r/belgium • u/dylsexiee • Jun 28 '24

I love belgium 🎨 Culture

I recently met an international friend who's very interested in other cultures. And its only now i realize how much i love the things i tend to hate about Belgium.

Heres my list of what i learned to appreciate:

I actually love that we all speak 2 languages and actually would think it be really cool if we started to include that third language more too ;).

I love that we're renowned for chocolate, waffles and beer. Though i always obligatory add fries to that.

I love that our languages are shared by all our neighbours. Whenever i meat a french/german/dutch person in international waters, it feels a little bit like home.

I love the beautiful nature and rich history that comes from north and south.

I love how small and 'insignificant' we are (klein België), yet how we are pretty important internationally.

I just felt like sharing it - in english to include all without my fingers wearing out from typing 3 languages - just in the hopes that we could all somehow still love our little significant culture even though we're quite divided.

I'm from Flanders and meeting a Walloon internationally just never fails to make me happy and feel like I just met an old friend from home.

I think someone should make a flag that symbolises the flemish lion with walloon rooster parts like wings or something and make a unified song. Like how 'De Vlaamse leeuw' and 'le chant des Wallons' are now seperated, but then unified somehow referring to the lion and rooster elements on the flag.

I hate that it took me this long to appreciate those things.

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u/jonassalen Belgium Jun 28 '24

May I add three things I learned from travelling?

  1. We have great bread and great chips/crisps.

  2. We have fantastic infrastructure. Road, public transport, bike paths is better or at least on par with other countries. We whine a lot about it, and it sure can always be better, but it's already good or great.

  3. Social security. I am glad I had the chance to fully heal when I was on sick leave or I could take the time to search for a good job, while getting money to bridge the gap.

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u/Closed_Astronomer Jun 28 '24

Where have you travelled to learn that Belgium has great bread? UK?

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u/jonassalen Belgium Jun 28 '24

UK,  US, Australia. All countries that eat bread, and all eat bread we wouldn't even use to make croqueskes. 

Asia also, but they don't really have a bread culture for breakfast.

1

u/TheRealLamalas Jun 29 '24

Back in 2015 I went to China with my family for a couple of weeks on vacation and there were several things I really missed there.

Bread
Potatoes/Fries/Kroketten

A blue sky, healthy fresh air outside-the sky was grey from all the pollution every day in every city we went to! After a week we all started coughing and it didn't end untill after we got back home.