Language Wars .Where better to start than with a glass of Leffe Blonde in the Eierplein. Leffe is a Belgian abbey beer, hence the two languages on the glass. It is now brewed at the Stella Artois brewery and is owned by inBev. The Leffe website is an enjoyable hoot. [Well, it was an enjoyable hoot when I first posted this, but since then they appear to have sobered up the site.] Be warned, the Blonde is 6.6% ABV. Van Eyck at last got his wish, which I recorded in 1967 at the height of the language wars (see below). A clever graffito artist pressed the real artist into service to kick the francophones out of Louvain (as it then was). Today it is Leuven and the francophone part of the university has moved across the linguistic border. There are no bilingual street nameplates in Brugge. This is Flanders and making no excuses for so being. We should finish as we began with a beer and balance out the opening drink with this monolingual glass containing a somewhat squishy monk, as seen in a local shopwindow. |