Belgitude !

Credits

• This web site owes much to Pierre Guillot's own home page. In fact mine is a mere "plagiat" of his!

Note for those who want to learn French: a survival kit

• I warmly recommend the short guide to French conversation by A.P. Magnus. Your browser will need to support playing sound (.wav) files.
• Alternatively you can visit A.P. Magnus's homepage. You will find there a strange piece of Belgian literature too.

Francis Dannemark

• (I'm confident he wouldn't mind being introduced to you in English). Unexpectedly, F. Dannemark doesn't appear in the list of famous Belgians.
• So I thought I should give him the credit he deserves (in fact, instead of that "Famous Belgians" website, you might be better off trying out C'est du belge! in case you read French).
• Les francophones peuvent consulter une une sélection d'extraits de textes de Francis Dannemark,
• ou alors naviguer sur son site personnel.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

• Reading Jean-Philippe Toussaint
• Faire l'amour (excerpt, French)
• Fuir
• Jean-Philippe Toussaint's homepage

Un peu de tout

• Even in the US they like so much our beers that the ones they brew they call New Belgium !
• There's a wierd guy who draws cats et qui fait le clown chez Drukker. Before starting to be popular in France, he used to pretend to be a meteorologist on Belgian television and for many years he was Docteur Philippe G.
• When I iron some clothes (that's not so often) I sometimes happen to listen to les snuls... Alternatively I may listen to Torremolinos by Sttellla.
• I remember from my childhood my parents listening to Blusette by Toots Thielemans. Listen to the show hosted by Dick Gordon.
• It might well be that Manneke pis is not the most famous Belgian (abroad) and that Tintin speaks even more languages (see also the Tintin webring). Well, if you don't know either of them at least I'm sure you've heard of Hercule Poirot.
• There's also another guy claiming to be the first Belgian having wandered in space. You can read everything about Dirk Frimout.
• There's an official site for Jacques Brel. Je vous conseille aussi la section Brel-par-Brel sur cet autre site.
• Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much to read on the internet about Marcel Broodthaers. Look at his Bureau de Moules, anche qualchosa in Italiano.
• Personnages de papier, mais aussi villes de papier: les cités obscures.
• Since I have architect friends who gratiously keep my wine in their cellar, I ought to remind you that this guy too was Belgian: Victor Horta. There's a museum dedicated to him, located in his former living and working place. And a gallery of Art Nouveau buildings.
• Some painters: René Magritte, Hieronymus Bosch and James Ensor.
• Last but definitely not least, I can argue that Julio Cortazar was born in Brussels for having an excuse to include him in here. The official argentinian page, again for Spanish readers.