Leuven

Kelly, Poppy and I had a great time taking a little adventure to Leuven on Friday. Leuven is just about 10 miles outside of Brussels and is a cute little college town of 85,000.

To give you a little history/geography lesson, the northern part of Belgium is Flanders and people there speak Flemish (a version of Dutch.) The southern half of Belgium is Wallonia and the people there are Walloons and they speak French. When they speak French they are referred to as francophones. Brussels is in Flanders, but it is mainly French speakers, to really add to the confusion. So just as I am mastering a couple of words in French, I go only a few miles away and suddenly everything is in Flemish!

In broad stereotypes, the Dutch/Flemish are known as a very clean, rule oriented people. However, the Walloons like to bend the rules a little bit more and are against laws etc. So basically, even though this is one country, it is very different depending on what area you are in. Since Brussels is a larger city, and is more like Wallonia than Flanders, it is a lot dirtier and less law abiding than Flanders. This is why Kelly and I enjoyed Leuven so much! Since it is in Flanders, we just couldn't get over how clean everywhere was and how there was no dog poop on the streets. We only spent a few hours there due to time constraints, but we definitely will be going back there often for some fieldtrips!

All of these new words/labels get quite confusing to me, so I have developed a few memory tricks that I thought I would share with you. Now when you are at a dinner party, you can speak intelligently about the differences of Flanders vs. Wallonia and everyone will be impressed! (but still probably have no idea of where you are talking about because no one knows where Belgium is.)

People in Flanders both speak and are Flemish (both of these start with Fl so they go together. Also, if you go by alphabetical order, F comes before W, so Flanders is in the north.)

People in Wallonia are Walloons but they speak French and when they do that they are called Francophones.

Click here for photos of Leuven:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=121a73ha.z5ylz2e&x=0&y=n7tnia