Linda Gasparello

‘American’ Middle East Universities in Danger

September 1, 2016 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

By Linda Gasparello

The attack on the American University of Kabul opens a new chapter on impeding access to liberal education in Afghanistan. It is a chapter that could be opened in as many as 18 American universities across the Middle East and North Africa.

The American University, located on five acres in the Afghan capital, opened in 2006. It is the only private, not-for-profit and co-educational university in the war-devastated country. It offers its 1,700 full- and part-time students a liberal arts and sciences curriculum taught in English. Many receive U.S. government-funded scholarships.

In 2008 then-first lady Laura Bush — who made access to education in Afghanistan one of her causes — helped to secure $42 million in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development for the American University. The State Department reportedly considers it to be an important symbol of the partnership between the United States and Afghanistan, and it has educated many Afghan government and non-government group officials who are trying to build a modern country.

Other American universities in the Middle East and North Africa – between nine and 18 – that receive U.S. government support also promote critical thinking and a liberal arts and sciences curriculum. The oldest of these, the American University in Beirut, has been doing so since its founding by American missionaries in 1866 as the Syrian Protestant College. Its mission statement says, “The university believes deeply in and encourages freedom of thought and expression and seeks to foster tolerance and respect for diversity and dialogue.”

As Michelle Evans, student life coordinator at the American University in Cairo (AUC), the second-oldest American-brand institution in the Middle East, told U.S. News & World Report, “The mission and values of an American university is to cultivate a well-rounded, independent thinker who is ready for the challenges of the world.”

As a graduate student on a U.S. government-funded scholarship to AUC in the late 1970s, I saw how important it was to have such an institution in a country that was trying to modernize. AUC students were exposed to so many more courses and ideas than students at the national universities, including Cairo University, who took classes only within their discipline. I felt they would be the most ready and able to carry out the “opening up” (or infitah) to the West that President Anwar Sadat was beginning in 1977.

Remarkably, as strongholds of Western education and values, AUC and other universities did not suffer lethal attacks during the civil wars in Lebanon, Arab anger at President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, or the Arab Spring. But there have been attacks on them, and I experienced one at AUC in 1977.

On a January afternoon, I was enjoying coffee with friends in the interior garden of the university when we heard a faculty member shout,“There’s a riot outside. Go home! Go home now!” Rioters pelted the university with stones, breaking windows. The stoning stunned everyone because the university — and America — was held in such high esteem in Egypt. The school’s librarian, a well-born Egyptian matron, said to me, “Who would do such a thing?”

We soon learned just who.

Thousands of poor Egyptians took to the streets in anger over Sadat’s economic liberalization, specifically a government decree lifting price controls on bread and other basic necessities, acceding to an International Monetary Fund request. The countrywide Bread Riots lasted for two days, and rioters destroyed 120 buses and hundreds of buildings in Cairo alone. But the American University was spared.

The Bread Riot protesters threw rocks; today’s Islamists, motivated by ideology, will toss bombs.

The attack on the American University of Kabul was a seminal event. Now the venerated American universities in the Middle East and North Africa will be even more vulnerable than they already are. — For InsideSources

For Lutetia

November 16, 2015 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

Fluctuat nec mergitur

O Lutetia, you’ve seen these seas before;

Seas roiling, and red with blood.

Raise your head now bowed in sorrow. Look up!

Montmartre: the Mons Martyrum,

Where gore and gaiety have embraced in a danse macabre

For centuries. During the siege, did you despair, Clovis?

Or you, Henri? Wasn’t the city well worth a Mass?

Terror has rained down on you. You’ve emerged confident.

Liberté, Liberté cherie

Tonight your proud tower is dark.

You are tossed but not sunk.

— Linda Gasparello

Vietnam Diary: Ho Chi Minh City

September 24, 2015 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

By Linda Gasparello

In Ho Chi Minh City, the steeples of Notre Dame Cathedral and other French colonial-period churches no longer dominate the skyline. Tower cranes are everywhere as scores of high-rise buildings are going up in this city of 8 million, which is widely still called Saigon.

This city is a hive for the young – 60 percent of Vietnam’s population is under 30, and 85 percent is under 40. Educational attainment is rising fast. In Ho Chi Minh City, there are more than 80 universities.

“Young Vietnamese are eager to learn,” said Duc Anh, one of the city’s young entrepreneurs. And earn.

Wearing shiny helmets, cowl scarves pulled up to their noses, jackets and gloves, young Vietnamese swarm the streets on their motorbikes.

Mobile Mom. A young mother, with a rattan high chair perched on her motor scooter, waits on tiptoes.

Mobile Mom. A mother, with a rattan high chair perched on her motor scooter, waits on tiptoes.

Those with dash and cash head, for example, to the Vincom Center, a twin-towered, glassy mega mall in District 1, the city’s center. They hang out in the district’s burgeoning home-grown coffee chains with European-cafe (the French introduced coffee to Vietnam in 1857) ambiance, including Phuc Long Coffee and Startup Coffee. And they club the night away.

But modernization hasn’t come to all of the city’s 24 districts (19 urban and five rural) at a high-octane rate. Traditional culture is parked everywhere from the streets lined with shops carrying just one type of product, to the pungent food stalls in the Binh Tay Market in Cholon, the city’s huge Chinatown, to The Jade Emperor Pagoda, a multi-faith temple, built by the Cantonese in 1909, where turtles swim in the fetid courtyard pools and people pray in a fog of incense smoke.

Sacred swimmers. Hundreds of turtles swim in a pool at The Jade Emperor Pagoda.

This diary will meander from Ho Chi Minh City to Nha Trang, a buzzy seaside town, also the capital of Khanh Hoa Province, on the south central coast of Vietnam.

Landmark Meeting

In July, I traveled to Vietnam with my husband, Llewellyn King. It was our second trip to the country in six months, and in a year that marks two important anniversaries: the 40^th of the end of the war with the United States, and the 20^th of the normalization of diplomatic relations.

During our trip, a milestone in Vietnam-U.S. relations was in the making: Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Vietnam Communist Party, met with President Obama at the White House.

“As you heard, I got an invitation to Vietnam. And I think this is indicative of the remarkable progress that’s taken place in the relationship between our two countries over the last 20 years,” Obama told reporters in the Oval Office, following his meeting with Trong on July 7.

“Twenty years is a long period of one’s lifetime. Yet, it is merely a fleeting moment in the long history of relations between nations,” Pham Binh Minh, deputy prime minister and foreign minister, wrote for a news site of the state-run Vietnam News Agency. “Few people could have imagined that Vietnam and the United States would make such great strides in their bilateral ties after two decades of normalized relations.”

Since May 2014, when a fierce fight over sovereignty broke out between communist neighbors Vietnam and China, causing relations to plummet to their worst level in three decades, those strides have become more vigorous in defense. In October that year, the United States decided to partially lift its ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam. And three months ago, the two countries announced a Joint Vision Statement to increase defense ties, bolstering the comprehensive political and strategic partnership established in 2013.

Trade between the Vietnam and the United States has grown by leaps and bounds. “From a modest figure of $400 million in 1994, bilateral trade has increased 90-fold to $36.3 billion in 2014. With $30.6 billion in exports to the United States in 2014, Vietnam became ASEAN’s No. 1 exporter to the U.S. market: Vietnam even surpassed India and joined the list of top 10 net exporters to the world’s largest consumer market,” Minh wrote in his July 7 article.

Currently, the United States is the sixth-largest investor in Vietnam, with direct investment of $7 billion, reaching $9 billion with the addition of investment via a third country. In two or three years, the United States will become the top investor in Vietnam, a place now held by South Korea, predicts Matthew Daley, chairman of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council. In early May, the council sponsored a group of 23 U.S. businesses on a visit to Vietnam – the largest-ever U.S. business group trip to the country.

It won’t be long before the “Made in China” labels in your clothes and other products will be replaced with “Made in Vietnam” labels. Not long at all: the Chico’s brand sweater I’m wearing has that label.

Crisp Currency

The Vietnamese don’t like creased or crumpled currency. I found this out when I tried to change a $20 bill at the Pullman Saigon Centre, a five-star hotel, in Ho Chi Minh City.

I handed Giang, a front desk clerk, a neatly folded $20 bill, and asked her to exchange it for dong. She handed it right back to me with two hands, saying, “We cannot change it; only new bills. It is a law since 2006.”

By new, she meant hot off the U.S. Mint presses. “Money is money; crisp or crumpled,” I protested.

“No,” she said, “In Vietnam it is not. And so many visitors here are sad when I cannot change their money.” And mad, too, I thought.

I’m not sure there is such a law, but there is a tradition of crisp currency in Vietnam.

“In general people prefer notes to be shiny, new, crisp and unfolded. Traditionally money is given in the New Year, at weddings and other family occasions. Fresh, new notes are considered ‘lucky,’ while grubby, crumpled, soggy notes are very much frowned upon,” according to Jonny Platt, a Briton who has lived a decade in Ho Chi Minh City and writes the Vietnam Travel blog.

“When paying for goods or services, it is polite to straighten the notes and to hand them to a vendor with two hands, making eye contact as you do so,” Platt advises in his blog.

Sweet Thy

When in Ho Chi Minh City, get a guide. That’s my advice.

Mind you, as a lifelong traveler, I love meandering in a city. But when I’ve toured a city with a good guide, it’s really paid off.

Hiring one can be a crapshoot, but my husband and I lucked out twice in this buzzy southern city.

We took two city tours, morning and afternoon, offered by Saigontourist, a state-owned holding company with investments in the hospitality (including the Pullman) and tourism industries. Small and medium-sized, independent tour operators are cropping up, but they’re up against a government giant: I was told, for example, that Saigontourist is one of two companies allowed to provide tours to the cruise ships making calls in Vietnam’s southern ports, which are becoming industry hot spots.

Both guides may have been government employees, but they were anything but dull, especially our afternoon guide, Anh Thy. Indeed, the booking agent said, “You were very lucky. She was a history teacher. She is famous in Saigon.”

During our four-hour tour with Miss Thy (pronounced “tea”), we learned that she was a gifted anthropologist and comedian. Our tour included a visit to the Ben Thanh market; The Jade Emperor Pagoda; the Reunification Palace; and a cyclo ride in Cholon, the Chinatown that dominates the western part of the city.

On one street, Miss Thy pointed out a Fruit Shake shop that sells nuoc ma, sugar cane juice. “We like that drink. So sweet, you don’t have to sweeten it,” she said, adding, “Sugar-cane juice in Fruit Shake with many flavors becomes a high-class beverage in Vietnam.” It’s also a refreshing drink sold all over the country in lowlier stalls and carts.

Miss Thy gave us this food and beverage rule of thumb: Hanoi, located in the North, hot and salty; Hue, in the central part of the country, hot and spicy; Saigon, cold and sweet.

As for coffee, Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of Robusta coffee, a bean variety that coffee experts consider inferior to the Arabica type. But the Vietnamese don’t give a hill of ’em about that, and brewed Robusta is a top drink thanks to Vietnamese ingenuity, which you’ll see everywhere from their agricultural practices to exquisite handicrafts to major engineering projects, to the way millions of motorcyclists know where to buy gas in Saigon, where there are few gas stations — Hint: Look for an upturned brick on a sidewalk, and you’ll find a man with a gas can.

In Ho Chi Minh City and elsewhere in Vietnam, coffee is prepared using a small, metal drip filter. “In the South, we like our coffee cold and sweet with [condensed] milk.” If you crave an Americano or a cappuccino, you can order one at the proliferating European-style coffee shops, like the local My Life Coffee, or the Australian chain, Gloria Jean’s. And they often come – thanks to Vietnam’s French colonial past and current culinary trends – a macaron.

French twist. Coffee is served at the Pullman Saigon Centre Hotel with a macaron.

Another one of Miss Thy’s food and beverage rules of thumb: “We drink coffee in Saigon; in Hue, they drink coffee and tea; and in Hanoi, they drink tea, like the Chinese.”

ISIS Is Turning the Cradle of Civilization into a Grave

March 17, 2015 by Linda Gasparello 1 Comment

There is horror in the recent news that the Islamic State bulldozed the ruins of two of the greatest Assyrian cities, Nimrud and Nineveh. And there is irony. These ancient cities, located in what is now northern Iraq, were built by a ferocious people whose profession was war – people for whom the Hebrew prophets, including Isaiah, Nahum, Zechariah and Zephaniah, reserved some of their fiercest denunciations.

In the 9^th century B.C., Assurnasirpal II, a brutal militarist, erased entire nations as far as the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, stretching through what is now Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel. But he restored the ancient city of Nimrud and established his capital there. His magnificent Northwest Palace, first excavated by the British explorer Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s, was probably completed between 865 and 869 B.C. Its dedication was celebrated with a banquet for 70,000 guests.

Sennacherib, who moved the capital to Nineveh in 704 B.C., was as bellicose as his forefathers. When the city of Babylon rebelled against his despotic rule, Shennecherib destroyed it, saying, “ The city and its houses, from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. The wall and outer wall, temples and gods, temple towers of brick and earth, as many as there were, I razed and dumped them into the Arahtu canal.” But in Nineveh, he built a palace decorated with precious metals, alabaster and woods. Mountain streams were diverted to provide water for the city’s parks and gardens, resplendent with trees and flowers imported from other lands – along with captives who were enslaved and brought back to Assyria to build and tend them.

It is a wonder that these Assyrian kings who were capable of such ruthlessness were also capable of building cities filled with such majestic architecture.

In the 1970s and 1980s, in the time of another ruthless leader, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi antiquities board reconstructed large parts of Assurnasirpal II’s palace, including the restoration and re-installation of the carved-stone reliefs lining the walls of many rooms, according to Augusta McMahon, professor in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge.

“The winged bulls that guard the entrances to the most important rooms and courtyards were re-erected. The winged bull statues are among the most dramatic and easily recognized symbols of the Assyrian world,” McMahon wrote in a BBC report.

Nimrud, she added, “provided a rare opportunity for visitors to experience the buildings’ scale and beauty in a way that is impossible to find in a museum context.”

That is lost for all of us, now and in future generations.

Fortunately, a significant number architectural artifacts from Nimrud and Nineveh are housed safely in museums in Europe and North America, including the limestone and alabaster reliefs, portraying Assurnasirpal II surrounded by winged demons, or hunting lions or waging war, and the monumental, human-headed winged lions that guarded important palace doorways, currently displayed in the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

As if the loss of Nimrud and Nineveh were not horrible enough for world heritage, ISIS continued its campaign to eradicate ancient sites it says promote apostasy last week by leveling the ruined city of Hatra, also located in northern Iraq, founded in the days of the Parthian Empire over 2,000 years ago. Hatra’s massive walls withstood attacks by the Romans.

Irina Bolkova, director-general of UNESCO, said, “The destruction of Hatra marks a turning point in the appalling strategy of cultural cleansing underway in Iraq.”

I hope it does. And I hope that what Zephaniah prophesized for Assyria will befall the Islamic State: “Assyria will be made a desolation.” –For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Hanoi Diary

March 12, 2015 by Linda Gasparello 1 Comment

Making your way through the traffic in Hanoi, whether by foot, bike, motorbike or automobile, is like playing the game of pick-up sticks.

In the game, a bundle of 50 sticks is released on a tabletop. Each player in turn tries to pick up a stick from the jumbled pile without disturbing any of the others. It is a mentally and physically challenging game.

When the pile is gone, the player with the most sticks wins. Like a pick-up sticks player, a pedestrian, bicyclist or motorist becomes a winner when they have picked a path unharmed through Hanoi‘s traffic tangle.

During my December visit, I saw few traffic accidents in the city. Considering the millions of motorbikes (often ridden by a mother with an infant sitting on her lap and a child clinging to her back, or a deliveryman obscured by his cargo) that cross paths with those of cars, buses, trucks, people pulling handcarts, bicycles and pedestrians, that is a miracle. Or, maybe, it is just common courtesy.

Speaking of tangles, I have never seen anything quite like the mess of overhead power lines, telephone and television cables in Hanoi. The wires, all twisted together and hanging from poles or banyan trees, look like mad dreadlocked hair.

These wires are an eyesore and a huge public hazard.

In June 2013, the English-language daily Viet Nam News reported, Nguyen Thi Nga, a resident in Hai Ba Trung District’s Lang Yen Street, received an electric shock while opening her shop door near an electric pole after heavy rain. Even though uninjured, she has a panic attack when she thinks of it.

“ ‘The whole area is covered with messy and dangerous wires, and they threaten local lives when it rains,” said Nga, adding that after big rains last year, electric discharges damaged many appliances in nearby homes.”

Electric poles holding hundreds of heavy, tangled wires particularly threaten residents in the capital city’s old tenement houses. A group of tenement houses at 30 Pham Van Dong Street is an example, Viet Nam News reported. “Many loose wires hang down from power poles and some even touch the heads of passers-by.

“ ‘Wires even hang down near the public playground, which threatens out children’s safety, said Dam Thi Diu, a 33-year-old resident in Tu Liem District, adding that promises to clean up the problem had been made many times.”

Vu Quoc Hung, deputy director of the Ha Noi Power Corporation, told Viet Nam News that “Hanoi will try its best to have the cables buried on 321 city streets by 2015.” That effort is now coming down to the wire.

The Red River runs through North Vietnam and its folk theater, which includes Cheo and water puppetry.

Dating back to the 11^th century, water puppetry was created by Red River Delta rice farmers who built simple stages on the surfaces of ponds and paddy fields. The shows were supposed to entertain the villagers and the spirits, so that they wouldn’t make mischief.

Nowadays, water puppetry is performed at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater in Hanoi. After entering the theater, you walk up a narrow, wooden staircase to a first-floor landing. Wooden puppets, laquered white — and some around 30 pounds — are piled on the floor.

The puppets perform in a big pool of water; they enter the water stage through a curtain strung behind it. They are controlled through a pole-and-string rig, hidden beneath the water surface, by eight puppeteers standing in waist-deep water behind the stage.

Musicians, sitting on one side of the pool, provide music and sound effects on traditional Vietnamese instruments. They also do the puppets’ voices.

The night I went to the Thang Long theater, the program included a folk music opening, followed by a 14-scene water puppet performance portraying rural life (planting rice, fishing, chasing the fox that tries to catch ducks); sacred animals (dragon, unicorn, tortoise and phoenix danse); and national history (Le Loi, a 15^th-century hero, returning a sword to Kim Quy, the Golden Tortoise God, on a lake in Hanoi).

The puppets, either vividly lit or shrouded in fog, moved on the water stage like ballet dancers, twirling, diving and swooping in intricate patterns. At the end of the performance, the puppeteers emerged from the water to take a dripping bow.

Water puppetry is a preserved art form. “The secret of how water puppet shows work has been kept quiet for centuries. The puppeteers even have their own dialect and codewords to prevent someone from overhearing talk of a particular technique,” according to the Thang Long theater.

“Trying to figure out exactly how puppeteers can control the intricate movements blindly is part of the magic of each water puppet show. Great shows of skill include passing objects from puppet to puppet and other coordinated movements, which have to be done by instinct rather than sight. The musicians, who can see the puppets, sometimes shout code words to warn the puppeteers when a puppet is not where it should be.”

The performance I saw delighted children, adults – and, not doubt, spirits with mischief on their minds.

China has its Peking Opera. Japan has its Noh Opera. Vietnam has its Hat Cheo theater. Tales of life in North Vietnam’s Red River Delta are told through musicals at the Cheo theater, Nha Hat Cheo Vietnam, in Hanoi.

This form of musical theater (“hat” means “to sing”) satirizes social classes in North Vietnam, from farmers, monks and students to wealthy people, dates back to around the 11^thcentury. Until the 16^th century, these musical tales were performed by traveling, amateur troupes in village squares and building courtyards. Today, they are performed by professionals at Nha Hat Cheo Vietnam, a theater in Hanoi.

Hat Cheo has little in the way of scenery, costumes and makeup. The accompanying orchestra comprises drums, bamboo flutes, fiddles, lutes and zithers.

Every Friday and Saturday night at 8 p.m., the Hanoi theater offers a top-of-the-pops program, titled “5 Most Favored Lyrics of Cheo Art Music.” The program is “a new and innovative approach to introducing audiences to the traditional Cheo art,” according to the theater.

There’s no place like Hang Ma Street for the holidays – any seasonal holiday, from traditional Vietnamese to Christmas.

Christmas is celebrated in Vietnam, and widely across Asia, as a major shopping holiday. And in December, Hang Ma shops were brimming with yuletide treasures: synthetic Christmas trees leaning against front windows; Santa Claus suits and hats in all sizes, from baby to daddy, hanging from rafters; ornaments, tinsel and wrapping paper crowding shelves; and glitter banners reading “Merry Christmas” adorning entrances.

: The legendary white horse of Hanoi.

Instead of a full-length musical, the program includes pieces played by the Cheo orchestra and individual members. One piece, titled “Ways To Pass the Hardship and Sorrows,” is played on a bau, a one-stringed zither which makes a soulful sound. Another piece, titled “Xuy Van Sharing Her Sad Mood and Broken Heart,” is played on a bamboo flute.

The program closes with the orchestra playing “Fate of a Bad Luck Lady,” a piece with a decidedly downbeat title. After hearing it, audiences may wonder whether to give the musicians a standing O, or a standing Oh dear!

*****

On the road from Hanoi to Halong Bay, you’ll see mile after mile of industry. In fact, almost no stretch of the 100-mile-long, main highway is without some form of industry, from single human to heavy.

Just across the Red River, on the outskirts of Hanoi, I saw workers with bodies shaped like question marks tending rice fields. An hour away, I saw mountains with red gashes from clay mining; a nearby village had bricks and clay pottery stacked high in front of shops. Passing through another village, I saw garage-like shops displaying elaborately carved, wooden furniture – massive bed headboards, dining sets and sofas fit for the palaces of ancient kings, or the new Vietnamese McMansions.

Nearing Halong Bay, there is a dreary stretch of highway. The road and villages are covered in soot. “This is a coal-mining area,” my guide, Tran Huong, said. I didn’t need to be told.

: The Old City temple courtyard, strung with birdcages.

Between these villages, I saw all sorts of highway vendors: women in triangular straw hats, selling fruit and vegetables, squatting on the side of the road, their toes within inches of bicyclists and speeding vehicles; men keeping a nonchalant eye on black sandals and shoes, displayed in rows, looking like dashed lines along the highway.

The industry of the Vietnamese is one of the country’s wonders.

Fade to Gray

September 16, 2013 by Linda Gasparello 2 Comments

They walk in line, trunk to tail,

To their watering holes. Drink —

Innocents drink the water.

Then forty-one trumpets sound;

Bellowing, they all fall down.

The elephant's child is dead.

In-Box: Bedtime Story

September 4, 2010 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

Joe Mathieu, host of POTUS (Politics of the United States) on SiriusXM Radio (Channels 110 and 130). fowarded this e-mail to us. Pete Dominick, his SiriusXM colleague, was the original recipient:

From: Michael de Montreul

Date: Aug 29, 2010 4:15 AM

Subject: Hail to the King

Pete,

I hope your show went well. If you didn’t catch The Press Pool on Friday, you missed Llewellyn King in top form and I highly recommend giving it a listen. My wife and I have decided that we would like Mr. King to read us a story every night, give us a big hug, tuck us in and tell us everything will be alright. the man has such a gift for language, capacity for nuance and a nose for bullshit.

Mike from Clinton, BC

Letter to the Site

May 22, 2009 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

Hello, young man (I’m 90). I was listening to your reaction [on Sirius XM Radio, Channels 110 and 130] to the diatribe against you, when you evidently said something favorable about socialism.

Let me tell you about my experience with socialism in the late-1930s, when the sawmill shut down in our town in north Idaho.

Since no jobs were to be had in the private sector, I joined the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]: a socialistic project.

In my home state of Washington, before the Grand Coulee Dam was built, central Washington was inhabited by nothing but sagebrush, jackrabbits and rattlesnakes. The result of that socialistic project caused central Washington to bloom like the Garden of Eden.

I’m now on Medicare: another socialistic project. Enough said.

JERRY KESSLER via e-mail

The Roar of the Tourists, the Smell of the Waffles

January 16, 2009 by Linda Gasparello Leave a Comment

BRUSSELS, Belgium–“L’Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers,” Napoleon Bonaparte was supposed to have said disparagingly of the preparedness of England to fight France. If the emperor were alive today, perhaps he would dismiss the pre-Christmas collapse of the government by saying that Belgium is a nation of waffle merchants.”Belgique est une nation de marchands de gaufres.”

“Oh, yes. They sell a lot of waffles here. And they waffle a lot,” a Pakistani immigrant, who owns a convenience store near the city’s Grand Place, said of Belgian politicians.

He said he much preferred the political waffling in Washington, where he drove a taxi for 12 years, to that of Brussels. “In Washington, it is Democrats and Republicans. So simple. Here, the political situation is so complicated.”

On Dec. 30, King Albert named Flemish Christian Democrat Herman Van Rompuy as prime minister to head a revived five-party coalition in a nation facing a bank crisis, as well as impending recession and a continuing ethnic rift. Two days later, Van Rompuy received the backing of parliament in a vote of confidence.

Van Rompuy, replaces his party colleague Yves Leterme, who resigned amid allegations of political meddling in the bailout of Fortis bank.

“It’s the same coalition with the same five parties,” Pascal Delwit, president of the Center for Political Studies at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, told Reuters. “But Van Rompuy is a little bit more subtle than Yves Leterme.” Belgium’s coalition comprises the Flemish Christian Democrat Party, Flemish Liberal Party, Francophone Liberal Party, Francophone Christian Democrats and Francophone Socialist Party.

Delwit said Van Rompuy could be more successful in the job than Leterme because he was more attuned to the linguistic and political divisions between the poorer, French-speaking south and the richer, Flemish, Dutch-speaking north.

“I think he knows better the French-speaking people, the French-speaking politicians, and in this way, he is more engaged in compromise. I think perhaps he will do better,” Delwit said.

Van Rompuy will need all his old-pol skills of compromise to keep this new government-the third in 12 months–together beyond regional elections due later this year. That is when the acrimonious divisions between Belgium’s Flemish and the French-speaking Walloons will come to the fore, according to the BBC’s Olana Lungescu in Brussels.

Van Rompuy had long resisted taking the premiership, but is seen as a steady pair of hands, after successfully cracking down on public debt as budget minister in the 1990s, Lungescu said. He has promised to start out by taking over his predecessor’s plan to battle the economic crisis.

“Nothing is simple in our country, but what is important is that we have a government to lead with seriousness, stability and serenity,” Elio di Rupo, leader of the Francophone Socialist Party, told Reuters.

Choc-Troops

“Belgium’s economic and political mood is as dark as its chocolate.” The headline topped the Jan. 5 “European Diary” by Irish Times writer Jamie Smyth.

Over the holidays, British tourists in Brussels bought chocolates-dark, milk and white–as though they were on a campaign to lift the nation’s gloomy mood. Piece of cake for the Brits, who eat the most chocolate per capita (22 lbs a year) of anyone in the world, according to Datamonitor.

As soon as the high-speed Eurostar trains from London arrived in Brussels, the Brits marched to the chocolate shops all over the city. From the artisanal (Pierre Marcolini and Frederic Blondeel) to the ancien regime (Corne de la Toison d’Or, Mary, Neuhaus and Wittamer) to the nouveau arrivee (Chinese chocolatiers who sell lower-quality boxed chocolates piled haphazardly on counters), the British choc-troops demonstrated an impressive use of their credit power and came away with the spoils. Arms laden with bespoke and assorted ballotin boxes filled with pralines (the Belgian name for filled chocolates), their victory was sweet.

Chalet City

At Christmastime, the area between the Bourse (stock exchange) and the Place St. Catherine becomes a chalet city. Hundreds of small wooden chalets surround the great, gray Bourse building, guarded by two stone lions, sprawl across the broad Avenue Anspach and fill Place St. Catherine, the site of the old fish market.

Vendors come from all over Europe, and even North and South America, to sell their wares in the festive chalets, from French foie gras and olive oil soap to Flemish gluhwein (mulled wine) and gumdrops to Argentine alfajores (caramel sandwich cookies) and Andean chullos (knitted caps with flaps and long ties).

No question, these folk-patterned caps were the hit of the 2008 Christmas market. At the Place St. Catherine, you saw them on the heads of skaters whizzing around the ice rink, on parents watching their children ride the fantastic merry-go-rounds, on red-cheeked babies in prams, on lovers sharing a milk chocolate-filled crepe geante, on groups of teenagers waiting to ride the big Ferris wheel.

Curiously, you saw the caps pulled tightly over the headscarves on the heads of teenage Muslim girls. I watched three teens trying them on at one of the chalets. After some discussion about whether they should remove their headscarves before trying on the caps, one unruly-haired teen asserted in French: “I think it would be correct, and chic, to wear the hat over the hijab.”

And lo, at a Christmas market chalet, an Islamic fashion trend was born in Brussels.

Photos: Dorcas Shurberg

Restaurant Suggestions

Here are a few restaurants to try in Brussels:

Aux Armes de Bruxelles (classic Belgian dishes like mussels and fries; and waterzooi, chicken or fish in a creamy soup with vegetables), near the Grand Place.

Taverne du Passage (classic Belgian dishes), in the Galerie de la Reine near the Grand Place.

L’Entree des Artistes (classic Belgian, with a few hearty Italian dishes, like a single sheet of homemade cannelloni, filled with spinach and ricotta, topped with a tomato and smoked salmon cream sauce) in the Grand Sablon.

La Belle Maraichere (seafood) in the Place St. Catherine.