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Belgium No Longer Exists

By Andy Hume / March 21, 2008

It was, by any measure, an odd moment. Being interviewed on stage just moments after her tearful coronation, the new Miss Belgium was lobbed the gentlest of softballs about her hopes for the future. She hesitated, smile fixed on her face, and then said, “I didn’t understand, can you repeat?” And that was when the booing started.

Alizee Poulicek is Belgian all right, albeit a Belgian who spent much of her childhood in her father’s native Czech Republic, and her French is impeccable. But the audience in Antwerp were, like a majority of Belgians, native Dutch speakers for whom speaking French is a chore generally to be undertaken only with ignorant tourists. When it became clear that the new beauty queen didn’t speak their language, they took it as a mortal insult, rather as if Miss USA had admitted not knowing the words to the Star-Spangled Banner.

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  • By karoline thornton 9/29/08 at 2:58 p.m. UTC

    ughh boring

  • By JamesK 3/26/08 at 11:39 a.m. UTC

    http://zapatopi.net/belgium/

     

    ;)

  • By Tapestry 3/22/08 at 9:13 p.m. UTC

    The emotional temperature within Belgium is not as bored as you make it sound.  People are frightened, especially the French of the Flemish.  As the EU disintegrates nations, it provides an umbrella of sorts, but one probably of limited duration.  Once it splits open, the trouble will really start as the nations that contained local wars for generations will be so disempowered.  That is why the EU should be a trade deal between nation states and not a replacement.  All empires come to an end, and that's always when you get the wars…Austro-Hungary, Soviet etc

  • By Melvin Schnell 3/21/08 at 1:21 p.m. UTC

    Dont worry, all ethnic differences will be subsumed in Eurabia. Everyone, please stope learning French or Flemish-those are dead languages. Arabic is much more useful

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