Assumption day in L-L-N

Another public holiday in Belgium, which means Mike doesn't have to go to work. :) We've had a nice day; we got in the car and drove to Louvain-La-Neuve (which means "The New Leuven"), a totally modern town that didn't even exist until the 1960s or 1970's. There was a big fight between the French speaking people at the Catholic University in Leuven and the Flemish speakers. Basically (although I think it depends on who you ask) the French speakers got kicked out so they went down the road and started their own school, and their own town. The official line from the Catholic University website is this:

"In 1971, following pressure from the world of Flemish politics, which was hostile to a francophone university on Flemish soil, the Université catholique de Louvain was split into two separate universities, a Dutch-speaking university which remained in Louvain (Leuven in Flemish) and a French-speaking university which moved almost all its departments to the Brabant Wallon, to a new town symbolically named Louvain-la-Neuve."

It is a cool town in that the whole thing is basically built on top of a bunch of roads and parking garages. You park you car then take the stairs or escalator up to the pedestrian streets. Not a lot of character other than that; it looks like all the buildings were built at the same time in 1970, which they were. But they had some neat restaurants and a movie theater, and it's very close to where we live, so we may be back. (Unfortunately, alas, most of the movies are dubbed in French instead of English with French subtitles). Being summertime, and a public holiday, and Monday to boot, there wasn't much going on, so we hopped back into the car and drove to Namur (More to post later)