The Cultural View

I was 16 when I first went to London with my grandfather, we travelled down by train and stayed at my Uncles' house in Streatham.  There is no easy way to say this but I had never seen so many people of West Indian or African descent.  In the North East of England there was at that time a sizeable Jewish population and to a lesser extent those of Indian and Pakistani descent.  The Indians and Pakistanis ran most of the local convenience shops in our area.  Naively, I thought I had grown up free from any exposure to racist behaviour, the reality was that I had not noticed and therefore thought it didn't exist.

London is how you would describe as cosmopolitan, it is a rich mix of ethnic groups, cultures and traditions.  The reality is that in the UK the population composition has changed a great deal since the Second World War, we have people from all over the world coming from Commonwealth countries, what we used to call the British Empire before that term became a bit embarrassing.  Since the UK joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner to the European Union, the UK has become even more diversified with citizens from all over Europe, former Eastern block countries and now asylum seekers from all sorts of countries.  In essence the UK is a big mixing pot and our culture and identity is changing as a result.  Now this is not meant to be a debate about politics, the rights and wrongs of taking in asylum seekers, border controls, the future membership of the European Union, no.  My aim in starting this off was to explain why I think London is a much more dangerous place to drive and the people seem less friendly than back home in the North East.  I put this down to a lack of understanding and uneven cultural attitudes to driving.

So what has this to do with Belgium then?  Well I think that Belgium being in its central position in Europe and having its connections with former colonies has a similar mix of cultures, particularly in the big cities.  Where it does differ is that the two predominant language groups of Flemish and Wallonian are very conscious of their identity.  So even if there are three official languages in Belgium; Dutch, French and German, they do not really do a lot to help other non-natives out.  If you buy some drugs at a pharmacy in Belgium you will get a leaflet out and the chances are the instructions will only be in either Dutch or French and if you are lucky German.  In the UK if you buy some drugs then the leaflet will most likely be printed in about 8 or 9 languages.  In the UK we seem to bend over backwards to cater for people who do not speak English, in particular in the cities.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that a lot of people in Belgium speak English very well, mainly I have to say this is on the Flemish side.  In the Wallonian side they speak English to a lesser extent and this is probably due to the dominance of French speaking TV and radio.  The Flemish TV has a great deal of programmes and films in English.  These are dubbed in French in Wallonia.  Do I think that they are losing their identity because of this, no, not at all.  I know where I am and the locals are rightly proud of their heritage and they maintain it very well.  You just have to visit one of the local towns when they have an event in the main square, they all have markets and festivals and there is usually a town Prince, which is an ornately dressed person I can best describe as similar in appearance to a Pearly King only more outlandish.

My original intent was to talk about queues and the different attitudes to them, somehow I got onto the composition of the population!  Oh well, next time.