LUCIE IN BELGIUM

Belgium is a little country in Europe. There are three spoken languages:

French, Dutch and German.

Belgium is 321 times smaller than the United States of America. Belgium has 10.5 million inhabitants.

Specialities

French Frites Waffles

Beer

Belgium is famous for its bakery. Famous things in Belgium are:

-cramique (bread with raisins)

-cougnou (bread with pieces of sugar, eaten for Christmas)

-gozettes (turnovers)

-tarts (most typical cherry, plum, sugar and rice tart)

Cuberdons

Candy

Chocolate

Belgium produces 440 million pounds of chocolate in 1 year.

Belgium is the country that export the most chocolate.

Monuments in Belgium

Atomium in Brussels

The Atomium is a monument in Brussels.

There are nine balls on it. These balls represent the nine atoms of iron crystal.

The Atomium was built for the occassion of the Universal Exposition of 1958.

La Grand place of Brussels

The flower carpet at the Grand Place in Brussels

The museum of Tintin

Hergé, the writer of Tintin, is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

There are more than 80 original plates, 800 pictures, documents and objects brought together in the museum.

Hergé isn’t just Tintin. He was also successful as an illustrator, type designer, writer, caricaturist and storyteller.

In 70 years, 200 millions of the book have been sold worldwide.

Museum of Mini Europe

Mini Europe is a park consisting of 350 miniatures built around the theme of Europe.

In mini Europe you can find a miniature of Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Place in Brussel..

Cultural differences

All the streets are straight in the USA, in Belgium and France the streets go to the center of the city, what creates a spider web

Streetnames are different. In the USA it’s always a number, but in most European countries it’s a real name. Ex: Rue des pommiers (appletrees’ street).

The schoolsystem is also very different. We have different subjects everyday. We don’t have a cafeteria to buy food for lunch. We don’t have electives exept for gym. We only have academics. We have a lot of homework everyday.

We have assigned seats the whole time. We don’t have a schoolbus, only the

citybus.

We also have different food. Mc Donald’s is expensive in Europe. We have 7times less Mc Donald’s restaurants in Belgium. We eat eat potatoes and vegetables everyday. Fruit is what we eat most of the time for a snack.

We have times to eat, we only eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We never eat snacks.

We don’t have mexican food.

We have a lot of history in the country. We have a lot of old buildings that we want to keep. Some buildings are 300 years old. In the USA you have a lot of new buildings. You also have big and high buildings like in Chicago.

We dress up more than american people. We never wear sweatpants. We wear always nice clothes, with jewelry and nice shoes. It’s very important to look good.

Facts

The tallest man in Europe is a Belgian man, Alain Delaunois. He measures 7.6 feet.

The biggest baby recorded was born in Belgium. Samuel Timmerman’s weight was 11 pounds.

Athina Onassis Roussel de Miranda is the world’s richest girl and she lives in Belgium.

The Belgian highway is the only thing you can see from the moon because of all the lights.

The first printed newspaper in the world was printed in Antwerp, Belgium.

Durbuy is the smallest town in the world, with less than 500 inhabitants.

The Belgian singer Salvatore Adamo has the second highest disk sales in the world after the Beatles.

Pierre Minuit founded New York City (aka New Amsterdam) after buying the island of Manhattan.