That's how deeply the world of the internet has become ingrained in our consciousness. The virtual aspect of the story - should she have published to the world? - is the entire story.
New media, if we can still call them that, are everywhere this election season. Not just the likes of Joke Van de Putte, who, as a 27-year-old Groen! candidate, might be expected to have a blog, a Facebook page and access to Twitter, but also, for instance, Ivo Belet, a 50-year-old CD&V candidate for the European Parliament, who, besides the ubiquitous Facebook also has his own cool-looking website (www.ivobelet.be).
Currently Twittering on Skynet are such trend-setters as Jean-Luc Dehaene, Guy Verhofstadt and Wilfried Martens, which is a little like finding out that Gordon Brown has a tongue-piercing.
A guide to the best sites to help you maneuver in Flanders
According to estimates, some seven million Belgians are now online, or about 67% of the population. That's well above the European average of 49%. Let' s see what there is to get up to out there, shall we?
Social
Netlog is the Belgian equivalent of Facebook, with 46 million users, most of them young people. In some countries, notably Belgium, Netlog claims more users than Facebook. In practice, the two services are pretty similar.
www.netlog.be
Tourism
Visit Flanders offers a variety of information, depending on where you tell it you come from. It's clearly aimed at tourists or absolute newcomers, with an emphasis on things to do and see. Some interesting links all the same, and one of the few gay sections out there.
www.visitflanders.be
I'd be wary of any website promising to teach you Flemish - especially one that spells it Flemmish - but there are lots of resources on the web for basic Dutch lessons. Having said that, the availability of language courses in real life is so huge, including free lessons and native teachers, that distance learning doesn't have much to commend it. Still if all you want is a primer or a refresher course, here are a few freebies.
www.forbeginners.info/dutch
www.valley-trail.com (with dictionary and translator)
www.livemocha.com/study/beginner-dutch/1
www.taalgarage.be
Culture
Some of us thought it disastrous when the old BRT Radio 3 changed its name to Klara, as if a venerable dowager had started calling herself Nikki, but Klara's evolution hasn't only been a marketing ploy. From a rather stuffy classical music station, it has made space for other kinds of music, too.
The website is packed with goodies, from online live listening to videos to extensive background information. It's also a lesson in how to get a huge amount of options on a homepage without making it impossible to navigate.
www.klara.be
Arts Flanders is a website dedicated to the arts, but it only updates every two months, so it's often not very timely. The events calendar, at the time of writing, was still showing events in February and March. Nevertheless it's one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. The range is enviably democratic: all the way from Anima Eterna to Zita Swoon, including foreign dates for Flemish artists. In English only.
www.artsflanders.be
Shopping
Cosmox is the webshop of the VRT, which means that it sells everything to do with Flemish public television and radio. That means DVDs of FC De Kampioenen, books spun off of TV series like Mijn Vader, box sets of Secret Army and Ketnet merchandise. And it's all shipped free.
www.cosmox.be
Jobs
Stepstone is in English, and the job that came up in my hypothetical search was a corker: TV correspondent on EU affairs for a major broadcast network. But, on closer inspection, this dream job has been up for over a month. Perhaps it was too good to be true? Sign up for the newsletter and get job offers by email every day.
www.stepstone.be
Don't forget these major Flemish job sites.
www.vacature.be
www.jobat.be
http://vdab.be
Food
Flanders brought the world "food pairing", the science that tells us that bananas go well with Parmesan cheese, peppermint and cloves and should be eaten with a nice Chardonnay. Even if your dinner-party plans are not along those Heston Blumenthal lines, you can play with the food-pairing site for hours. What about chicken, milk chocolate, roasted peanuts and Jules Destrooper cookies? How many F-words would Gordon Ramsay give that?
www.foodpairing.be
More conventional are the three chefs who put together Flemish Foodies: nothing more outlandish than belly of cod with octopus ink, or spiny lobster with chicory and chorizo. The recipes are highly involved - the last one there has 34 ingredients - and the photos are possibly more delicious than the food. Kids! Come and get your raw beef with octopus and hummus!
www.flemishfoodies.be
Food and wine are perfect subjects for Web 2.0 exploitation because so much rely on USG - user-generated content. One wine writer, for instance, can only get through a handful of wines in a day, but a whole community can share information on prices, varieties and quality almost endlessly. And that's what they do on Kurkdroog, where right now the top buy is a Museum Real Reserva from Colruyt at only €11.75.
www.kurkdroog.be
Pop Culture
Not exactly lowbrow, but not as rarified as Klara, is Cutting Edge, an online magazine of culture and media, covering, for example, Gabriel Rios, Paniek in het dorp, Flight of the Conchords, Evi Hanssen and so on. It's in Dutch, but you can't honestly pretend to be with it in this country if you're still stumbling along in French. Sorry but that's so 1968, like being caught with Jane Birkin songs on your iPod.
www.cuttingedge.be
Urban Exploration, or "urbex", brings the highest standards of photography and aesthetics to the gonzo adventure of exploring abandoned buildings and sites. The proponents stress they don't do any damage - "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints" is the motto - and let's face it: they are leaving evidence of their visits all over the net if things go wrong. One of the best is Arno Raps, who took one of the photos we published last week, and whose own site is www.hierzo.net. Some others from the same field:
www.urb-ex.com, who also went to Chernobyl, the Shangri-La of urbex.
www.urbanexplorationsquad.be
www.abandoned-places.com
KUTsite has been going, amazingly, since 1999 and, despite its rude name, (ask a Flemish friend) it's a most level-headed film review site, all the way from arthouse to telly (in Flanders the journey is not so long). It's all in Dutch.
www.kutsite.com
Kids, meanwhile, can play along with their favourite TV characters on the website of Studio 100, although they probably know that already.
www.studio100.be
And not forgetting another hands-on media site.
www.ketnet.be
Information
Life is not all exquisite art projects and shopping, and sometimes you just gotta get by. Nowadays everyone catches the bus (www.delijn.be and www.mivb.be), plans train-trips (www.nmbs.be) and looks up telephone numbers (www.skynet.be/diensten/witte-gids) online.
As those of us in the business know too well, newspaper readers are increasingly keen on getting their information online: www.standaard.be, www.demorgen.be and www.detijd.be. KifKif offers news, jobs and more under a banner of multicultural cooperation: www.kifkif.be
For weather information, you can turn to www.kmi.be, and for traffic conditions http://mobiris.irisnet.be or www.wegeninfo.be. Finally, for organising an evening out or just fishing for entertainment, nothing touches the newly reorganised UITinVlanderen, which is as comprehensive an agenda site as you could wish for: www.uitinvlaanderen.be.
Got any good tips of your own for sites in or about Flanders? Send them to editorial@flanderstoday.eu, and we'll add them to a links list that will soon appear here.
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