This is a pretty useless post, but nonetheless I want to congratulate the Americans on their new healthcare bill. It doesn't make it any less socially a third world country amongst the rich nations, but at least there's hope.

Yesterday I called a car rental agency in Hannover to book a car (part of my job). Since my German is completely shabby, I asked if the person on the other line spoke English - instead, she offered to speak French...

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. The good lady probably presumed he's calling from Belgium so he must talk French. Why yes, I do - but it's not my native language (and it turned out her English was excellent, probably better than mine). You see, historically, Belgium, when it became to be, was conceived by its ruling class as a unitary state with one official language - French. La Belgique sera latine ou elle ne sera pas. Now, that was the Zeitgeist - you really can't blame them. Everyone in charge pretty much thought like that back then.
Its proponents argued the local Flemish dialects were not similar enough to one another to be effectively used in administration - although they had been since the Middle Ages, and quite successfully. So for almost 150 years, Belgium was a state 'home' to two cultures - the Flemish one (Flemish dialects are closely related to Dutch) and the Walloon one (which originally did not speak French, but was gallicised thoroughly in the past two centuries).