Subject: First thoughts about countries

I don´t know we are much closer to Slovakia.

Polish language isn´t very similar to czech.

But I know that their market is very friendly to our seniors :)

i think we get along pretty well, except when it's for alpine skiing.
but you can't really call the language they speak german anyway (and i'm not talking about the french, italian or romansh parts)

Like I said:

Belgium - No such think exists, and if it would exist, they should split it ;-)

So, in my opinion, a Belgian doesn't exist. You're a Flemming, or you're a Walloon.

Now with the EU it's not such a big thing anyway

Flemming... that's a normal first name in Denmark :)

and what about Hungarian people ?? :)

We ( Flanders ) and the Netherlands speak officially the same language, but Noord-Hollands or people of Groningen are very hard to understand. And I'm from West Flanders, and we have a very strange dialect. A lot of other people from Flanders don't understand us, when we talk our dialect.

For me it is. Did you know that - statistically - every Flemming gives 800 EUR to Walloon, and every Walloon receives 1300 EUR from Flanders? There's a limit, and these numbers have crossed the line.

Only Flemish who think Wallonia is 'abroad' talk about separating. They think the differences between the two are as big as with any other country. Those ppl clearly never went outside the tourist resorts (or even outside flanders). Or the ones who like to hear easy solutions to political problems every country has.
And politicians who talk about separating either have a weird fetish with the german language or a unrealistic fantasy that the netherlands are much more like the flemish than the wallonians. Or a fixation with "if they can't work together, split up the political responsibilities!"

The only thing that really doesn't work in Belgium is the communication between the two regional governments and for some reason ppl like Rubinho will argue that this isn't the cause of, but the reason to that we should separate. Weird:p

Long story short... don't believe the hype :p

i feel like there' not much going on. where i'm from, you would never ever notice we had a connected history for centuries. might be different in the east, especially Burgenland.
but iron curtain, y'know..

as there were many german speaking people in the czech part of the monarchy, we have some more links i think :)

i'm not well informed about belgian domestic politics, but i guess you have right wing agitation + certain amount of easily scared, rather badly educated people on both sides?
(i'm just trying to imagine, what would be happening, if the poorer parts of Austria had a majority of not German speaking)

There's just one problem: Belgium just doesn't work. All the Flemmings want a new state reform, but whatever we propose, the Walloons never agree. And when you have one part of the country that won' cooperate, well, than you have a serious problem. This has been going on for years now, without any glance of improvement.

Yes, you are right :)

And what do you think about Temelin ?? It´s maybe the biggest link between us nowadays.

funny how you keep quoting that one politician, but with no real indication to why we should exactly use hís solution to the problem. Because that's what he's saying: 'it's not working, let's break it up'. Never it is explained why splitting up would remove the problems (ie. communication problem, the issue of the money-transfer - which exists in other countries as well and would stay in existence even after the split up).

so yea, what you said ;)