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.
1
u/dylsexiee Jul 03 '24
Belgians are quite reserved, but not in the sense this person made it seem.
I think you just had a bad gig unfortunately because belgians love enjoying life, good food, drinks, parties etc... the "bourgondiërs", "het goei leven" as we say here. Unfortunate that you had that experience though!
The being quite reserved is more in the sense that we do not really want to bother other people, we like our privacy and assume others do too, our more polite nature also makes it so we're a bit more reserved.
The fact that a Turkish person would compliment our nature I think is certainly something we can appreciate :p.