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LadyEllen -> RE: what do you know about Belgium? (2/21/2008 9:24:22 AM)
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What I know about Belgium apart from what others have mentioned already;
The headquarters of Rubbermaid and a bunch of other companies in their group, are in Waterloo, where there is also a fascinating little museum about the 1815 showdown and the history of the town more generally.
Brussels airport is no place to spend 12 hours because your meeting with Rubbermaid finished early and you'd already explored Waterloo and been round the museum twice.
The architecture in Brugges centre is amazing, but there's this constant smell of drains.....
Belgium is actually quite a long country, though narrow. Driving from Dunkerque ferry port to Luxembourg took me 4-5 hours without a break. Driving from Dunkerque to the Dutch border between Antwerpen and Breda is about half the distance, and would take half the time if Antwerpen had any idea of how to build a road system.
The view from the motorway is very, very flat and boring until you get past Brussels' nightmare traffic system, (if youre lucky you can spot the Atomium thingy from the motorway), after which on the road to Namur and Luxembourg, you find the most absolutely wonderful scenery in the Ardennes.
The south of Belgium is full of French speaking people and appears post industrial (or did last time I was there); grimy and run down, a bit like our industrial areas mid 80s.
The west of Belgium may have far more cows and pigs than people, judging by the number of loads of milk products and meat we used to bring in from there. However the west of Belgium gets BBC TV programmes so everyone is fluent in English.
If you speak French, you might (might) just get by in most of Belgium. Forget any idea of speaking Flemish or understanding a word of it, even if you know Dutch. But everyone is pretty friendly anyway.
E
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