Author(s): Andre de Vries

Travel

From its humble origins as a few huts in a forbidding swamp, Brussels took more than a thousand years to become the capital of the Duchy of Brabant and then of Burgundy, and from 1830 the capital city of the new kingdom of Belgium. Today its name evokes European power politics and miniature cabbages, a world capital of beer, a paradise of chocolates and French fries. André de Vries explores a city and country in perpetual search of an identity, still showing the scars of the Counter-Reformation, peopled by the âÂÂSpaniards of the NorthâÂÂ. He discovers a capital on the faultline between Latin and Germanic cultures, with its improbable hybrid languages. A place ruled by the spirit of zwanze âÂÂself-mockery and derisionâÂÂ, a city so down-to-earth they had to invent surrealism.