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For richer, for poorer
After the economy ministry released figures on the most- and least-expensive places to buy a house in Flanders, we set out to see if the towns are really so different

Sint-Martens-Latem is a peaceful, leafy village to the southeast of Ghent, on one of the prettiest stretches of the River Leie. It’s bordered on one side by the busy Kortrijksesteenweg, but this stretch of the road is lined with dealerships for Audi and Chevrolet, not with a mattress store or a lumber yard. As you walk to the centre of town, there are a great many high hedges around, and garden walls. They may be rich, but they’re also discreet.
Alan Hope
(September 7, 2024)
Flanders’ brain gain
From a Czech village to Ghent’s top bio-tech institute, plant science mastermind JiÊí Friml is raising the bar of Flemish research

Jiri Friml was born in a small Moravian village in the Czech Republic’s south east, a long way from the Flanders Inter-university Institute of Biotechnology (VIB). But, thanks to becoming a trailing spouse and to Flanders’ Odysseus programme, he landed there, garnering the institute’s international attention and hundreds of thousands in research awards. Friml (pictured) studied biochemistry in Brno, Czech Republic, before heading to Germany, where he earned a PhD at the prestigious Max-Planck institute in Köln. Only one year later, the Volkswagen Foundation awarded him a €1.7 million grant to set up his own research group in Tübingen. In 2007, he took a professorship offer in Göttingen – until life got in the way.
Tania Rabesandratana
(September 7, 2024)