9. These are the following cities I know in Belgium: Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges. I know this because my favorite Belgian waffle place names all their waffles after Belgian cities. I usually order the Antwerp.
Belgium actually has multiple national languages - I know both german and french are such, with parts of the country having that as the commonly used language. I'm not sure if there's another english part, but I do think there was a third language in the mix
like all european countries, the belgian border is quite the opposite of straight - in one particular instance, the border to France kinda wraps around a part of france - and the french built their nuclear powerplant there
You should try out Liège Waffles, it's tasty. You're right about all points. In Belgium, the majority of the population speaks Flemish, which is a Western Germanic language. In second place comes French and in third place comes German (only the eastern cantons speak german and that's about three cities in the Liège province). Belgium is famous for it's pralines.
We still have a royal family but all they really do is diplomacy. Everything else in their job is done under the supervision of the premier minister. And the royal family isn't popular here. In stark contrast to the Netherlands, our neighboors, who are patriotic (Belgians are only patriotic when it comes to football and eurovision) and like their royal family about as much as Englanders do.
Belgium had an African colony, Congo, but it's a rather complicated story. Leopold 2 (our second king) managed to obtain that part in the middle of Africa
when European countries negotiated to divise under themselves. So it originally belongeg to him and he became a king of 2 kingdoms. Of course he stole the land from the people living on it and he mistreated them. Protestant monks outed him internationally and an investigation followed, that proved he mistreated people. Leopold 2 then said other countries did the same, made them investigated,
nd indeed, other countries also mistreated natives. But still, Leopold 2 messed up, so the Belgian government decided to overtake Congo from him. That was also a complicated political story. At the time Belgium had a new party in the political field: the labourers party. That party was against colonialism and thus didn't
want Congo but their party leader had another opinion, he thought that because they were against colonialism, they had to take Congo from this exploiter Leopold 2, so when his party voted against it, he was absent to show his disagreement, he went to Congo. So in the end, Belgium took Congo and tried to make things better, by bringing schools and whatever there, but because they were still paternalistic
af, they messed up. And they brought belgian conflicts over to Congo, like catholic schools vs government schools and the language discord. In the end, Congo wanted independancy, and Belgium didn't want a war like France was having with Algérie and others, so they let them go. And they helped them out to write their constitution.
Nowadays, I'd say Belgium is a country with sh**ty politics like everywhere else and nobody in Belgium undestands what government does what, it has good and all kinds of beer, has an interesting literature, has good music, and a good sense of humor.
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