Oostduinkerke

Queen Elisabeth was named after her legendary aunt Sissy, Empress of Austria. She married King Albert I of Belgium in 1900. Admittedly, he was not yet king at that time. That didn't happen until 9 years later. Queen Elisabeth was called "the White Angel of the Yser" because she set up a clinic on the war front during WWI. Both Albert and Elisabeth remained at the front, which made them immeasurably popular with the Belgian population. Queen Elisabeth surrounds herself with artists, writers and scientists. For example, she was good friends with Albert Einstein. The most well-known result of her artistic interest is, of course, the Queen Elisabeth Competition. For more than fifty years, this has been the most important competition in the world for voice, violin, piano and composition. She was also given a second nickname: "the red queen" because of her socialist and communist sympathies. She chose her socialist friend Camille Huysmans as her confidant. After Albert's death in Marche-les-Dames, she made several cultural journeys to the Iron Curtain. She stood next to Khrushchev at the May Day parade in Moscow, met Tito in Yugoslavia and spoke with China's communist leader Mao.

Dromos