Belgium forum < "the way of life" in Belgium

  • Belgian lifesyle

    posted by Deleted user in Belgium forum 

    Hard to answer for such a young country, still really undetermined in term of identity.
    We have this linguistic conflict which can sounds silly but which is real:
    -South Belgians speak french and schools don't teach them a lot of dutch there.
    -North Belgians speak dutch and most of the time also french and english.
    Reasons for that?
    French stays a language spoken by a lot of people compare to dutch, plus, most of the Belgians dutch speakers speaks also french.
    Something else about this conflict is more deeply installed:
    Historically, Belgium is born from the liberation of The Netherlands domination. Then the riches and powerful peoples in Belgium where all speaking french, and the economy was stronger in the south (charcoal mines, ect..) So, naturally, inequality leads to anger. Then, during the 60's there was few conflict about what language to speak where in the country, what language to use in the administrations and so on..The University of Leuven become only dutch speaking and we created another new university with french language only. In the mean time the north economy become more important while the south one is failing down.
    So, today we have the north (dutch speakers) which have been fighting to get some rights about their language. And the south with french speakers who don't really understand that there is/was a conflict, for them, most of the time, they are Belgians and that's it. The actual conflict are mainly about Brussels and his surroundings: Brussels is mainly french speaking but located in the north part, up to the linguistic border...sounds silly isn't it?
    Ok, that's it for the history, I hope this may help you to understand the identity dynamic in belgium.

    Now, about the "cliché" Belgian lifestyle:
    We live in a country that counts up to 2OO day of rain per year, this determines a lot of our habits I think..:

    -We like indoors, we hang out (coffee, beers, games, chat..)
    -Belgium is a country producing a lot of comics and all Belgians have a lot of them,
    -We DO love potatoes (we are pissed off to hear about the english word "french" fries, ours are the ones!),
    -we really enjoy a wide variety of beers,and we also have some local alcools
    -our chocolate is good (note that this come from the colonisation time)
    -Brussels is messy
    -Despite of the linguistic conflict, we feel all Belgians when someone think you are french
    -Despite of the size of the country, Belgium is made out of a lot of small areas that all have their own landscape, habits and specialties, from the sea to the forest, from the waffles to the beers.
    -We love when sun and beers are around, hanging out in a park on the summer time, we try to get outside as soon as there is a little dry weather!

    hope this help,
    best,
    --
    nicolas

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