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Belgium
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Belgium is bordered by Germany, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Its compact size makes it an easy country to travel around. Brussels, the capital, is the heart of the country and the European Union, as well as headquarters to the NATO and offers travelers cultural attractions like the Museum of Ancient Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Comic Strip Museum and the Chocolate and Cocoa Museum, featuring one of Belgium's best known products. A string of engaging cities such as Bruges, Ghent and Liege offer impressive architecture, lively nightlife, first-rate cuisine and numerous other attractions for visitors. Then there is reinvented Antwerp, now a hotbed of fashion and modern design, and the charms of the beauty of the mountainous Ardennes region to the East, as well as the sweeping sand of the coastline resorts of the Western seaboard. Belgium is ... a land whose specialties include ubiquitous beers, delicate chocolates, lace and Belgian waffles.
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Belgium, a small country in Western Europe, is generally flat except for the hilly and forested southeast (Ardennes) region. After centuries of invasion and occupation, this crossroads of Europe now stands at center stage in the newly unifying continent. Belgium is greatly attached to democratic values, and in 1994 a revised constitution made it a federal state, giving political representation to its Dutch, French, and German cultures. There are three regions in the federal state: Flanders in the north (with 5.8 million people) where the official language is Dutch; Wallonia in the south (with 3.3 million people) where French is the official language; and Brussels-Capital region (950,000 people) where both languages are used. The smaller German-speaking community (about 70,000) is in Wallonia. The regions and language communities enjoy autonomy in cultural and economic matters.
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In Dec., 1981, the Christian Democrat-Liberal coalition, under the leadership of Wilfried Martens, came into power in Belgium. His prime ministership saw unpopular economic reforms, and interparty strife toppled the government in 1987. A year later... a new coalition took control of the government, again led by Martens, which was composed of the Flemish and Walloon Socialist parties, the Christian Social party, and the Flemish Volksunie party. In 1992 a center-left coalition government of Socialists and Christian Democrats led by Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene of the Flemish Social Christian party came to power.
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If Belgium sounds like a melting pot for different culture, it's no wonder. In its history, it has been ruled by Austria, France, Germany, Spain, and others. Figures as diverse as Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon have played some part in Belgium's complex history.
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There were signs of interest in Belgium for Freud and Breuer's research on hysteria as early as 1894. References can be found in Dallemagne's Dégénérés et déséquilibrés (Degeneracy and Mental Imbalance), but this appears to be an isolated case (Berdondini, N., 1987). During the twenties, a few attempts were made to introduce young psychiatrists to psychoanalytic concepts, but there was vehement opposition from the old guard. In literature a special issue of Disque vert appeared in 1924, entirely devoted to Freud. The Belgian authors included Georges Dwelshauwers, André Ombredane, and Henri Michaux. In his later writing, Franz Hellens, director of the publication, was ... sympathetic to the work of Carl Gustav Jung.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium, November 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The case of a pregnant woman whose high blood pressure was lowered by increasing the amount of salt in her diet was revealed by leading hypertension expert M.D. Dr Mohaupt, at a recent conference. Doctors recommended that the woman, who was suffering from pre-eclampsia, consumed 20 g of salt a day. As a result of the salt increase the woman's systolic and diastolic blood pressure dropped by 16 mmHg and 12 mmHg.
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