Eupen
Continuing with our focus on the politics of Belgium, we went to Eupen today. First we visited the local museum which was very basic in nature and relatively quite young. Something I admired about the museum was its promotion of local artists. Having visited many museums in the past couple of weeks, this one was probably one of the smallest we have visited. Nonetheless, we received a very warm reception from our hosts who had some snacks and drinks ready for us. Something I really liked about our hosts was that there were only 2-3 people in the museum who seemed to manage everything. Our hosts did a great job of multi-tasking. They had their daily responsibilities to fulfill, but still took out time to show us around the museum talking about the various artists, and describing their work. Additionally, the managers/owners of the museum were very aged, while the art on display was modern art. It shows as to how much the community supports each other. Despite the fact that our host was unable to explicitly explain most of the art that was on display, he still kept it in the museum. It was his way supporting local artists. I found this to be very pleasing and an inspiration for other elderly people to accept the art of the current generation.
Moving on, we later went on to meet the Prime Minister of the German speaking community of Belgium. We had a brief 10 minute video introducing us to the community. From it I learnt that the community was very small with only 73,000 inhabitants. However, interestingly they had 23% of their population below 18. This young population signals that the community has a good chance of achieving a lot of success. These children will be entering the work force in the near future, and I was very excited to learn about how the Prime Minister had planned for their introduction into the work force. Finally, on meeting the Prime Minister all of us bombarded him with different questions. Interestingly, he behaved like a typical politician giving us very vague answers, and most of our questions did not yield much information. For instance, when I asked him about his future plan for the young population, he gave me a very vague answer. He spoke about how 50% of the community’s budget was dedicated to education and vocational training. There was even a cell for enterprise-startup setup for young aspiring businessmen. I found this to be more of a general plan. There were no specifics about how the community was trying to reach out to businesses, or undertaking additional efforts to help this upcoming young generation. While I can understand that the community is very small, and that their powers are limited. Nonetheless, I feel that since the community is so small, there is more scope of greater attention to this generation.
In conclusion, I found the German speaking community very interesting. Even though they are relatively a very small community, there is a strong sense of bond here. The manager/owner of the museum is playing his part in supporting local artists. On the other hand, the community’s parliament is trying to do as much as they can for their citizens. I do realize that I have come down a bit harsh on the Prime Minister for his vague answers to my question. His powers are limited. His parliament has primarily only social and cultural jurisdiction. Nonetheless, I don’t think it would be unconstitutional for them to be directly approaching businesses and trying to get something working for their upcoming generation. I hope in the future I hear some great success stories from the young generation of the German speaking community.
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