Brussels Capital

By Christophe Cung

Since the invention of cinema, movies about dance have never represented a significant genre and have rather been crouching in the darkness. However, recently a few notable films such as Mathilde (Claire Denis, 2005) and La danse, le ballet de l’Opera de Paris (Frederick Wiseman, 2009), have discreetly succeeded in coming out into the open. Image by Mesple.

by Catherine Castledine

Ask the founder of the Brussels 20km why she started the event, and she’ll tell you it was to make running cool. Now in its 32nd year, the event draws together elite athletes with Sunday morning joggers – and everyone in between. It has become a much-anticipated fixture in the Belgium capital’s calendar.

By Eva Donelli

People sitting and tasting THAI specialties, jugglers on stilts, a quartet of “policemen” wearing blue fluorescent uniforms and yellow socks improvising clumsy choreographies, notes out of tune from a giant karaoke and a row of colorful stands all around the square: a country fair? Wrong. It is Place du Luxembourg on Saturday 7th of May going all Festival of Europe. Institutions open their doors, visitors are welcomed, no badge required.

By Maxence Peniguet (Translated by Rose Kelleher)

On February 8, Belgian personality Marie-Rose Morel died of cancer. That is the headline that might have featured in the international pages of foreign newspapers, but it's not the whole story. Because before being Belgian, Marie-Rose Morel was Flemish. And before dying of cancer, she had been elected to the extreme right.

In collaboration with the national platform Pas en notre nom/Niet in onze naam, 30 students' organisations from throughout the country have organised a “frites revolution” for tomorrow, Thursday 17 February.

Their beef? Political deadlock and the spectre of the division of Belgium.

By David Tempere
Translated by Charlotte Van Calster
On Sunday, October 17th 2010, a group of young Europeans launched a strong message against poverty at the Memorial for Victims of Poverty in front of the European Parliament in Brussels. In cooperation with Belgian organisation ATD Vierde Wereld, they call themselves Djynamo! Coming from all over Europe, they had been working on getting their message out there for over a year. Cafebabel Brussels was curious about what exactly it is that they want to achieve and about what it is that makes them tick...

The open minded, art-for-everyone spirit is alive and well in Brussels. This is thanks to a wealth of young, talented artists and collaborative-minded organisers, like the founders of Plastic. Not to mention a generation of obsessive facebookers and social networkers. So what do you do in Brussels when you are a young, gifted and insanely connected? You exhibit in unusual places and crank up the electronic music.

By Rose Kelleher

“At sunset, when my kids said to me ' I want to eat this and that' I said “No. We are going to have soup.” Nadia Hachim is tired. But that's okay. It's all in the name of God. The past month she has been fasting, reflecting and avoiding excesses, particularly culinary ones. Since August 11, Brussels Muslims have put down their forks during the daylight hours, and lived a simpler and more careful existence.

Come on, sunset!

Ramadan, the observation of which is one of the pillars of Islam, fell in the summer this year. Thankfully Belgium's less than scorching climate means that the city's Muslims were not too physically challenged during this holy month of fasting, prayer and good deeds. “The first day was very difficult for me.” says Nadia. But she quickly got over it. “It's all psychological. Now I'm not even hungry anymore.”

By Anna-Karin Friis

The Scandinavians in Brussels can be traced by following the flags in Etterbeek and Ixelles: the Finnish church and café in Rue du Luxembourg, the Scanshop in Place Jourdan and even a Scandinavian hairdresser in Avenue d’Auderghem! A stroll through these emblematic contact points on Misummer Day does not reveal the Swedes letting loose by jumping around the Midsummer pole in any awkward postures. Quite to the contrary; some Scandinavians have given up on their tradition.

At Brussels' very city centre, close to everyone and everything, lies De Markten or literally translated 'The Markets'. De Markten is a community centre that offers a wide range of cultural as well as other activities, together with a lot of social contact and pure cosiness. And when, after having completed your cultural activity/ies, your throat needs instant refreshing or your stomach would like nothing better than to be filled (and stretched) with food, you're always welcome to go and do exactly that in the bar by the community centre. For the old as well as the young, for art lovers as well as theatre lovers, for everyone...
Photo: © PitsLamp photography/ Flickr