 2015 inauguration. El Bied’s favourite is the “magnificent 1886 Neo-Gothic bijou” Chapelle Sainte-Julienne (Joris Helleputte). This Romanian church features dreamy-figured frescos, wood details and gold leaf. The commune’s artistic heritage continues with the new comic strip walk around place Saint-Josse, she said, notably Italian artist Vanna Vinci’s stunning “This is not a BD” fresco, rue du Marteau 6 (2013). Or, by night, try the special Sarendip jazz trail near the Jazz Station. The commune’s diversity – 153 nationalities, 60 languages – is amazing, El Bied adds. It’s not just Turkish “Little Anatolia” around the Chaussée de Haecht. “We can eat all the world’s cuisine here,” she said, also praising the commune’s dynamism and youth. Moreover, “people speak to each other here,” she said, emphasising the abundant community groups. Dognié agreed, telling The Brussels Times, “I adore this commune. I get on with everyone, it’s truly ‘un village dans la ville’.”

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(Just one of many)

Saint-Josse Top Fives

One of Constantin Meunier’s statues gracing Brussels’ greenest cultural treasure - Le Botanique. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

1. LE BOTANIQUE CULTURAL CENTRE AND ITS GARDENS, rue Royale 236

The gardens, once a breeding ground for Brussels’ famous chicory (chicon), still contain many varieties of iris – the symbol of the Brussels Capital-Region.

Set in gorgeous green surroundings, from scientific to cultural centre, Le Botanique is home to ‘Les Nuits du Botanique’, impressive, mainly photographic, exhibitions and some 200 concerts a year. It is one of Brussels’ highlights. It was also Belgium’s first botanical garden, El Bied said proudly.

First designed by Charles-Henri Petersen in 1829, the gardens were extended in 1842 and 1854. Post Expo 1958, when Brussels was all about the car, they were drastically cut in two by boulevard Saint-Lazare.

Step inside the fantastic glasshouse designed in 1826 by Tilman-Francois Suys and Paul Gineste, with its huge green copper topped rotunda and long glass corridors full of sprawling tropical plants and goldfish rockpools. It’s an enchanting walk to the Café Bota, whose terraces overlook the beautiful botanical gardens.

They contain some 30 bronze and stone sculptures (out of an original 52). Two were created by the renowned Constantin Meunier. The gardens’ showpiece is a fantastic fountain and lake. The one-time orangerie was also designed to showcase different zoo animals, Dognié told us. The sculptures include eagles, tigers, even a crocodile – echoing Belgium’s then links to the Congo.

Famed garden architect René Péchère – creator of the Mont des Arts – was then brought in to design a geometric French regal garden in the upper section around the Botanique. This leads to an Italian area with star-shaped rose garden and irises. The bottom section near place Rogier is a wilder, undulating, hidden ‘English’-style garden.

The building is an eclectic mix of neoclassicism – note the stone ionic columns – and 19th century ‘iron and glass’ industrial architecture.

In 1973, the botanical collections moved to Meise; in 1984, le Botanique became the cultural centre of Wallonia-Brussels. But its botanical past is reflected in the surrounding street names – Gineste, Linne and Plantes to name but a few.

Le Botanique in snowy splendour. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse/Dieter Telemans

From scientific to cultural centre, Le Botanique is set in beautiful French, Italian and English-style gardens. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

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2. LE CITÉ/ATELIERS MOMMEN, rue de la Charité 37 Take a chance and push the massive wooden door leading to a fascinating other-world. It is often open, and not just on heritage days. Once inside the Victorian-style complex, known as the only artists’ village in the 19th century, you can wander down a narrow cobbled path that ends up at a charming walled garden. The Cité is named after Limburg cabinet maker Felix Mommen. In 1874, he expanded his company to make artists’ studios. Many big names came to work at the Etablissements Mommen. These included famous Belgians Xavier Mellery, Félicien Rops, Constantin Meunier, Théo Van Rysselberghe and Henri Evenepoel. Mommen thought artists should be protected from day-to-day life so the complex is set back from the street. Today at least 30 creators live in this haven of peace, with exhibitions taking place regularly in the salon. The charming interior of the Victorian-style Ateliers Mommen complex. Credit: Commune of SaintJosse

One of Brussels’ secret artistic havens - the Ateliers Mommen. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse / Serge Brison

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The former factory and warehouses were built between 1874 and 1910 by Ernest Hendrickx and Henri Van Massenhove. They have been converted into red-brick Victorian terraced houses. Large windows on the ground-floor ateliers provide the artists with natural light. This creative hub, once used as a packaging centre and paintings stockroom, also houses a multimedia centre and the Brocoli Theatre.

A Brussels’ must-see, the Ultimate Hallucination brasserie is a Paul Hamesse masterpiece.

The Ultimate Hallucination’s sombre façade is marked by olive-green paintwork, a big bow window and intricate ironwork balcony.

3. THE ULTIMATE HALLUCINATION / L’HÔTEL COHNDONNAY, rue Royale 316

down and eat in a real railway carriage booth, designed in the 1930s by another Art Nouveau master, Henri Vandevelde, for Belgium’s railways.

A must-see place to visit when I arrived in Brussels some 20 years ago, this wonderful brasserie was first constructed in the mid-19th century. But in 1904, owner Cohn-Donnay gave free rein to architect Paul Hamesse to transform the venue. Hamesse renovated the space in his signature geometric Art Nouveau style, even adding a cupola.

The restaurant has a chequered past. Going bankrupt at least twice, it was even a nightclub at one point. Reborn and reopen in 2013 as the Ultimate Hallucination, some of the original green furnishings and paintwork have changed, but it is still a wonderful, even “hallucinating”, visual experience. Temporarily shut for roof repairs, the brasserie should be open, in all its Art Nouveau splendour, in time for Christmas.

The magnificent interior of the Ultimate Hallucination contains hidden marble dining rooms with fireplaces, winding staircases and stunning stained glass.

The façade is sombre but marked by olive-green paintwork, a big bow window, an arresting angular ironwork balcony and a swirly green, often illuminated, ‘Ultieme Hallucinatie’ sign. Inside there are hidden marble dining rooms with fireplaces, winding staircases and stunning stained glass. There is even a lovely Neoclassical glass-topped orangerie full of lush greenery and a romantic rockery. Best of all, you can sit

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The starkly Modernist roughcast concrete SD Worx/RVS building was influenced by the Amsterdam School. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse

4. SD WORX/RVS BUILDING, rue Royale 284 Saint-Josse has few Modernist buildings. But this wonderful corner building, with its three extra-long vertical windows with stunning stained glass on one façade, more than compensates this lacuna. The former Rotterdam Insurance Societies (Rotterdamsche Verzekering Sociëteiten) offices were designed by Jos Duijnstee (19361938) in a stark functionalist style, influenced by the Amsterdam School. His name is written near the imposing iron and glass door. Classified in 1988, at the front, the strikingly angular building features bands of windows and a fascinating spire-like construction/ column of light with gleaming yellow block glass. There is even a roof terrace. And enlivening the curved, Ocean-liner roughcast concrete walls are green, black and gold mosaic tile trimmings. The interior, until 2017 housing consultancy SD Worx and to become Saint-Josse administration offices, contains an incredible series of mosaics by famous comic strip designer Ever Meulen.

Three beautiful stained-glass, extra-long vertical windows grace the former offices of the Rotterdam Insurance Societies. Credit: Liz Newmark

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The pool stands out for its mirror-glass, arched ceiling, long bands of windows and two-tiered individual changing rooms (cabines) lining the pool. Each contain two doors – one opening on to the water and the other to a gallery/corridor at the back, encircling the pool.

Look up to see the imposing ’Bains, Baden’, almost Russian Expressionist-style lettering of Saint-Josse’s stunning swimming pool. Credit: Commune of SaintJosse / Laïla El Bied

5. LES BAINS DE SAINT-JOSSE, rue Saint-François 25 It was always a delight to swim in this gorgeous Art Deco domain. There were even special women-only sessions in respect of the Muslim community.

A charming statue-topped fountain sits at the top end of the pool by open showers. Another highlight is contemporary artist Marie-Jo Lafontaine’s beautiful series of swimmers decorating the entrance hall. Outside, yellow brick and French stone walls are graced with Art Deco, almost Russian Expressionist style lettering: “Bains, Baden”. The writing is very similar to that decorating Schaerbeek’s 1957-built Neptunium swimming pool.

Les Bains de Saint-Josse - built 1930-1933 and to reopen next year, stands out for its mirror-glass arched ceiling, long bands of windows and charming fountain. Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse / Dieter Telemans

Shut in 2010, the three-storey piscine with a wealth or original details will finally reopen next year, El Bied assured us. The 1970s formica changing room doors will be wooden again, with the retro 1960s café expanded and relocated near the entrance. There will even be a lift. Built 1930-1933 by Jos Bytebier and Charles Schaessens and classified in 2009, the Bains once offered bains-douches and Turkish baths as well as a pool. In the 1960s, they were renovated/reworked and given extra features like mosaic windows and style 58 Spirou details.

Classified Saint-Josse Art Deco piscine, complete with two-tiered individual changing rooms (it’s a lockerfree zone). Credit: Commune of Saint-Josse/Dieter Telemans

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TASTE THE CULTURE

SPEAK THE LANGUAGE

MEET THE PEOPLE

DISCOVER THE REGION

Film, concerts, theatre in the neighborhood

Dutch courses, workshops for children, practice opportunities

Clubs and activities for children and adults

RandKrant and local information

welkom.derand.be Check out our English, French and German pages or pay a visit to our centres ‘de Rand’, Kaasmarkt 75, 1780 Wemmel T. 02 456 97 80 - info@derand.be

Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling The 500 Hidden Secrets of Brussels. He picks out ten of his favourite hidden secrets in each issue of The Brussels Times Magazine.

DEREK BLYTH’S HIDDEN SECRETS

STROKAR INSIDE A stunning new street art hub has opened in an abandoned Delhaize supermarket in Ixelles. Originally built as a garage, the modernist building was converted into a supermarket in 1971. Its concrete walls are now covered with wild art by dozens of Belgian and international artists. The works include Andrea Ravo Mattoni’s giant triptych based on paintings by Flemish Masters and a series of rubbish bins sprayed with the portraits of Belgian politicians.

Chaussée de Waterloo 569, Ixelles www.strokar-inside.com Strokar Inside

CAFÉ PASTEL

LIBRAIRIE NIJINSKY

Café Pastel opened its doors last summer in a space that was until recently occupied by the restaurant Et Qui Va Ramener le Chien? The owners have transformed it into a relaxed Nordic-style café with a terrace furnished with wooden benches and cushions. They have also brought some vitality to the ancient cobbled Rue Rollebeek by organising Aperollebeek afterwork drinks on Thursday evenings and stringing lamps across the street, making it the perfect new hotspot to take your friends from out of town.

Named after the famous Russian dancer, Librairie Nijinsky used to sell secondhand books in a beautiful town house in the Châtelain district. No more. The owner was forced out by a rent hike. He now occupies a much smaller shop near Place Flagey. Drop in to check out his eclectic stock of books and art magazines, including a small collection of English fiction.

Rue Rollebeek 2, 1000 Brussels

Chaussée d’Ixelles 315, Ixelles +32 (0)2 539 20 28

CAFE CABERDOUCHE This new café on the sleepy Place de la Liberté borrows its name from an old Brussels word referring to a bar used by prostitutes (from the Spanish expression cabe una dulce, or here comes a sweet girl). The spacious interior has been given a Nordic makeover with exposed brick walls, big windows and hanging plants. The menu offers simple homemade food along with an interesting list of craft beers including Boon Oud Gueuze and Goose Island IPA from Chicago. Cafe Caberdouche

COMIC BOOK ROUTE

Place de la Liberté, Government Quarter +32 (0)2 356 14 05, www.caberdouche.be

PARC D’EGMONT

It’s hard to keep kids amused during winter, but you might manage to brighten up a gloomy day by persuading them to follow the comic strip trail. Launched in 1991, the route now features 56 comic book murals dotted around town. You can begin at Central Station where a huge Smurf ceiling fresco was unveiled earlier this year in a passage next to the Hilton Hotel. But that’s just the start of a fascinating route that helps to make Brussels the comic book capital of the world.

This romantic little park hidden behind the Hilton Hotel is the perfect urban retreat, reached down a secret path between two houses. The park has a few benches, some rare trees and a statue of Peter Pan, along with a stylish café-restaurant located in a former orangerie. The city recently put up signs explaining the history of this ancient green space.

www.brussels.be/comic-book-route

Rue aux Laines 1, Central Brussels

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PICCOLA STORE Mamma mia, this little Italian restaurant is the real thing. The owner, Rosalba Astore, comes from the region south of Naples where they grow the best of everything. You eat what she tells you. Sometimes she has spaghetti vongole. Sometimes not. Sometimes there is lemon tart. Sometimes every last crumb has gone. It’s the most authentic Italian restaurant we know.

Piccola Store

Rue Lesbroussart 48, Ixelles +32 (0)498 88 87 86, www.piccolastore.be

BRUSSELS HISTORY TALKS

TERVUREN ARBORETUM

Learn more about your city this winter in a hidden downtown cabaret. Historian Roel Jacobs is giving a series of talks in the charming cafe-theatre Le Jardin de ma Soeur in the heart of Saint-Catherine district. Jacobs aims to shed some light on the Spanish period on 7 and 8 November, the Austrian occupation on 20 and 21 November, and Expo 58 on 5 and 6 December. Tickets cost €5.

Not many people know about the arboretum planted just outside Brussels by King Leopold II. Located near Tervuren, it’s a quiet spot to wander through on an autumn or winter morning. Trees are planted in plots corresponding to continents, so you can begin in a forest that resembles British Columbia, discover a patch of Douglas firs from Oregon, cross a bridge into a Swedish forest and end up in an Alpine landscape. Leopold’s aim was to find out which species could survive in Belgium’s cold, wet climate. Most trees seem to be doing fine.

Quai du Bois à Brûler, Central Brussels +32 (0)2 217 65 82, www.lejardindemasoeur.be

Tervuren, www.arboretum-tervuren.be

BRUSSELS CEMETERY Brussels has several romantic cemeteries dating from the 19th century including the vast Brussels Cemetery in Evere, where you find the graves of burgomasters, politicians, academics and soldiers. Hop on bus 63 to reach this forgotten spot where you can discover the city’s past, admire beautiful tombs and breathe clean air.

Avenue du Cimetière de Bruxelles 159, Evere Brussels Cemetery Passage Du Nord

PASSAGE DU NORD The Passage du Nord used to look a bit faded and dusty, but a 16-year-long building operation has restored the shine to this covered passage built in 1882. The shop fronts have been repainted in the original style, the neoclassical statues cleaned and the lighting improved. Among the shops, you find an oyster bar, knife shop and milk bar.

Place de Brouckère, Central Brussels www.passagedunord.be

146 | THE BRUSSELS TIMES MAGAZINE

Subaru, whatever the weather. Winter is coming, a great time of the year to spend long evenings with our beloved ones. The winter, however, also has a downside: the dark and often wet days are accompanied by difficult driving conditions: poor visibility, slippery roads, low temperatures. For those choosing a Subaru, these difficult circumstances do not exist. They travel with a certain Peace of Mind, exactly what the brand stands for. A Subaru will take you wherever you need to go, no matter what the circumstances are, regardless of the weather conditions. And it does not matter which Subaru you prefer. Every Subaru is safe, fun and tough. Always and everywhere.

Subaru Benelux nv Leuvensesteenweg 555 bus 1 1930 Zaventem For dealers see: www.subaru.be

*Subaru Outback as from 35.895 Euro. (Catalog price 1.1.2018) Including metallic paint; Shown model Outback 2,5i Premium Lineartronic CVT. Limited availability. Combined fuel usage : 7,3 l CO2-emissions 166 g/km (NEDC). Pictures and colors are not binding. More information www.subaru.be Subaru Benelux nv Leuvensesteenweg 555 bus 1, 1930 Zaventem. 02/254.75.11

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