BELGIUM IS KNOWN FOR…

Anais & Emma

Beers

Jupiler This is the beer that many young people and soccer fans drink.

Gouden Carolus this beer is from our hometown Mechelen,it’s brewed in the Anker, the brewery from Mechelen.

Westvleteren A special beer from Belgium which you can only buy at the Abbey of Westvleteren, you can only buy it once a year and it’s very special and for numerous times voted as the best beer of the world.

Sports

Tennis: Kim Clijsters & Justine Henin

Athletics: Tia Hellebaut & Kim Gevaert

Cyclo-CrossA typical Belgian sport where the bikers cycle cross-country, with lots of mud

Sven Nijs & Bart Wellens

Music

SoulwaxThis Belgian duo (Stefaan and David Dewaele) make music from their own with Soulwax(like the cd Any minute now) but they’re also a DJ-set, 2Many DJs. They make many remixes of famous songslike Bonkers (Dizzee Rascal),hey boy hey girl(Chemical Brothers).

Regi PenxtenA producer and DJ. He is in a band with Linda, named Milk Inc, and he also produces CDs on his own. Milk Inc is very famous for the songs ‘Walk on water’ and ‘land of the living’.

Jacques BrelHe called himself a French Flemish man.He sung in French and Dutch and he’s very famous in many countries. Two famous songs are

‘Ne me quitte pas’ and‘Amsterdam’.Ne me quitte pas is translated in Deutch by Marlène Dietrich and also Nina Simone andFrank Sinatra have sung this song.Amsterdam has been sung by David Bowie in English.

Millionaire, the great Tim Vanhamel who created his own rock band,using strange rhythms and voices.Millionaire is known worldwideby rock musicians and has influenced a lot of people.

He also played with Evil Superstars, another famous indie rock band with influences who are alike to the ones of Millionaire. This band is lead by Mauro Pawlowski,an indie rock legend among lots of us.His solo projects like Othin Spakeand Otot are even more strangebut also popular.

Here you can see Mauro in the frontand Tim Vanhamel with the red hair

on the right.

dEUS, a band lead by Tom Barman and in which Mauro Pawlowski plays guitar. Tom is also known as a solo-artist and used to work with Tim Vanhamel. dEUS is very famous in lots of countries, performing everywhere one can imagine.

Here you can see Tom Barman in thefront and Mauro Pawlowski on the right.

Marc Moulin, who has recently died from cancer (1942-2008), was a very famous composer and keyboardist, known for his jazz-electro music. He also had a band named Placebo, they have has sold many records in Tokyo, London and San Francisco.

Marc Moulin in his early years.  M.Moulin when he had grown older.

Gastronomy

Belgian waffles, delicious after a day of shopping and with an ice cream topping

Mussels, freshly captured in our North Sea

Belgian sprouts, soft texture and creamy taste

French Fries, originated from Belgium. Even better with a good quality beef steak and some mayonnaise

Belgian Chocolate, the sweetest chocolate in the world

Famous People

Father Damien, a hero who lived with the people who suffered from leprosy. After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual and emotional needsof those in the leper colony,he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is widely considered a "martyr of charity".He is now made into a saintby the pope.

Herman van Rompuy, the ‘president’ of the European Union

Painters

Jan Van Eyck – Flemish Primitives

Pieter Paul Rubens – Baroque

Magritte – Surrealism

Pierre Alechinsky – COBRA

Writers

Hugo ClausHugo Claus was a universal artist: he wrote poetry and novels, painted and made films.The character of his work is particularly diverse. He combined the banal and the burlesque with tragedy. Often classical themes return: love for the mother, hatred of the father, Roman Catholicism and Flanders during and after the war. His most famous work is Het Verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium, 1983), an epic tale of Flanders under Nazi occupation.Of great importance to Claus was his encounter with modernism and, especially, with surrealism after the Second World War.

Paul van Ostaijen (1896-1928) is the most influential poet Flanders has ever produced. Every avant-garde movement since the interwar years has drawn inspiration from his work, and yet at the same time he has developed into the most enduringly popular modern Flemish poet.

Much more frequently read, however, are the poems that van Ostaijen wrote after his Berlin period. ‘ Marc greets things in the morning’, ‘ Bersaglieri Song’ and ‘ Recitative’ are among the very best-known poems in Dutch-language literature.