An Austrian friend of mine lives abroad alot, due to her husband’s profession, and complaining is her default mode. The spent a year in Alabama, which all of us know is a wonderful place, and she complained about a number of things there, including the fact that the classiest restaurant far and wide was a steak house at the local mall, the lack of decent beer, a funny American attitude towards most of the finer things in life including alcoholic beverage in particular wine, the construction of American homes – including the fact that, where she was, the houses were built without rain gutters so the water just sort of flowed off the sides of the house when it rained; weather that was too hot or too cold, the fact that there was a church of one kind or another on nearly every block in town, the poor quality of schools in general and the particular fact that long division is taught differently in America than it is in Austria, and that her child’s teacher refused to accept correct results if they were arrived at using the Austrian method.
This is just a small fraction of her list, remember.
Now she is in Belgium, where all the men have pot bellies and red noses, and where the season of winter (“at least this year,” she fairly remarks) doesn’t really exist, just sort of a nasty transitional season between fall and spring, making paying for the mounting of winter tires on your car a waste of money.
And so on. Awful country, Belgium. At least if you overlook the fact that good food can be had there (I mean, Belgians invented French fries, for godssake), and most houses are built with rain gutters.
Not to mention the beer.
well…. some people just need attention I guess. Some people do that by starting a weblog, some just complain (And some combine the two).
At least she didn
Hah. Works for me.
Belgium seemed okay when I was there. I had a huge serving of steamed mussels in Ostend. With french fries.
And beer.
Some people will complain about anything.
Yeah, Belgium sucks. Astounding architecture, facinating history, attractive people, delightful food, and several classes of amazing beer. I can’t get past Chimay, myself.
Don’t ever let her move to Berkeley, where the flowers don’t stop blooming, Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck instilled a unique level of consciousness to housebuilding, we don’t know about winter tires at all, you can still find bilingual education, everyone on the planet immigrates here and brings their cuisine with them,. Plus the really great beer choices are boggling. No sirree, she’d hate it.
yah, well, they have good weblogs, yo.
belgium sucks. america is better. Just because it’s european n shit doesn’t make it cool or special. It just makes it belgium. Yay. waffles and chocolate. yahoo. lame.
poop
osama bin poopin’ good fritters. no.
You guys are full of shit when you say that belgium is lame. And you guys from America:
your country doensn’t give a shit to start a war,
there are metal detectors in every school (does this sound normal ?), your food over there, in every village ther is a mc donalds or burger king.
I could give many more reasons…
Belgium is a country where the people are friendly. I’m not saying that every person in Belgium is friendly and all, but we have are principals which you don’t have ! (e.g. start a war)
Belgium is OK,it’s just the people that suck.They have an attitude problem.
Most americans are real dumb. They believe everything what little george bush says, without thinking themselves.
Hail to the old Europe !