Thursday, March 12, 2015

Up with Geography: Belgium

Name:
Belgium

Capital:
Brussels

Continent:
Europe

Maps:
Map of Europe. Belgium outlined in dark ink
and shaded.

A close-up of Belgium & its neighbors.

Neighbors:
Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, France

Water Borders:
North Sea

Total Area:
11, 787 square miles

Five Largest Cities:
Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liege, Brussels

Famous Geographical Point:
Signal de Botrange (at 2,277 feet, the highest point in Belgium)

Famous Person:
Claude Levi-Strauss, anthropologist

Book Set In/About:
The Adventures of Tintin, vol. 1 by Herge

You must know about Tintin. He's got to be the most famous fictional character to come out of Belgium. In case you spent your life living under a rock, click HERE.

Movie Set In/About:
"Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" (1975), directed by Chantal Akerman

A day in the life of a widowed housewife. Something unexpected happens.

Headline of the Day:
"GPS Fail on Bus Sends Belgian Tourists on 1,200 km Detour" in BBC News Europe.

The lack of interesting news stories about Belgium was truly stunning. At least this one brought the lolz.

2 comments:

Patricia said...

I've always kind of wanted to be from Belgium. Okay, maybe just for the last 30 seconds or so. But it strikes me as the mini-Canada of Europe. A pleasant place, that doesn't cause a lot of trouble.

Your headline did make me laugh. Poor tourists!

balyien said...

I feel like Belgium would be a really nice place to live, unless there was another European war. Then it's like they're the continent's doormat.

The thing I loved about that news story was that they all just laughed it off. In America people would probably be screaming about suing!