4 ms·

Read Wallonia and thought this was about some SeaLand clone - I checked the URL expecting it to be the Onion

• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• tormeh 10y ago
  It's complex... Belgium is divided into two major regions: Flandern and Wallonia. Flandern speaks Dutch and Wallonia speaks French. Initially, Wallonia didn't want to share its riches with the poor Flemish, wich meant a strong separation between them, but now it's the other way around. Basically, Belgium is two countries pretending to be one. It's one of many ways in which Belgium is messed up politically. Fun (sad) fact: Belgium has the most national politicians per capita in the world. Fun (sad) fact 2: Belgium holds the record for longest period without a government, with Iraq in second place. 589 days. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%9311_Belgian_government_formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%9311_Belgian_govern...)
  • icc97 10y ago
    Flanders [1] not Flandern. But you're quite right about the rest. Belgium is indeed a mess. I moved there from the UK 6 years ago expecting to find a country benefitting from a more open minded dual-language socialist life style. But instead its just nothing more than petty in-fighting. The Flemish speak better English than they do French. The two countries would love to split up but they both want Brussels which is in the Flemish half but mostly French speaking. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders
  • kwhitefoot 10y ago
    But Belgium survived quite well without a government because the civil service kept on working. It seems that governments aren't as important as they like to think; at least on a day to day basis.
    • tormeh 10y ago
      It's like not paying for software support and upgrades. The bugs won't be fixed, but newer ones won't be introduced either.