Belgian country presentation

30th of November 2005

I realised that it's been a while that I didn't update my spot, but life goes on with working, sleeping, eating, working, sleeping, ...

I've attended some nice music shows the last two weekends at Fun Arte. All these shows are for free, funded by the government. It's a nice and cheap way to discover many different rhythms, as Brazil is more than Samba!

Last wednesday was an other holiday, only in Brasília, so not nationwide. The reason of the holiday was "Dia evangélico". Next year, people will even have more days off, as many holidays will be on thursday. This means that you won't have to work in friday eighter. Anyone interested to move to Brasil and work here ;-)
Of course there is a but ... Some companies will give thursday and friday for one holiday but the next holiday on thursday, people have to come to work. And when Brazilians work, they do work hard too. So they deserve some spare time.

I took advantage of the day-off to give my country presentation. Almost 100 slides with facts and figures, many pictures, festivals, characteristics of the Belgians, food and drinks, and much more. People congradulated me afterwards and enjoyed tasting some chocolates, waffles, beer and jenever.

And as pictures say more than words, here we go ...

My audience during the beer break ...

Is tintin made in Belgium ... ?!? We didn't know ...

The result of giving Brazilians a Duvel ...

Afterwards we went to Stadt Bier, a bar where they produce beer according German standards. So finally a real beer in stead of the Brazilian water beer. They also sold Belgian beers (Hoegaarden, Duvel, Chimay, Maredsous, and other trappist). Unfortunatelly, these were too expensive: R$ 15, R$ 20 or even more. Knowing that my salary is R$ 1200 ...

So we decided to drink the locally produced German beers ...