Zoot Allures
Page Under Construction- will feature highlights on the route between Flanders/Limburg and Burgundy. The name 'Zoot Allures' is from an Album by Frank Zappa.
The starting place of the journey is the old postage-stamp sized province of Neutral Moresnet in the North-east corner of Belgium (the white triangle on the map). Before World War I Neutral Moresnet was a zinc mining area that was important enough that Germany, Holland, and Belgium wanted to control it, yet wasn't important enough to fight over.
The language Esperanto was proposed to be the official language of Neutral Moresnet. Esperanto is a made-up language that was intended to bring people together and promote world peace. In Esperanto's heyday around 1910 it was spoken by millions of people as a second language.
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| The country of "Neutral Moresenet" in Belgium in the early 1900s. Esperanto was intended to be the official language. At the top of the triangle is the "Four Countries Point"- New Moresnet, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. |
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| Mother of all "Dances on Water"- the town of Spa in the Wallonian part of Belgium. One of the first stops on the trip. |
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| The page will use the metaphor of "Dancing on Water" to describe several of the stops on the journey as well as the Flemish language. It is actually possible to make the entire trip via rivers and canals, but the preferred route is to stay closer to the border than the water route allows.
Flemish is one of the lightest, most melodic, and most playful central Germanic languages. The sound of Flemish conversation resembles a babbling brook. The Flemish use the word "babbeling", to describe conversation.
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Web Page Under Construction. The remainder of the page will describe an overland trading route from the 'Three Lands Point' in Belgium to Cluny in Burgundy (and vice versa). The route will roughly follow the border betweem France and Germany.
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