Trying something new + Diaspora Season Chapters 1 & 2

Hi there,

You’re getting this email because, at one point in the past six years, you signed up to the Brussels Beer City mailing list. If you’re no longer interested, scroll down to the unsubscribe button which you should find at the bottom of this mail.

This is just a quick mail to alert you (if you’re still here) of two recent Brussels Beer City developments. The first is a switch from Mailchimp to Substack.

This is mostly an administrative change, but does it mean you'll be seeing more Brussels Beer City newsletters in the future? Maybe! (if there's anything you'd like to see in a more regular BBC newsletter, drop me a line)

Speaking of which…

In July I launched a new BBC project, the Diaspora Season.

The Brussels Beer City Podcast: Diaspora Season is about Brussels’ immigrant communities and the places they love to drink. From ice cold Sagres with piglet sandwiches and pintjes in old bruine kroegen, to creamy pints, fried plantains, and more, the podcast will explore the drinking - and eating - cultures of just a small slice of Brussels’ diaspora communities, in the company of people who have come from all over the world to make their home here.

Each installment features an article and accompanying podcast.

Chapter 1 - on Irish pubs - is already available here: https://www.beercity.brussels/home/2023/brussels-beer-city-podcast-diaspora-irish-pubs

Chapter 2 - “Big Trouble in Little Kortrijk”, on the phenomenon of Brussels’ Flemish bars - is published today. Read an except below:

“In Den Hemel is one of the few places in this corner of Brussels that’s guaranteed to offer that possibility of connection. But when he first moved to the “the big, big city” (his words) in his mid-20s - before marriage, children, and suburbia - like most Dutch-speaking new arrivals, he found it elsewhere. More specifically, in downtown Brussels’ Dansaertwijk neighbourhood that hosts the densest concentration of Flemish bars in the city.

Some, like the Walvis or Bar Beton, are modern. Others, like the Daringman, Le Coq, or the Roskam are more timeworn. De Markten, right at the neighbourhood’s geographical centre on the Oude Graanmarkt square, is a bit of both. But what connects them, apart from their geographical proximity, is the dominant language spoken behind and in front of den toog: Dutch.

For almost 40 years this small corner of central Brussels - comprising the Antoine Dansaertstraat, the Vlaamsesteenweg (the “Flemish Carriageway”) and the perpendicular streets that criss-cross them - with its bars and shops and cultural lodestones, has been a linguistic enclave for the city’s Dutch-speaking “diaspora”. But the forces that made this neighbourhood a creative centre of Flemish life in Brussels look to be waning, and the Dansaertwijk’s grip on Brussels’ Dutch-speaking imagination might be loosening.”

Read the rest here: https://www.beercity.brussels/home/2023/brussels-beer-city-diaspora-dansaertwijk-flemish-bars

Keep a look out for future entries in the coming months!