Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 4 and final)

16.  Okay, you need to look very carefully at the photo below: the two people on this bike are facing away from each other.  Yes, that's right.  On the same bike, facing in different directions.  I...just...don't even know what to say about it, except that you would certainly never see the French doing anything that awesomely insane. 

17.  This is how the Belgians do hot chocolate.  Totally. Civilized. Country.

18.  The Belgian waffle (and yes, there actually is a waffle lurking underneath all that, you just can't see it - and that's how I like it!):  suuuure, the French do amazingly delicious and perfect pastries, but would you ever find anything resembling this hot mess in France?  Mais non! But quite honestly, if they loosened up on the perfection once in a while, it might do them some good...

19.  The French can sometimes be a bit too subtle.  The Belgians?  Yeah, not so much.

20.  A giant replica cone of frites by the front door - you would never see anything this tacky (and awesome) in France.  But I swear, every time I see this photo I get hungry, so it's effective advertising.  And also?  Hee!  Truly, my love knows no bounds.

 

So here we are at the end of my twenty reasons why the Belgians are better than the French (which, I repeat, was all tongue-in-cheek affectionate teasing, of course) - I've had fun choosing the photos and writing about it, I hope you've enjoyed reading it.  I now return you to our regularly scheduled programme...

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 3)

11.  The Belgians make about 8000 kinds of beer.  Miss K is not a fan of beer, but I appreciate a) the inventiveness and b) the names.  Like Kwak, for example.  Just say it a few times: Kwak, Kwak, Kwak.  Hee!

12.  The Segway tour in Bruges.  There are Segway tours in other cities, but this one is fabulous.  You go all over town, which is a great thing when you are short on time (we were only there for a day, so this was ideal).  Plus - fun!  The Segway is just about the most fun you can have standing up...

13.  The Belgians are not afraid to let you know they have a kinky side.  This little shop was right along one of the main tourist streets in Bruges - yes, you can buy linens and chocolates and postcards and chain-and-leather lingerie all on the same block.  Hey, you just never know when you might need to get all those things at once...

14.  They have a museum entirely dedicated to frites.  And why not?  The frites in Belgium deserve their own museum.  French frites should hide their little frite faces in shame at the vast superiority of the Belgian version.  Oh yeah, them's fighting words, but I'm not wrong.

15.  Deckchairs outside a Brussels city centre bar on a cold night in September.  This is so awesomely freaky that you would never see it in Paris. 

 

To be continued...

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 2)

6.  Oh. My. God.  Where do I even start???  Believe me, I cannot even begin to describe how intrigued I am by the "poulycroc" and the "crizly", but I swear that I will go to my deathbed still wondering about the "cheese crack".  But perhaps it's for the best - I might have gotten hooked and ended up selling myself on the mean streets of Brussels for just another taste of cheese crack.  Dude, it's cheese crack - that could totally happen...

7. Belgium is a civilized country where you can buy frites at the little stand in the street (in this case, from Antoine's, which makes the best frites in Brussels) and then sit and enjoy them with beer or wine or whatever at a neighbouring bar where frites are "accepted".  Civilized, I'm telling you.

8.  The half-and-half - it's half white wine, half champagne, and the waiter brings both bottles and fills your glass to the point where the only thing keeping it from spilling is the surface tension, so the only way to start drinking it is to slurp - hee!  So not classy but so much fun.  And it's about half what it would cost in Paris, if they even served such an awesome thing, which they do not.

9.  Sure, the French make pain au chocolat, and it's wonderful.  But the Belgians do it too, and they add chocolate glaze on top.  Chocolate glaze on top of your pain au chocolat...mmm...excuse me for a moment while I wipe the drool off my chin.  Seriously, when the French are being left behind in the field of pastry?  Well, you might want to strap on your ice-skates, because apparently Hell has just frozen over...

10.  They sell copies of In Bruges in the tourist office in Bruges!!!  If you haven't seen the movie (Tiny Dancer hasn't, and I had to educate her that the correct way to refer to the city is: In F*ckin' Bruges), you may not realize how completely, totally, insanely awesome this fact is, but if you have?  Well, then you know.

To be continued...

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 1)

Okay, even the title of this post is going to get me into huge trouble, but too bad.  In September, Tiny Dancer and I went to Brussels and Bruges for a long weekend, and being in a half-Flemish, half-French country really highlighted some of the differences between French speakers in France and in other countries (have I mentioned before that I know of Parisians who will only speak English to native French speakers from other countries because they simply can't bear to hear French spoken by anyone other than the French? Because a foreign accent is so "offensive" to their delicate ears. Seriously.) and of course this is meant only in a tongue-in-cheek, poking-affectionate-fun-at way...

1.  Belgians bring the crazy right away.  This is one of the first things we saw from the bus window upon entering Brussels.  Tasteful?  No.  Hilarious? Yes.  Hee!

2.  Belgians like fun art - not just the occasional temporary fun thing installed in the Tuileries masquerading as some kind of festival, or some wacky thing hidden away where no one will see it.  Nope, they stick a great big robot-thingie guy right on the path from the train station to the centre of town and they leave it there.  Excellent.  And fun.

 

3. Belgians know how to have a good time.  The sign for this beer festival?  Still up two weeks later.  Clearly they enjoyed themselves at the beer festival so much that they just couldn't be bothered to take the sign down afterward.  (In France, I am sure there is some humourless bureaucrat whose entire job is to make sure signs are promptly taken down after events.)

4.  Belgians apparently sell "High Quality Pleasure" in shops, and Miss K entirely approves of anyone selling such a thing.

5. In Brussels, they quite literally roll the red carpet out for pedestrians.  Seriously!  The sign says so, and I'm not kidding, the carpet goes on forever.  Fantastique!  And as pedestrians who are almost killed every damn day on the Parisian streets, this is the exact moment when Tiny Dancer (pictured below) and I both fell in love with the Belgians.

To be continued...