The land is flat and, although there are few obstructions to the eye across the fields, the view is less than if hills roiled in the distance. So the beauty of northern Flanders is invested in the sky and its roiling clouds: sometimes swirling dark and menacing and at others still, haloed by an emerging light. Painters in the area north of Antwerp got it right as far back as the thirteenth century.

This land is the border expanse between Flanders to the south and the Dutch Low Country to the north where the water lies just below the surface of the rich soil and the air is often filled with rain. The border came into being in 1830 when the Low Countries (the Netherlands) split along religious lines: Catholics to the south and Protestants to the north. But these religious labels have little similarity to those in the US.

Catholicism in Flanders is simply part of the background of an intelligent fun-loving population with no particular adherence to Papal strictures. Protestantism in Holland is not marked by the sober conservatism of Scotland and Northern Germany – instead it has become the opposite, a liberal flowering in which the population does whatever foolish thing it wants: from drugs to euthanasia to gay marriage. The wise Dutch send their children south to Belgium for their education.

But the subject here is Flanders.

Antwerp is a port well-known for its diamond trade, but less well-known as the port of entry for oriental pigments and dyes which supplied the paints for the likes of Van Eyck, Vermeer, Steen, Rubens, Rembrandt and others of the Low Countries before the present day Netherlands and Belgium came into being.

In the county of Antwerp a principal city is Hoogstraten – literally “high street” for here a small rise makes a big difference in the flat countryside.

The rise and its surrounding fields was the property of Count Antoine de LaLaing. The boundaries of his feudal estate fields form the border between the nations. Thus, the boundary waves in three large indentations leaving two different nations oddly separated but intertwined like patterned cloth both connected and separated by a zip-fastener. Hoogstraten in Flanders is surrounded on three sides by the Netherlands only a mile away in one direction. Likewise, inside the Netherlands, Baarle-Hertog/Nassau is a town, with two mayors, composed of tiny bits of Belgium, some just garden size, embedded in the neighbouring country.

In this region different dialects are strong in neighbouring towns because in the past feudal serfs stayed where they were. Even today whole extended families of several generations live in single towns and commute to work elsewhere in Belgium. This makes for strong family ties with unchanging language and customs.

Without rolling hills and sun Flanders produces no wine but with light unrestrictive Catholicism the land abounds with monasteries that produce a hundred different beers. These beers are the world’s strongest and best. Knowing Flemish drinkers dismiss beers produced to the north, like Heineken and Amstell, as fruit juices.

Chocolate probably arose from imports through Bruges and Antwerp but the Flemish have turned chocolate making into a fine art and cultural-icon. The outward sign is the export of such chocolates as US-owned Godiva but real Belgian chocolate is made by small chocolatiers across the land. In tiny Hoogstraten, huddled around its magnificent church, there are five chocolatiers who could give those who produce Godiva good advice.

Besides beer and chocolates, the Flemish are known for eating well, so well that I suspect the French chefs must have come north to learn their trade.

A Christmas meal at a local Hoogstraten restaurant might make the point.

It starts slowly. A taste of paté, mustard, cress and tomato, together with champagne, and the conversation begins.

Then a succulent carpaccio of fawn (young hart) accompanied by an autumn salad with cheese and pine nuts complements the aged Medoc.

Good conversation decorates a pause before an unlimited serving of cream-of-cress soup arrives.

The conversation is lighter now as the wine flows but it ceases abruptly as the diners approach the next course: lightly poached sole in a cream sauce enhanced by small potatoes and basted calamari. As the delicacy of the fish occupies the tongue the conversation picks up again … and runs around the table. It waxes and wanes as each glass is refilled.

Then in preparation for the main meal, champagne sorbet in a high glass cleans the palette and I swear the talk changes with each taste. The world’s problems go away.

It is Christmas so the next dish presents the turkey, delicate slices of kankoen, dark and white with sausage stuffing, beans and croquette potatoes in light gravy. The serving is just enough to tempt your mind with holiday spirit and to tantalize the taste buds.  Fortunately it doesn’t stop there.

“Would you like some more, Sir? -- steaming hot – and perhaps a little more?”

Why am I not surprised that the conversation takes on its own soul as the wine flows? “Lekker” is the Flemish for a wonderful taste and I hear the word often.

The dinner is almost over. Only the sweets are left: a Yule log of mocha and vanilla ice-cream served in generous cuts, and later as the next topic is exhausted, strong coffee and a plate of delicate biscuits and, of course, Belgian chocolates.

The meal has taken a brief three and a half hours.

The US dollar is not worth much in settling the bill but rather than use a credit card our Flemish friend pays in cash. He is well known to our hostess. The bill contains a discount. This discount, however, is not for friendship rather it marks another long-standing characteristic of Belgium and Flanders. The discount is for cash and the absence of official invoices, forms, and the 21% tax.  The meal has become part of the country’s black economy. It lessens the tax burden. It has been said that without ‘black money’ from the exchange of goods and services the country would go bankrupt.

So, Flanders is a world of questions:

• How can a countryside in which an overpass is an alp look so beautiful?

• How can a country surrounded by more powerful nations be so individual?

• How can a country, encumbered in part by a social system that requires high taxes, survive?

• How can a country be characterized by good living when its past companion to the north cannot boast of much more than tulips and some cheese?

The fact is that Flanders manages all this and very well.

Hoogstraten, including hotels and restaurants: www.hoogstraten.be/main.htm