In a class assignment prior to arriving in Belgium, I wrote a bit about my stereotypes of Europe and Belgium. While I did not realize it at first, my mind was completely programmed to associate Belgium with France. My mother is French, and growing up I used to spend my summer vacations with my grandmother in Brittany, France. My grandmother lived in Brussels for a couple of years and worked for the European Community. She was absolutely in love with the city, as was my mother who would visit her on the weekends from Paris. Hearing their stories growing up, I subconsciously associated my experiences with France and French culture with Belgian culture.

I hate to admit this, especially publically, but I was royally disappointed when I realized that I was not in fact in France (or at least culturally), but in Belgium. It’s unfortunate that my own ignorance is what led to this disappointment, but because my stereotypes were so pre-programmed, there was no other way to learn about Belgian culture than by being fully immersed in it. I stayed with a Belgian family the first night and couple of days that I was in Brussels, and they really taught me more about the culture and identity of Belgium. After some sight seeing and doing some more research on my own, I have to say that I developed a sort of fascination with the country’s mixed cultures and languages and history. It has given me more of an appreciation of my own culture, and has led me to develop an interest for learning about other cultures, as well.

Finishing up our third week here in Brussels, I have fully come to terms with and have almost wrapped my head around what Belgian culture encompasses. I have come to love the routine I have developed here, and am really feeling at home in Brussels. However, the destruction of my stereotypes has only made me miss France more, especially Brittany, where my grandmother lives.

It’s safe to say that I was a more than excited when Dr. Birchfield pulled me aside and told me she would be taking us to a Breton food truck this past Tuesday after our visit to the European Commission. The food truck served “crêpes” and “gallettes”, which are native to Brittany, France. Galletes differ from crêpes because they are made with buckwhear flour, and generally served with savory ingredients. Dr. Birchfield let us get one of each, and it was one of my highlights of the trip, so far. I chose to get a classic “jambon-fromage” (ham and cheese) gallete, with a pear and chocolate crêpe. The taste of well-made crepes and galletes is so unique and I am thankful that I was able to enjoy them in Brussels. While Brittany is not my temporary home (I was born and raised in Atlanta), a piece of my childhood is there, and getting to enjoy Breton food made me feel homesick yet satisfied all at once.  Below are some pictures from the afternoon!

My ham and cheese galette looks small but it was so filling! I unfortunately did not get a picture of my pear and chocolate crêpe…I ate it too quickly :p

The pans where our galettes and crêpes were made.

The menu of galettes! I will definitely be ordering the “chevre-tomate”, or goat cheese and tomato galette after trying Victoria’s.

Suraj, Will, and Conner anxiously awaiting their food. Sorry for the candid, guys.

Living in a foreign country for the first time in my life has, within less than a month, destroyed my conceptualization of what exactly a “home” country is and my fundamental understanding of what qualities definitively qualify someone as an immigrant. I have always thought that I was “better” than mainstream conservatives (who frequently denounce the idea of immigration into the US) by believing, at first, that a mastery of the English language and an American accent was what determined how “American” any given immigrant was. Obviously, the older I became, the more I came to realize that this was a completely arbitrary aspect of any given person in terms of quantifying their right to “American-ness”. Soon after, I came to accept the (retrospectively) equally arbitrary denotative nature of a common set of values being the glue that holds states together, and sets outsiders apart. It was not until now, after having spent three weeks in a foreign city spending copious amounts of time learning about supranational, international, and transnational institutionalism and having to survive in a new, non-contorting culture, have I come to accept that that notion was misguided as well.

The ability of any given population to hold a wide-ranging variety of often fundamentally contradictory beliefs and still function as a relatively stable society is a unique characteristic of states. Being ideologically congruous to the fellow citizen next to you makes you no more or less entitled to your shared state’s protections and identity, as is explicitly denoted by the concept of state citizenship (which guarantees rights or protections to humans, not ideas). Thus, after having been exposed to so many European perspectives on identity and values (many of which I find myself identifying with in place of widely-held American beliefs concerning conceptualizations of identity and sovereignty), I have come to realize that ideological parallelism is not the arbiter of collective identity either. That assertion, however, questions the very “stickiness” of societies themselves. What truly mobilizes populations into distinctive, proud societies if neither commonly held accents nor a widely recognized set of pseudo-static beliefs offers an explanation?

I now believe this question itself to simply be a remnant of a one-day by-gone era. The question should no longer be, “What arbitrary characteristics can we utilize to continue segregating ourselves from other nations?” but rather, “Why are we using increasingly inane state borders to define our identities in the first place?” I think the European Union’s creation in and of itself is helping to guide the world from asking the first question to asking the latter. It challenges the seemingly principle belief that states define people, and seeks to encourage citizens to embrace the realization that they are in fact the ones defining the states. To continue recognizing the borders of states as the ultimate arbiters of identity in light of the knowledge that these historically harmful, nationalistic lines crisscrossing the Earth would only prove to grant these arbitrary divides more legitimacy. This recognition would be a travesty when the EU’s very existence is actively proving to mankind that there is another way to preserve identity without having to preserve the classical, nonsensical notion of sovereignty. Sovereignty of the people is not synonymous to sovereignty of the state, and it never was.

The EU is frequently criticized for being “undemocratic” (claims made in a fashion blatantly disregarding any acknowledgment of how exactly the “undemocratically-elected” leaders of the EU are given positions of power in the first place…). However, I do not believe that any institution has made strides as far as the EU has in providing an alternative power structure more favorable to the people, and less so to the ruling elites of states. The EU’s collective nature allows it to better handle non-traditional security threats and economic irrationalities in a globalized world, thereby giving even more strength to an otherwise increasingly vulnerable public. The EU also serves to synthesize mass popular, consensus-based opinion and transform it into continent-wide policy (a power that small, unilaterally-acting states could never hope to possess). Critics may claim that this feature of the EU in and of itself infringes on the rights of the people, but do states not operate in the same fashion on a smaller scale?

Identity is a fundamental aspect of human nature and will not be erased from our society anytime soon. I believe that, because of the efforts of the EU project, humanity is slowly being presented a choice between notions of how that identity is defined. The first choice would be a continuation of the notion that the progressively irrational power of territorial borders should dictate who we view as the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. The second choice, however, would be a new way of conceptualizing the ‘Self’ and ‘Other.’ It would be a choice that would intuitively lead to a more peaceful, rational future for humanity. These last three weeks have led me to the realization that the EU’s clever, subtle circumvention over the last 60 years of the state monopoly on identity is giving mankind a choice between the two paths, and I believe humanity will choose the right one.

The past few weeks in Brussels have been nothing short of a whirlwind! In the first week, the students situated themselves with their host families, explored Brussels’ multi-ethnic and diverse city, and got up to date on some of the basic knowledge about the European Union, NATO, and the transatlantic relationship. This past week, the students began site visits and were able to finally see the European Union in action! The Tech students visited the European Parliament, where they were given an in-depth look at how the Parliament works, where it fits into the institutional triangle of the EU, and how MEP representatives not only acquire their positions, but how they divide along political groups within the European Parliament.

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