How international is Maastricht?

A city of many borders and languages
Names tell stories, and Maastricht has remained true to its name. The old Roman ‘passage over the Maas’, site of what is arguably the earliest Roman settlement in the Netherlands, is still a place of travel and traffic, a place where people and cultures meet and mingle. And, unlike other cities, whose names have perhaps gone on to tell other stories, its original vocation is still very much at the heart of the language used to promote it.

The buzz-word nowadays is ‘international’. Everything is contained in that word: ‘inter-national’ indicates something that is cross-liminal, that crosses thresholds and borders, a concept that somehow transcends tribal boundaries. A city of many borders and languages, Maastricht lies at the heart of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, an area covering three major languages (French, Dutch, German), a number of distinct dialects and an overall population of nearly four million people. It is one of a number of cross-border regions that were set up in the post-war period to translate at a local level the challenge of creating the dream of a united and peaceful Europe. The capital of Limburg prides itself on being ‘international’, and justly so.

But what does all this add up to? What does ‘international’ really mean? And if the nature of a place is defined by the people who use it, how ‘international’ is Maastricht anyway? What do the people themselves think?

“What’s international?”
The word ‘international’ crops up everywhere. Maastricht University is ‘the most international university in the Netherlands’, its website tells us, and ‘stands out for its innovative approach to learning and international outlook’ – all in the same line. Maastricht’s Tourist Office website tells us that Maastricht offers high levels of language expertise, five airports and fast railway connections to Brussels, London and Paris. There would seem to be no excuse for staying here. Education, innovation, the expertise to cater for a mobile international community, accessibility – in the language of regional branding, this is what makes Maastricht modern and appealing.

When I put my question, ‘How international is Maastricht?’, to Marcel Knols, director of the Maastricht Tourist Office (VVV Maastricht) and the Maastricht Convention Bureau (MCB), his immediate response was to ask:

“What’s international?”

Dinghuis Maastricht

We were sitting in his office on the first floor of the medieval courthouse which currently houses the Tourist Office and the MCB, the Dinghuis in Kleine Staat 1. Despite the somewhat abstract nature of the topic, Knols took time out of a pressing schedule to offer me his perspective.

Knols’ responsibility is to look for ways of promoting the city as a destination for both leisure tourism and what he referred to as the ‘MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions or events) market’.

“If you ask me ‘What’s your main job?’, it’s creating employment,” Knols tells me. “In short, that’s what we do. People come over here, for meetings for incentives for leisure, therefore we need hotels, therefore we need a waiter, therefore we need somebody in housekeeping, therefore we need a cab driver and therefore we create employment.”

Maastricht has in fact needed to replace its more traditional industries (mining, cement, tiles, paper) with services, and the provision of competitive facilities for national and international leisure and business tourism has been vital to its success over the past three decades. Becoming ‘international’ has been an essential part of moving with the times.

Figures show Maastricht to be highly desirable as a location for business tourism. According to the biennial NBTC-NIPO report, Maastricht tops the list of cities in the Netherlands with ‘the best image as a city destination for organised business meetings’, ahead of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Bosch and The Hague. Internationally, too, Maastricht scores well: an ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association) report ranks Maastricht 81st (up 69 places from 150th between 2007 and 2008) on the world list of international non-corporate conventions, ahead of New York and San Francisco.

Marcel Knols, director of the Maastricht Tourist Office and the Maastricht Convention Bureau

So what makes Maastricht so appealing as a venue nationally and internationally?

“Its size,” Knols replies. “In a compact, small city, people at a convention will go to hotels, they will go into town, have a bite, etc., and, because it’s so small, people will meet any time of the day. Your objective, which was getting to know people and acquiring new knowledge, and exchanging knowledge, is much easier than in a city like Amsterdam, where you will go back to your hotel and you will be the most lonely person on the planet.” Where networking is the objective, in other words, size matters and small is good.

“Not as cosmopolitan as it looks”
The same day, I spoke to Jerome Smeets of De Tribune, the bookshop in Kapoenstraat. De Tribune was rated by a top specialist magazine as the best literary bookshop in the Netherlands in 2004, and holds the dubious distinction of being the first shop in Maastricht ever visited by me.

Jerome is from Limburg, and he spoke to me of cultural and linguistic divisions. “There’s quite a barrier,” he said. “We’re Dutch speaking, and the nearest border to the south – that’s immediately French-speaking Belgium.”

Jerome Smeets at De Tribune bookshop in Maastricht

Maastricht’s ties with French-speaking Belgium are close and – to the outsider at least – baffling.

“The people of Maastricht always had a strong link with Liège,” Jerome explained. “There used to be a very big influence of the French language, but now that’s diminished.”

The advent of English as the lingua franca after WWII cemented a geopolitical split in Limburg dating back to 1830 and the Belgian Revolution. When the Catholic, French-speaking southern provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands broke away to form an independent Kingdom of Belgium, the controversial governor of Maastricht, the Arnhem-born baron Bernardus Johannes Cornelis Dibbets, resisted the secessionist pull and remained loyal to King William I.

Dibbets was Dutch, an outsider, and he has been reviled for his actions ever since. Yet Maastricht has prospered as a Dutch city. As a Dutch city, it has embraced the realities of postwar economics, in which the English language has been seen as a pragmatic choice. English in Maastricht, as in most parts of the Netherlands, is spoken at least adequately by a very high percentage of the population – higher than anywhere else I have been to (barring some parts of Britain, of course). People are taught English at school, they watch TV programmes and films at the cinema in English, they read English; a high percentage of the companies based in Maastricht are international corporations in which business is conducted in English; Maastricht is also home to a renowned university hospital – and there, too, English is the language of international knowledge-transmission. The university itself aims to become officially bi-lingual. The English language seems to be a vital factor in the process of ‘internationalisation’.

“A hundred years ago it was totally different, I think,” Jerome told me. “There weren’t a lot of people that were French-speaking, but the upper class was very well educated in French.”

“So what changed?” I asked.

“Just that maybe there’s no need to cross that border any more. Maybe economically the French part of Belgium has declined, but maybe it’s also the provincial character of Maastricht; it’s not as cosmopolitan as it looks. English has really become the number one language. And that’s also maybe the explanation for the barrier with the neighbours to the south.”

But there is a subtext in Jerome’s comments: underlying all these external influences from a Dutch and English-speaking economic sphere, there is a city whose traditions are firmly rooted in the dialects of Limburg.

Winckers&Winckers, shoeshops in Maastricht

Paul Winckers runs the Winckers&Winckers shoe shop in Minckelersstraat; the other one, just around the corner in Vijfharingenstraat, is run by his brother. The shop in Minckelersstraat has been in the family for 120 years. In fact, the brothers’ parents still inhabit the old family home above the original shop.

Paul, who is about the closest thing to the archetypal Maastrichtenaar you are ever likely to meet, views the internationalisation of the city he was born and brought up in with suspicion.

“All these international events,” he says, “They don’t really reflect the city’s people and culture.”

Speaking from the viewpoint of the local trader operating in the city that is his by birthright and family tradition, he is concerned at a trend which is pricing people like him and his brother out of their markets, businesses and homes:

“On the question of local industry,” he says, “the situation is problematic because the only thing people really worry about is the price of everything – service and quality are elements that don’t really come into the equation.”

It’s the old story: globalisation at the local level means that the shops people have used and enjoyed for generations are forced out of the market by large conglomerates which have the resources to rent or purchase inner-city properties at dizzying prices, and cities that were once lively communities with strong ties to the local environment become expensive open-air museums.

Butcher shop Franssen

The Slagerij Franssen in St. Pieterstraat is another example of a family business which has survived history for over a century. The butcher shop is currently run by Maurice and Karin Franssen, who invited me to breakfast with their family in their home above the shop (I cannot recommend highly enough their filet americain!).

They agree that life has become almost unbearably expensive for small city businesses.

“30 years ago,” Maurice told me, “there were 400 butchers in this area. Now there are just a handful.”

The key problem, they say, is property prices. Asking prices for properties are absurdly high and the banks will refuse mortgages even to well-established and profitable companies. Maurice and Karin were fortunate in that they could support their mortgage application with over a century’s-worth of carefully-kept accounts.

But they remain upbeat about the changes they have witnessed in their city over the past thirty years.

“Maastricht’s identity is changing with internationalisation,” they say, “it’s sad, but it is a good thing.”

But internationalisation does not necessarily imply that the old Maastricht will disappear, as the clientèle at the Slagerij Franssen testifies. Some of their more elderly customers have been buying their meat at the Franssens’ shop since the times of Maurice’s grandfather.

Butcher shop Franssen

“They order in [the local dialect] Maastrichts and they expect to be understood,” Maurice said. “When we employ new people in the shop, we want them to be able to understand the dialect.” And the dialect, I am told, definitely requires subtitles. It is an important point: the clientèle may be ageing, but there is still a demand for young people who can use the local dialect in the work-place. Maastrichts is not yet a thing of the past, and I know from experience that interest in local traditions, cultures and languages is on the rise across Europe.

Maastricht may still be a somewhat provincial town, but the Franssens alerted me to the fact that any resistance to ‘outsiders’ among the Mastrichtenaar is in fact directed against the Dutch, not against those who come from outside the Netherlands.

“Do you know the story of General Dibbets?” Maurice asked me as I was preparing to leave. I didn’t, so he went on. “There used to be a custom that fathers would encourage their male children to go and piddle on his tomb.”

As a sign of disrespect, I assumed. “How long ago?” I asked.

“Oh, until quite recently. The tomb became so damaged that they had to move it. No one can get near it now.”

I laughed at the thought, then asked: “And you, did you do it?”

“Oh no, no,” he said hastily. But he was grinning at me, and I was left wondering.

A modern dilemma
The picture that opens this article shows the coats of arms of the so-called Tweeherigheid, the ‘divided rule’, namely the period between 1204 and 1794 when the city’s administration was divided between the Duke of Brabant and the Prince-Bishop of Liège.

This, to my mind, still stands as representing the divided character of Maastricht. A city that, despite indissoluble ties to the Dutch and English-speaking North, is nevertheless irresistibly drawn to the French-speaking South; a city that harbours memories and traditions in a variant of Limburgish that owes much of its character to the French language and therefore stands apart from the Limburgish spoken beyond the city’s boundaries, which appears to be closer to German; a city where four international languages co-exist with relative ease; a city that assiduously promotes the international character of its institutions and the international importance of its recent history. And yet, a city where internationalist claims can justifiably be considered spurious by the locals.

European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht

When I first approached the question of how international Maastricht is, I think I had a contradiction in mind.

On the one hand, the city of corporate branding; on the other, the city of locals ordering their veal cutlets in Limburgish dialect as they witness the tensions inherent in political and economic colonisation by forces both national and international.

What I have found is a very modern dilemma: how to reconcile globalist aspirations with the preservation of local character.

By Robert Norris

Robert Norris is a British-Italian translator and teacher who arrived in Maastricht from Italy in the autumn of 2009. His interests include writing, travel and martial arts. He lives in Bunde with his wife, Mitchy.