Andre de Vries explores a city and country in perpetual search of an identity, still showing the scars of the Counter-Reformation, peopled by the "Spaniards of the North." He discovers a capital on the fault-line between Latin and Germanic cultures, a city so down-to-earth they had to invent surrealism.

André de Vries is a linguist, teacher, and writer, with interests in Asian languages and the dialects of his native country, Belgium.