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From my point of view, Obama's visit into my small country looked very odd, because he usually appears in a huge lecture halls full of English speakers who identify themselves as whether Democrats or Republicans. Here, none of those... He simply spoke in BOZAR building, an artsy place for people who can't spell the word "Beaux-Arts" (Fine Arts). The place was full of... young multicoloured-faced people (Hey! you don't have to be coloured to listen to Obama). The big organ behind him made him look like a priest, but what a priest (I haven't heard any preach on gay-friendliness so far). Finally, the first words that came to his mouth were "chocolate and beer"... Oh dear, he forgot about fries and waffles! He probably doesn't like them, zeg oh zeg.
Then they all got to a Flanders Field Cemetery and Obama called our country "brave little Belgium". How well formulated, almost a tongue-twister! The Flemish media rather focused on the two other speakers. Prince... erm King Philip, who studied in English, but whose accent sounded quite "Flemish" to me(!) talked about "the horrors of the trench warfare", but Flemish media heard "the horrors of the French warfare". It doesn't matter, we love France. Then later on, PM Elio di Rupo gave it a try too... although he stuttered at some point, it was a nice try, but he's surely progressing quicklier in Flemish, which he speaks in his original Italian accent!
On Sunday, the next person who visited Belgium was Chinese president Xi Jinping. For the record, "xi" is NOT pronounced "ksi", but something like "she" (although he's surely a he!). For his first day of stay, he visited a zoo called "Pairi Daiza"... by the way, why did they change the easy, more accessible, Spanish-sounding "Paradisio" for an old Persian (Vedic? Avestic? Whatever!) name that only the best orientalist/protoindoeuropeanist would get? Why?...
Anyway, the goal was to inaugurate a pavilion specially dedicated to an OTPP, i.e. "One True Pair of Pandas", imported from Beijing and graciously provided by Xi Jinping's country... These two guys are also superstars in Belgium, as we've heard of them the whole month along. They're so famous that even Bart de Wever appeared on a TV-show dressed as a panda and made the audience laugh, although the mixture of politics and entertainment wasn't approved by everyone (also because the guy is pretty much anti-Walloon).
The next big event in Brussels this week will be the EU-AU (i.e. African Union) summit. So far so good... Except some people are not very happy with the way traffic is disrupted... For example, a whole metro line was stopped even the day before Obama arrived in Belgium... Also, they're not that happy with all the money spent on all those big events, but that's another story...
Tell us what you think of Barack, Elio, Philip, Jinping or Bart de Panda! And share the post to your friends!
