When the history of today's Europe is written some 300 or 400 years from now, the chapter on the Belgians will not be as long as justice and good taste might suggest.

For the Belgians are a calm, steady, quietly ambitious people, and they eschew flowery displays of wealth, power and intelligence in favour of more measured, documented, established best practices.

For example: when the Belgians were looking for a homeland after centuries of nomadic wandering, they elected to settle at the mouth of the North Sea, near the intersection of the Ourthe and the Ambleve. You will note that this is more or less halfway between the Atlantic lowlands of Holland, where you are allowed to smoke pot all day, and the lush vineyards of Bordeaux, where they don't even make you wash your feet before you crush the grapes.

Situated as it is alongside the Netherlands and Luxembourg, Belgium forms the heart of the Benelux group. This sounds like a vacuum cleaner and you know what vacuum cleaners do?

Right! They dig out ground-in lint and leave your rugs and tapestries smelling showroom fresh.