FUNNY BELGIUM

For Manic Monday scroll down

Our host Swampwitch proposed for Fun Monday :
"Choose a topic/theme and make an alphabetical list of words, phrases,photos...however you want to share your topic/theme.If you don't know the alphabet, make one up. In other words, just have fun and teach us something using your own set of A B C's".

Of course I know the alphabet at least I hope so but, there are two things which keep me off to do a list of words. First I hate lists in general and second I am too lazy to put the following topic in alphabetical order. Fun Monday should be funny that's why I tell you the very funny story of the Belgian government.

ave you ever heard in your life about a country who remained without government for exactly 10 months ?? It didn't harm the population though, we didn't notice any difference.

It all started after the elections June 10.



to the right the former Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt


he guy to the left Yves Leterme was elected Prime Minister and should put a new government together. The day when he was asked to sing the Belgian anthem and sang the French one, he lost a lot of sympathies. It was as if Bush would sing "God save the Queen".

elgium has only 10 millions inhabitants, and consists of flemish (dutch speaking people) and wallons (french speaking people) and the politicians like to fight and pretend that the country wants to separate in one flemish and one french speaking state. (The new country names are unknown by the poor population)

he best cartoon designer of Belgium Pierre Kroll informed us, the ordinary people better than the News Papers where the news were different according to the fact if they were Flemish or French.



UN soldiers in Flanders ?



Go ahead M'dam don't be afraid, you can speak french we protect you ...
old lady : Are you sure ??
he Flemish politicians want to have everything in flemish and no french anymore or at least everybody should learn and speak flemish, but the wallon politicians are too lazy for that and consider flemish as a dialect and not a language. What else can the population do but laugh and take it with humor. This language war exists since Belgium was created in 1831.

o the the flemish and wallonish politicians started to fight and to fight for more power and being the most important part of the government. The population watched them like catchers in a ring.

-
fter 5 months of fights without any issue


Calm down ! and let's start again, (my wife is waiting)

he King finally suggested to put up a provisory Goverment to at least settle some important points like social security or the increasing cost of living. He asked the Prime Minister of the former government whom nobody wanted anymore to help creating a new government ! (I understand if you don't understand ! Nobody understands)


Government : We approach an agreement


Agreement cake


e agreed and finally formed a new government with as Prime Minister the one who cannot even sing his own anthem. He is flemish but speaks very good french. Anyway he should be neutral ! (he should ....)
fter 10 months without a final government on the 20th of March Mr. Yves Leterme was nominated Prime Minister by the King Albert II




ut he (the King) really regrets good old Guy as you can see above "Please don't leave us !" But Guy has other plans this time with whole Europe !



eterme the winner (??) swore to the King !



t's done !

or how long ??


o you like my alphabet ?

BELGIUM and it's languages

I invite you to come with me for A visit to Manneken Pis in Brussels




This little red spot on the Europe map is Belgium


and so looks a close up. If you drive about 200 km(124 miles) to 250 km(155) to South, North, East or West you arrive at a border. France, Holland, Germany and Luxembourg.

This little country is devided into three regions,

Flemish speaking part (Flanders) French speaking part (Wallonia) and the little red spot is Brussels, where both languages are spoken.

Of course both parts have a regional government. That leads sometimes to quite funny situations.

If there is smog the highway speed is reduced to 90 km/h. If you don't respect it you get a fine of € 40 in Flanders but only a warning in Wallonia. Concretely it would look like this for me :

15 km Waterloo - Brussels = 5 min high speed, 5 min at 90km 10 min high speed and this way I could drive through the whole country.

The weather too is different. I am living at the border between Flanders and Wallonia. After our garden we are in Flanders. When I listen to the french speaking weatherman, he would say (for example) it is 10 ° and sunshine. I listen to the flemish speaking weatherman and there it is 11° and cloudy. I look out of my garden and it's 14° and it rains even after the "border". This is really quite strange.

There are a lot of other absurd linguistic things. If you live in the french part of the country and want to send your child to a flemish school to become bilingual (that's what the politicians praise every day) you are not allowed. The school is only for children living in this town.

The traffic signs for city names are also very difficult especially for tourists. If you want to drive to the walloonish city Mons, in the flemish part it is named Bergen or Lille (France) becomes Rijsel ! How can a poor stranger find his way ??

When I go to Antwerpen which is a flemish town, I speak english or german but not french because I don't want to meet some fanatic flemish who pretends he can't speak french. But it has also happened to me that some of them ask " do you speak french ?"

I only hope the next generation will be more intelligent !