Taking nationalism too far.

Some of my readers might wonder whether I am guilty of doing just that: taking nationalism too far. When I first started using the alias ‘littlebelgianwriter’ I just wanted to point out that I am Belgian as opposed to any other country in the world.
Nowadays I am not so sure. Frequently I find myself blogging on Belgian matters and to tell you the truth, that is also the reason why I created this blogspot. While writing on Belgium and Belgian matters in particular I do want to make sure that I do not take nationalism too far.

Some of you might wonder what nationalism means to me. Nationalism can be about one’s feelings for a country, a culture of a language. Nationalism can also have its roots in the fact that one ethnic group is being discriminated against. I guess that is where Irish nationalism and Flemish nationalism originated from. Sometimes nationalism is needed to secure human rights. Once those rights are well established, in my view, there is no use in taking nationalism any further.

When taken further, once healthy nationalism may lead to discrimination and the violation of basic human rights of other ethnic groups in society. In other words, the victim becomes a culprit himself.

In my view and experience this is now happening at times in contemporary Belgium where once Flemish nationalists rightly so fought to establish educational and cultural rights. In my view those rights have been long established. Taking nationalism any further in contemporary Flanders in my view may lead to the discrimination of other ethnicities.

Nowadays I feel they are taking nationalism one step too far. Born out of a Dutch speaking mother and a French speaking father, I do not want to take nationalism too far. To me all Belgians are equal. I do not care whether they speak Dutch, French or German. I now call myself a Belgian because I do not want to take nationalism too far.

All cats will have to be neutered by law in Belgium by September 2014

When I first learned about this, it made a lot of sense to me. I had recently become a cat owner due to the fact that someone gave her 2 cats away because she no longer was able to keep them herself. At that time I had been looking for a cat because I wanted one to catch mice in my garden. I was surprised how easy it was to become a cat owner: there seemed to be litters everywhere and animal shelters seemed to be full of cats. I also learned that a lot of cats in shelters ended up dead or euthanized because there were no suitable owners to be found. That said I still am glad that I got my cats straight from the owner and that I opted for both cats instead of the one I first had wanted.

As soon as the cats were effectively in my home it suddenly dawned on me how many cats there were in my neighbourhood and in my own backyard for that matter. Most of them belong to dedicated owners but some clearly were strays. Needless to say what happens if/ when stray cats start breeding: there are even more stray cats and not nearly enough prospective cat owners around to feed them. That means that every year more cats will end up in shelters and possibly euthanized if no owner or prospective owner turns up.
Therefore I found it plausible at first when I learned that stray cats and cats in shelters were going to be neutered before they would be given to new owners. That way the number of stray cats would be reduced because they no longer would be able to procreate in the wild and unattended for.

In a second phase private cat owners who want to sell or give away their cats to someone else will be required to have the cats neutered before they are sold or given away. This I also am able to understand somewhat because that way when the new owner is not able to look after the cats properly at least the cats will not end up with litter and unattended for.

Further down the line of the law is also stated that its goal is that in the end all cats would become neutered. That is the bit that makes no sense to me. If all cats are going to be neutered how on Earth will cats be able to procreate? If cats are no longer able to procreate there will be a moment where there are no longer any cats.
Wait a minute! There is one thing I did not read in this law. Commercial kennels and cat breeders were not mentioned in this law. This means that they still will be able to breed cats. To my knowledge cats bred in kennels by professional breeders are pedigree cats. Why does this make me think of Harry Potter and Slytherin were no mudbloods are allowed and only those of pure blood are?
Why are some cats more equal than others?

Whatever Happened to the Belgian Flag?

This may seem like a strange question to ask. Let me explain myself. A few weeks ago it dawned on me that the flags hanging along the main road in our town are all Flemish flags. That would seem normal to many people because I live in Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium.

However, until further notice Flanders is still a part of Belgium and a few weeks after the Belgian National Holiday July 21 and the coronation of our new king Philip one would expect the Belgian flag hanging all over Main Street.

To be on the safe side I consulted the guidelines for hanging an official flag in my country. Official flags are no longer mandatory except on National Holidays. This somewhat assured me because I was wondering why the flags were up anyway since it was way past the Flemish National Holiday on July 11.

Furthermore I learned that when multiple flags are used the Belgian Flag still prevails. That would explain why last year the Belgian, Flemish and European flags were on display on National Holidays. However on a Belgian Holiday one would expect the Belgian flag and not the Flemish flag. After all we still live in the Belgian Kingdom and not in the Republic of Flanders though for some this might be wishful thinking.

What Happened to Belgian Frankness?

As a little girl I was taught to speak my mind. To my knowledge I have never put things bluntly because I believe I was brought up to be polite as well as direct. In my view being direct can avoid a lot of trouble. When speaking directly people will always know what you mean.

Some people prefer indirect communication. That is alright by my standards. Indirect communication involves a lot of interpretation of circumstantial and secondary information. In some cultures direct communication will prevail, in others indirect communication will. As I stated before: as a little girl I was taught to speak my mind, therefore it is safe to say that I abide by direct communication. Since I was raised a Belgian I never doubted that direct communication was a Belgian thing.

Nowadays I am not so sure anymore: recently I had conversation which left me somewhat baffled. Somewhere along the line it hit me that the person I was talking to did not really speak his mind. In fact it seemed like he went along with what I was saying just to be polite. In the end it did not do our little conversation much good. What is the use of agreeing with someone when as a matter of fact you disagree? In fact this attitude led to a lot of confusion. As a result I did get the wrong end of the stick. This was a shame. I am genuinely interested in what people have to say, whether they agree with me or not.
I am asking myself why some Belgians no longer seem to speak their mind. In all honesty: ‘What happened to Belgian frankness?’ Did Belgian frankness disappear along with the Belgian franc and the subsequent introduction of the euro?

My favourite Belgian bloggers.

Being a Belgian I read a lot of Belgian blogs. This sounds normal does not it? Today I would like to present 2 of my favourite Belgian blogs. These blogs are Belgian in the true sense of the word. Not only they are written by writers of Belgian nationality, they are also written by people who feel they are Belgian.
Since these kinds of real Belgians are becoming more and more scarce I would like to put them in the spotlights for the day.


Jan Steurs’s blog is a personal blog by social media manager Jan Steurs. Like most good things I discovered this blog while looking for something entirely different. Like Me Mr. Steurs has got a knack for languages. Unlike yours truly he has got a degree in applied linguistics to prove it.
I particularly like Jan Steurs’s blog for the honest display of his personal opinions. In my view his blog proves that he is a real Belgian. His blog is written in Dutch, one of the official languages in Belgium.

The second blog I would like to feature is ‘Journal d’un petit Belge’. As you can derive from the title, this blog is written in French also an official language in Belgium. ‘Petit Belge’ sounds a little bit like my own alias ‘littlebelgianwriter’. In fact, I first discovered this blog when I made an attempt to set up a blog in French using an alias quite similar to ‘Petit Belge’. Petit Belge is a Belgian nationalist and in his blog he displays a number of notable places and facts about Belgium.

I hope you will enjoy these blogs as much as I do. In fact I want to dedicate this blog to Belgium as much as possible. In doing so I hope people will realize that Belgium is a real country and not a mere sum of Flanders, Wallonia and the East Cantons. That is probably the reason why I am writing this blog in English: this way I hope that neither the Flemish nor the Walloons will tell me that I am putting the others first.

Belgian rules and regulations.

At times some Belgian rules and regulations drive me crazy. On top of this, nowadays in Belgium there seem to be more rules emerging out of nowhere than ever before in history.

I am aware of the fact that we need to have rules in order to avoid chaos, but sometimes things can get out of hand!

Last night as I was watching the news, I really could not believe my ears at first. It was announced that from now on the rules and regulations for road signs would be made stricter for small businesses. I did wonder what they meant by that.

Apparently there are too many road signs along Belgian roads. I guess too many signs can make a person confused at times. To avoid said problems and confusion it has now been decided upon that only official road signs will be allowed from now on. Private road signs leading to small businesses will become prohibited.

Private signs leading to one off parties such as marriages and birthday parties would be allowed but only on the day of the occasion.

I do wonder what is meant by small businesses. As I live sort of rurally I occasionally see signs such as ‘eggs for sale’ and things similar. Those signs are not always put up there by businesses but also by private persons keeping chickens or growing fruit trees and wanting to share/ sell their excess produce. As a matter of fact, I feel that people selling excess eggs are doing the community a favour. In this day and age good food should not be wasted! In my view it is better to sell your eggs or to give them to a neighbour who has forgotten to buy eggs at the supermarket and only realizes this at a time the supermarket is closed! Therefore I like those signs. It assures me to know that in the event that I have forgotten to buy eggs, I can be sure that my neighbour will have some for me!

I am littlebelgianwriter!

This blog’s name makes it pretty clear: I am not very tall, I am from Belgium and I love to write (mostly in English). This is not my first blog either. I have kept other blogs before and currently I have been writing on a daily basis for a number of English language blogging and article sites.




Contributing to the aforementioned sites has boosted my confidence for one. I now feel more confident about my own writing than I did a few months ago. When I first started out on the sites I was primarily looking for sites that would allow me to publish my poetry online. I soon found out that a number of sites do not allow members to publish poetry.
This fact introduced me to the world of article writing, which is something that I was not really familiar with prior to registering with blogging and article sites. At first I did not feel confident at all when writing articles. I questioned myself a lot as to what I would write about.



Slowly but surely I found out that there were more things that I was able to write about than I previously could have imagined. Shortly after I had published my first article I found myself writing about an unlikely number of topics that I would not have dreamed of tackling before.


In fact I found out that there is a lot of truth in the saying that everybody can be an expert. I do believe that most people are experts in their own right. Having said that, I believe we all inherently possess the power to display that expertise adequately. All we need to do is to allow ourselves to discover our inner expert.


Mostly I write about what springs to mind. In doing so, I find myself writing about a wide variety of topics. I do keep a notebook in order to jot my ideas down. In fact I do get the brightest ideas when I am not thinking about writing at all. Before I kept my notebook I tended to forget those ideas from the moment I actually sat down in order to write my articles. Of course this did not help matters.


Keeping a notebook seemed to do the trick for me. If/ when asked what would be my first tip for an aspiring writer I surely would answer: “Keep a notebook.”