FUN MONDAY - National Day in Belgium

Janice wants to know how we spent the July 4th US Independence day : Do you have a July 4th funny story you would like to share? Do you have a family tradition for this day? For those who are not US residents, please tell us when your country’s independence day is and share with us how you celebrate/spend it. We would love some pictures too, you can share your stories in pictures too.

As I am not an US resident, I spent the 4th of July in 30°C (90F) heat and tried to get rid of the jungle into which our garden had transformed itself during our holidays. I also had to fill in our fridge, which was completely empty for the same reason. Besides that there also were tons of laundry to do.

All this I wouldn't have done on our "National Day" on July 21th, and as we are not there yet, I tried to find some pictures from the last years. I wrote about how we celebrate in Waterloo on my Countries & Cities Blog.

In Brussels of course there is much more, because it is the capital there it starts with a big parade in presence of the King and Queen and all members of the Royal Family, plus the politicians of course. Years ago in the parade much more national military stuff was shown, in the last years it is more European Union directed. Of course you also have to keep your ears closed when the planes are flying over your head leaving color traces of the belgian flag.

In front of the Royal Palace is a parc where a big "family" party takes place, where also royal members are mingling with the population and their children have a lot of fun together with all the "normal" once. People do pic nic, there are shows, dances and funny other games. Of course the traditional "Frittekot" which means a booth selling "french" fries, and belgian wafers are there too.

On the streets there are different kind of parades, dances, music and people have a lot of fun.

Of course each town has its firework and some patriots are hanging flags at their windows. Not that much though. On official buildings there are always two flags now, the Belgian one and the European.

People are happy when the 21st is falling on a week day so they have a day off, and that's the most important for the majority I guess.

We never did anything special that day nor did our Belgian neighbors.




The King and the Queen, dancing and having fun in the street, a parade on stilts, and Manneken piss dressed as an accordion player (last year)



The King and the Queen. Our King is a very cheerful person with a lot of humour, which he really needs in this difficult country where 11 million inhabitants are fighting sometimes because of a language ! (french or flemish)