The main attraction is the 96 m high City Hall building. For those who haven’t had the chance to get a closer look, the City Hall was built in the Gothic style during the 15th century and it is covered with a collection of delicate facade statues.

It is estimated that around 750,000 people pass through the Grand Place every day. What’s struck me with awe is that not many people notice or question the City Hall’s asymmetry.

If you look closely you would immediately notice that the high tower is not positioned in the middle or center of the building.

Legend has it that when the architect realized the mistake, he climbed to the top and  jumped to his death. The spot has ever since been marked with a star.

Legends aside. The real reason why the building is asymmetrical is probably due to « the fact that during the 15^th century the building was designed over a longer period by a series of different architects, each of whom was forced to consider the very boggy foundations. »

And the star represents the point from which the distance to the capital is measured or the zero point in Brussels.

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The town of Mons is home to the Mundaneum and served as the precursor to Wikipedia, Google and even the internet. The idea began in the late 19th century when two Belgian lawyers shared the idea of collecting the world’s information and classifying it with their new system: the Universal Decimal Classification – which is still used all over the world today.

Henri La Fontaine, one of pacifism’s most important figures and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Paul Otlet, recognised as the father of information science with his 1934 plans for a global computing network that would allow people to search through millions of documents.

The two men envisioned this project to create a “world city”. To open networks and relationships with Europe’s intellectuals through the compiling of knowledge; aiming to create a global unity that transcended borders and foster peace. More than 12 million 3in x 5in index cards and documents are found in the Mundaneum in Mons, and they include everything from science, history, arts and even something reminiscent of today’s information system – erotica.

The original Mundaneum was in Brussels in 1910, but upon the Nazi invasion of Belgium in 1940, the Mundaneum was damaged and much of the material lost. The museum was then moved in 1974 to an Art Deco department store in Mons and reopened in 1998.

The building now functions as a museum that has space for exhibitions and lectures – all the while still having a vast underground archives centre that contains the original index cards, the founders’ collections; newspapers, postcards, posters and journals – which are reminiscent of the era in which it was open.

Google formally paid tribute to the Mundaneum in 2012 for the symbolic value it held and even created a partnership with its archive centre.

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A small stylized figure meant to depict an astronaut in a spacesuit is on the moon along with a placard of names of astronauts and cosmonauts who have died in the advancement of space exploration. The statute is meant to serve as a commemoration and was installed at a section of the moon named Hadley Rille on the 1st of August 1971 by spacecraft commander aboard the Apollo 15, David Scott, on his third spaceflight and first time on the moon.

The idea for the statue came about when Hoeydonck and Scott met at a dinner party. Scott laid out the specifications for the statue: the sculpture was to be lightweight but sturdy, capable of withstanding the temperature extremes of the Moon; it could not be identifiably male or female, nor of any identifiable ethnic group.

Although later approved by NASA, the statue was secretly smuggled onboard the spacecraft in Scott’s spacesuit to avoid detection. It was only revealed what had been done once they completed the mission.

After public disclosure, the National Air and Space Museum requested that a replica be made for public display. The replica was given to the Smithsonian Institution on 1972.

Controversy later arose when Hoeydonck geared up to sell 950 copies of the statue, claiming that his and Scott’s agreement stipulated his right to do so. Scott denied this, claiming that the art-work on the moon was agreed to be kept anonymous to avoid a policy that forbade commercial exploitation of the US government’s space program.

With pressure from NASA, Hoeydonck agreed after selling just one piece not to sell anymore, and Scott, along with the other astronauts onboard, were summoned to the Senate as a result of being involved in another case on the Apollo 15. In 1978 the Justice Department ruled that although the crew had broken some space-agency rules, they did nothing illegal and were not intending to sell the stamps. Despite NASA would have approved letting them do so had they been asked, none of the crew ever went to space again.

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Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) was classically schooled at a Jesuit secondary school, the Collège du Sacré-Coeur, in Charleroi. At 17, he began studying civil engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven but his studies were interrupted In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I were he opted to serve as an artillery officer in the Belgian army. After the war, he received the Belgian War Cross with palms.

After the war, Lemaître would go on to complete numerous studies in scientific fields. In 1920 he obtained a physics and mathematics doctorate, in 1923 he was ordained a priest and graduated from Cambridge University and later went on to MIT before returning to Leuven university as a part-time lecturer.

Much of Lemaître’s works were applying Albert Einstein‘s groundbreaking theory of general relativity to cosmology, and It was at Leuven University in 1927, that the work for the « Big Bang » theory would begin. He gained acclaim upon publishing a report which stipulated a new idea of an expanding universe, derived from General Relativity; it provided the first observational estimation of the Hubble constant.

Einstein, while not taking exception to the maths presented, refused to accept the idea of an expanding universe. Lemaître recalled him commenting « Your calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious. »

Having taken some time, Lemaître further built upon his theory to conclude the universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the « Primordial Atom« .

In January 1933, Lemaître and Einstein travelled together to attend a series of seminars in California. After Lemaître detailed his theory, Einstein stood up, applauded, and is supposed to have said, « This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened. »

In 1933, Lemaître achieved his greatest public recognition when he resumed his theory of the expanding universe and published a more detailed version in the Annals of the Scientific Society of Brussels. Newspapers around the world began calling him the famous Belgian scientist and the leader of the new cosmological physics.

After which, he was elected to many academic roles within society, Including the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936, which he took an active role there and served as its president until his death from a heart attack in March 1960.

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On the 4th of April 1990, King Baudouin stepped down for 36 hours to allow the bill on abortion to enter into Belgian law.

Abortion has been and is still a huge deal across Europe and the world. Today, only one country in the European Union has completely banned it: Malta. But back in 1990, it was a different story. Very few countries had made abortion legal.

A Belgian solution to a Belgian problem

On March 29 of 1990, after a long period of intense demonstrations, protests, and debates in Belgian society, the Chamber of Representatives adopted the Lallemand-Michielsen’s bill, which partially decriminalises abortion, with a strong majority: 126 against 69, with 12 abstentions.

As in many countries throughout the world, the Head of State must sign the bill before it becomes official. It’s a mere formality that usually does not raise any issues. But Belgium is Belgium. When presented with the bill, the devoutly Catholic King Baudouin told then Prime Minister Wilfried Martens that he could not, in good conscience, sign a law permitting abortion.

The king’s refusal opened a can of worms. First of all, abortion had been discussed and debated for years. Not passing the law would have been extremely polemic. Secondly, since the Chamber represents the people, there was no true justification for the king not to accept what the constituents have decided. The country was on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

To resolve the issue, an exceptional solution was found. Under article 82 of the Belgian constitution (currently  article 93), adopted in 1831, the king may be declared unable to govern after which the Belgian government can assume his authority. It has only been used once in the history of Belgium when King Leopold III was detained by the Germans during World War II.

The king invoked the constitutional mechanism so he could temporarily exit the scene and let lawmakers do their thing. The abortion bill was finally promulgated into law in the early hours of April 4. Thirty six hours later, the Chamber returned for a special vote declaring that the king is able to govern again. Thus, after taking a day-and-a-half break from monarch duties, King Baudouin promptly returned to the throne. A typical Belgian story?

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New York, New York! Yes, the big apple was founded by Belgian, Peter Minuit in 1626. Minuit (1589-1638) was from a family of immigrants that originally hailed from Tournai in southern Belgium, (previously Spanish Netherlands), but had moved to Wesel in Germany to more freely practice their Protestant beliefs.

Minuit’s time in Wesel is notably marked by the good reputation he held in the city. He took over his father’s business, married a wealthy woman named Gertrude Raedts, and was several times appointed a guardian in the city. However, by 1625, Wesel was in economic decline, and Minuit left the city to live in the more prosperous Netherlands.

It was in the Netherlands that Minuit was appointed an explorer for the Dutch West India Company, and it was from here that he set off to the Americas in search of tradable goods.

Once arriving in the Americas, Minuit was introduced to the local native tribes of the Hudson River area and began interacting with them about the purchasing of land. He is speculated to have met with the chief of the Canarsees for the purchase of the island of Manhattan, who was eager to sell the land to Peter for the price of 60 guilders – roughly $1,500 dollars in today’s standards.

The low price for the land, (even for the period), is a misfortune of history often accredited to different cultural perceptions between Europeans and Natives on how they viewed ownership of land. The concept was very unfamiliar to the natives, as they viewed land as a means to live on and not own. And being semi-nomadic, migrating between different areas for the changing seasons, this area likely would have been home to various tribes at different times of the year.

Further speculation for the chief being so willing to accept a low offer comes from the receipt of purchase of neighbouring Staten Island – which Minuit was a part of – consisting of items such as iron kettles, axe heads, hoes, wampum and drilling awls. Meaning that if the Manhattan trade included anything similar, the deal was not just a monetary one for natives but one of technological transfer that would benefit their lifestyle.

After the establishment of Manhattan, Minuit became the highest judge in the new colony and conducted politics in a measure of democracy during his administration. Several mills were built, trade grew exponentially, and the population grew to almost 300.

He was unexplainably dismissed from the Dutch West India Company In 1631 and then began working for the Swedish government in 1636, going on to help found the first Swedish colony in the new world, along the Delaware River.

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Although acceptable in antiquity, homosexuality was associated with sin in Christian Europe and was repressed throughout the era. After the age of enlightenment and the many revolutions across Europe, homosexuality became legal in some societies, like France, and this extended to Belgium as it were under French dominion; which allowed same-sex relations as early as 1795. This is in stark contrast to other European nations, as places like the UK only made homosexuality legal in 1967.

Same-sex unions, however, were a separate issue, and these laws were not revised in Europe until the beginning of the 21st century, with The Netherlands being the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001. Once enacted, this created a domino effect across Europe, with Belgium following the Netherlands just two years after, in 2003; having had domestic partnership benefits since 2000.

This move ensured that gay people in Belgium have all the same marital, adoption, and anti discrimination rights as everyone else. And this sentiment is reflected in Belgian society, as the country had one of the first openly gay prime ministers, Elio Di Rupo, as well as two openly gay ministers.

And as of now, 15 out of the 25 countries that have legalised same-sex marriage worldwide are situated in Europe, with many more European countries seeking to bring in the legislation shortly. But this also coincides with the fact that many European countries have banned same-sex marriage, with Slovakia enacting the law as recently as 2014 and Hungary having repealed previously enstated rights that allow gay marriage and protect gay couples from discrimination.

So for gay activists, they continue to campaign for equal rights across Europe, but at least for the citizens of Belgium, people are free to live and express themselves however they see fit and live in a society that judges them not on preferences, but on the weight of their character.

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You would think that a country would fall apart in the absence of a central government. Just look at how Americans start panicking when their government shuts down.

But not the Belgians who managed just fine with the help of a caretaker government, a well-oiled bureaucracy, and a naughty sense of humour even as their politicians spent a year and a half bickering away.

What was the problem?

Following the 2010 federal elections, political parties elected to the Chamber of Representatives couldn’t form a coalition government because, as usual, the Flemish and Francophones were clashing over policy issues.

Since Belgium operates under a parliamentary system, members of the federal government – namely, the Prime Minister and his cabinet – are drawn from the parties that constitute the coalition government. If no coalition is formed, no federal government will materialise.

Differing opinions on state reforms made it impossible to build a coalition. The Flemish demanded a transfer of additional powers from the federal to the regional level. The Francophones were against further decentralisation of powers since it would reduce federal funding for their less wealthy region.

There were other issues involved, but the stickiest of all was the debate over Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde or BHV.

What was the big deal about BHV?

BHV was an electoral district composed of the bilingual Brussels-Capital Region and Halle-Vilvoorde, a unilingual territory belonging to the Flemish Brabant Province.

As one electoral district, BHV voters could pick from the same list of candidates coming from both Flemish and Francophone political parties since Brussels is a bilingual area.

That meant French speakers living in the Flemish area of Halle-Vilvoorde would have the right to vote for Francophone candidates. The Flemish feared it gave the French-speaking political parties an unfair advantage since Brussels was already largely dominated by Francophones.

To eliminate this unfair advantage, the Flemish wanted to split BHV into two separate districts while the Francophones wanted to keep it intact.

The battle over BHV started all the way back in 2007 following the federal elections. It sparked a political crisis in Belgium which led to cabinet resignations.

After the final resignation of Prime Minister Yves Leterme in April 2010, early federal elections were held two months later but the crisis dragged on until 2011.

How was the crisis resolved?

After about 18 months of negotiations led by various mediators and negotiators appointed by King Albert II, the Flemish and Francophones finally reached a compromise deal in October 2011.

Under the sixth Belgian state reform a.k.a. the Butterfly Agreement, the Brussels-Capital Region became an independent electoral and judicial district while Halle-Vilvoorde was placed under Flemish Brabant jurisdiction.

Several powers were turned over from the federal level to the regions and communities. It was also decided that no more elections will be held for the Belgian Senate, which will instead be occupied by representatives from regional parliaments.

It was Socialist Party Representative Elio Di Rupo who finally brokered the deal after several failed attempts. He also succeeded in forming a coalition government among the Christian-Democratic Flemish party CD&V, the Humanist Democratic Centre (cdH), the Socialist Party (PS), the Socialist Party Differently (sp.a), the Open Flemish Liberals and Democrats (Open Vld), and the Reformist Movement (MR).

On December 6, 2011, a new government was finally sworn in with Di Rupo as prime minister.

How did the Belgians make it through the crisis?

Belgium managed its national affairs under a caretaker government run by Leterme.

King Albert II played his constitutional role as arbiter of Belgian national unity by sending negotiator after negotiator to work out a peaceful settlement. Proof that when all else fails between the Flemish and the Francophones, the monarchy will be the neutral force that holds Belgium together.

Since power is heavily decentralised in Belgium, regional and local governments continued to function even without a central government.

The country’s notoriously complex and cumbersome bureaucracy became a saving grace in a time of crisis. Its multitude of apolitical civil servants kept government services up and running. Proof that your greatest weakness can sometimes be your greatest strength.

Most of all, Belgians handled the crisis with a lot of humour amid serious protests for a new government. With their penchant for self-deprecating jokes, Belgians turned the situation into a source of fun and amusement.

There were calls to boycott sex and shaving until the brouhaha is resolved. Free french fries and beer were also handed out to celebrate Belgium’s record-breaking deadlock. Proof that nothing, not even a crisis, can rattle or break the lah-di-dah laid-back Belgians.

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1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Even if you disagree with their political ideas, nobody could deny the large influence Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had in the History. Lenin relied on Marx’s book, Capital and the Communist Manifesto to instigate the Soviet Revolution and run the Soviet Union. Several countries are still inspired by their work, such as North Korea, Cuba or China. Brussels was a significant place in Karl Marx’s life. He was forced to migrate to the Belgian capital in 1845 after being expelled from both Germany and France because of the political ideology he was spreading. From here, he wrote, together with Friedrich Engels, his most famous book, the Communist Manifesto.

2. Victor Hugo

Few years after Karl Marx moved to Brussels, another very well-known writer made the same decision. The author of Les Misérables is indeed one of the most famous authors in French literature. Unlike Karl Marx, Victor Hugo was not expelled from France. But as a defender of democracy, social justice and the abolition of the death penalty, he was a very serious opponent of Napoleon III. That’s why he escaped from France and came to Brussels in 1851, where he stayed seven months at Grand Place. He then returned to Brussels in 1861 to write Les Misérables.

3. Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers. This major French masterpiece, written by Alexandre Dumas, another famous author who lived in Brussels. Mr. Dumas also moved to Brussels in 1851, the same year as his friend, Victor Hugo. Although he pretended he was forced to migrate for political reasons, the truth is a slightly different. He was facing prison in France because of debts, and he had no other option than escaping his home country. Alexandre Dumas lived in Boulevard de Waterloo for two years. After he reached an agreement with his lenders, he came back to Paris in 1853.

4. Albert Einstein

Probably the most influential man of the 20th century: Albert Einstein. Einstein, who was the mind behind major scientific discoveries, lived in Belgium on and off between 1902 and 1933. His last trip to Belgium was of the most significance. In 1933, Adolph Hitler was elected German Chancellor. While the Jews suffered from the first discriminatory measures, Albert Einstein, who was living in California, decided not to come back to Germany. He headed to Belgium, and stayed in Le Coq for six months with his wife, before going back to the USA indefinitely.

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Belgium 2000 years ago was a conglomerate of various tribes. The main tribes were Gallic and Germanic, and they were distinguished by the languages they spoke. As Julius Caesar came to conquer northern Gaul (Morden day northern France, Belgium, southern Netherlands and Luxembourg), he made a differentiation of the peoples within it. He is noted to have said that there was a tribe separated from the main Celtic part of Gaul in the south, by the Marne and the Seine rivers, and from Germania in the north, with the Rhine river. The main tribe living here was called Belgae – the province hereafter became known to the Romans as Belgica.

Belgica was later divided into two sections: Belgica Prima and Belgica Secunda – with Belgic Prima having Trier in Germany as its capital. As there were Gallic and Germanic tribes living in Belgicia, it’s hard to place what tribe was dominant. However, Caesar says the Belgae were separated from the rest of Gaul by language, law and custom, and they had Germanic ancestry; the Gallic tribes had a balanced influence with the Belgae in the south as many tribal leaders names were Gallic.

Not much of Roman presence remains in Belgium as the lines of Belgica Prima and Secunda have since been redrawn multiple times over the past two millennia. However, one city in Belgium not only claims to be the oldest city, but the only Roman administrative capital within the country’s borders. Tongeren in Limburg is a city with clear Roman roots. It was not only mentioned by Caesar but has the only standing Roman walls in the country. Celebrating of this fact, the city of Tongeren also has a Gallo-Roman museum where you can find out more about the history of the province.

So although their presence is sparsely visible, the impact of the Romans was one of recording the peoples of Belgium in history and highlighting that the diversity of two different peoples has been a part of Belgium since Belgium exsisted.

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