Discovering the Heart of Brussels--The European Union

Saturday, May 4^th was official Open-Door Day for all the European Union buildings in Brussels. Just to give you some background info (skip this part if you are totally uninterested in the European Government), the EU is basically made up of 3 buildings-The Parliament (representing the people),  the European Council (representing national governments) and the Commission (responsible for holding up Europe's main interests). Treaties and laws are created by this "institutional triangle.”  The European Parliament is the only part of the 3 buildings which is an “elected body” and represents all citizens of the EU. Basically, the parliament participates in the legislative process. The representative members are directly elected every five years. The Council is the part that makes the main decisions. There is a Council President and each member state takes a six month turn in the position. In addition, the Council has the legislative power and decisions are made with a majority vote from member state representatives. Finally, the European Commission manages the EU with members that are appointed by the Council for five year terms- usually one Commissioner from each member state. Its main job is to uphold the common interest of the EU. In other words, their job is to provide better regulation of the EU. This means making better laws for consumers and businesses.

Well, I was lucky enough to get a peak around each one of these buildings and see the giant rooms where they hold their international meetings and votes. One of the coolest things I experienced was being able to visit the little interpreter’s glass booths sitting up around the meeting room in the Commission.

Inside one of the interpreter's booths

A man was giving a lecture about trade in English, and I stood in the German interpreter’s little cube room and watched as the women had one ear covered by the headphone and listed to the man, very intently, and then pressed a button in front of her and talked into a microphone, perfectly translating every sentence he said into German, directly as he was speaking! You never think about how difficult this job is until you actually watch someone do it. I went into the French room and the Dutch one as well, and I was so impressed every time. And they had rooms for almost every major language. I just found it amazing how the people could listen and speak, not missing a single sentence, even when the man giving the speech kept talking and they were still translating the sentence before. I even got to overhear a French interpreter talk to a women about her job. She explained how it is an extreme challenge for your brain at first (as I would expect!). You need to know both languages perfectly. She said that one way she practiced in school was by listening and completely comprehending someone giving a speech while, at the same time, counting backwards in her head! She also explained, which I found very interesting, that a lot of the time the people giving the speeches or who answer a question do not speak English as their first language, and they make a grammar mistake or mispronounce a word, or ever worse, use a word in their native-tongue instead of the English one! Sometimes this forces the interpreter to guess or simply improvise!

Here are some more pictures from the Commission: 

View of the Schumann area of Brussels from the top floor of the Commission. Schumann is where most of the EU buildings are located.

The "Arc de Triomphe" of Bruxelles, located in a park just outside Schumann. It was built between 1880 and 1905 to illustrate the "glorious past of Brussels" and represent the "peace-loving nation of Belgium."

One of the largest meeting-rooms in the Commission. Many important topics concerning all of the EU are discussed here!

The most impressive building however, was surly the Parliament. As I believe I told you in one of my recent posts, that building is absolutely HUGE! It even has its own hairdresser, dry-cleaner, bank and restaurant for the employees. It's like a mini city in itself.

The Parliament, as seen from Place Lux

Photo take from MIDDLE floor

The many different EU Political Groups... They are a  bit more spread out in their percentages than those of the US, I think.

View from window of Parliament

Cool statue in Parliament

In addition to getting to visit rooms and such, all the EU buildings were filled with booths from different organizations affiliated with the EU, each with a different goal. There were research booths, environmental booths, health booths, everything you could possibly be interested in. One young man came up to me and told me about the EU Marie Curie organization, which funds opportunities for students to do research in countries all over the world. I think this is a fantastic idea, especially since it helps students who would otherwise not afford to study abroad.

At the end of this long day of wandering around all the giant EU buildings, I felt like sitting down and watching a movie. That night was actually the last official night of the famous Brussels Short-Film Festival which lasts for about 2 weeks each May. They screen International and National Award-Winning short films of every kind of genre, in different theaters all over Brussels. That night, at a little old theater in up-town Brussels called the Vandome, they were screening 4 different short-films from 4 different countries, all of which received awards at recent prestigious film festivals from Berlin, Venice and Rotterdam. The films were from Portugal, England, Greece and Switzerland! The cool thing was each one was different from the next. 

The theater where I saw the screening was very small, but really had character! The  wooden stairs creaked as you went up to the concession stand, where the man was selling tall glasses of strong Belgian beer and little bags of kettle corn.

The Portuguese film was mostly silent and took place in Lisbon on the this festival day where all lovers are supposed to give pots of basil to each other as a token of their love. However, the people all were depressed and walked around the city very slowly, like zombies, some of them almost getting run over by cars. One girl even drowns herself. However, all of this is silent and kind of peaceful, in a sense, so it wasn’t as gruesome as it sounds. It was a little depressing but very well filmed. 

The Swiss film was about a man from Nigeria living in Zurich, who was forced to be deported back to his home country. However, he fights back and starves himself while in jail and dies in the end. The whole thing is narrated by this man as he is suffering. Also a quite depressing film, but very informative since it is based on real happenings. Apparently any Africans are inhumanly deported back to their home countries. Since they struggle and do not cooperate, they are forced to sit in chairs where they cannot move and have to wear helmets on their heads, and many of them die on the way back. 

The Grecian film was completely silent and simply showed a number of blank billboards across Greece. This was supposed to send some kind of message to the audience, but I didn’t really get it. 

Finally, the British one was a dark comedy featuring a two men arguing in a gas station in the middle of the night, playing with each other’s trust and decision making.. I think this one was my favorite.

Anyway, that was quite a full day and very exciting for me, even if I spent it all on my own!