Free Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson Page A

cannot look at all those long rows of windows without wondering what on earth goes on in there. I suppose there are whole wings devoted to making sure that post-office queues are of a uniform length throughout the community and that a soft-drinks machine in France dispenses the same proportion of upside-down cups as one in Italy.
    As an American, it’s interesting to watch the richest countries in Europe enthusiastically ceding their sovereignty to a body that appears to be out of control and answerable to no one. Did you know that because of its Byzantine structure, the European Commission does not even know ‘how many staff members it has or what they all do’? (I quote from The Economist .) I find this worrying. For my part I decided to dislike the EEC when I discovered that they were taking away those smart hardback navy blue British passports and replacing them with flimsy red books that look like the identity papers of a Polish seaman. This is always the problem with large institutions. They have no style.
    I don’t know much about how the EEC works, but I do know one interesting fact that I think gives some perspective to its achievements: in 1972 the European Conference on Post and Telecommunications called for a common international telephone code for Common Market nations, namely 00. Since then the various member states have been trying to reach agreement. So far not one of them has adopted the code, but give them another eighteen years and things may start to happen.

6. Belgium

    I spent a couple of pleasantly pointless days wandering around Belgium by train. As countries go, Belgium is a curiosity. It’s not one nation at all, but two, northern Dutch-speaking Flanders and southern French-speaking Wallonia. The southern half possesses the most outstanding scenery, the prettiest villages, the best gastronomy and, withal, a Gallic knack for living well, while the north has the finest cities, the most outstanding museums and churches, the ports, the coastal resorts, the bulk of the population and most of the money.
    The Flemings can’t stand the Walloons and the Walloons can’t stand the Flemings, but when you talk to them a little you realize that what holds them together is an even deeper disdain for the French and the Dutch. I once walked around Antwerp for a day with a Dutch-speaking local and on every corner he would indicate to me with sliding eyes some innocent-looking couple and mutter disgustedly under his breath, ‘Dutch.’ He was astonished that I couldn’t tell the difference between a Dutch person and a Fleming.
    When pressed on their objections, the Flemings become a trifle vague. The most common complaint I heard was that the Dutch drop in unannounced at mealtimes and never bring gifts. ‘Ah, like our own dear Scots,’ I would say.
    I learned much of this in Antwerp, where I stopped for an afternoon to see the cathedral and stayed on into the evening wandering among the many bars, which must be about the finest and most numerous in Europe: small, smoky places, as snug as Nigel Lawson’s waistcoat, full of dark panelling and dim yellowy light and always crowded with bright, happy-looking people having a good time. It is an easy city in which to strike up conversations because the people are so open and their English is nearly always perfect. I talked for an hour to two young street sweepers who had stopped for a drink on their way home. Where else but northern Europe could an outsider talk to street sweepers in his own tongue?
    It struck me again and again how much they know about us and how little we know about them. You could read the English newspapers for months, and the American newspapers for ever, and never see a single article about Belgium, and yet interesting things happen there.
    Consider the Gang of Nijvel. This was a terrorist group which for a short period in the mid-1980s roamed the country (to the extent that it is possible to roam in Belgium) and from time to time would