Our national anthem

Oh wow, my influence is so incredibly big...after typing my post about Belgian's national feeling yesterday, Yves Leterme felt the need to proof what I've written in front of the tv camera's.

For those of you who don't know Yves Leterme: he is candidate prime minister and trying to form a government coalition at the moment with his party that won the elections and with the liberals. The Frenchspeaking part of Belgium is very suspicious about him and his party though as it's known for its strong Flemish regionalistic points of view and they fear he wants to break up Belgium.

Anyway, as I stated yesterday, not many Belgians know the words of our national anthem and also not many know the exact reason as why we celebrate our national holiday on July 21st. It's the day that our first king, Leopold I took the crown in 1831 (one year after our independence).

Traditionally in Brussels (and other cities) the Te Deum is celebrated, a eucharist in which the King is praised and celebrated. All prominent politicians usually show up there and so did Yves Leterme although he's in the midst of negotiations to form our new governemnt.
A journalist asked him why we were celebrating our national holiday and he gave the wrong answer. Then they asked him to sing our national anthem ...and joke oh joke...he started singing the Marseillaise (French national anthem) rather than our Belgian Brabançonne. haha...what a blunder. Hilarious!

Hmm the Flemish think this is a good joke. He simply proofs that he's a real Belgian...but maybe he should know better if he has the ambition to become our prime minister.

Unfortunately the Frenchspeaking media see it as a provocating arrogant stunt. And the foreign media pick it up.


Oh well, this is Belgium. It'll blow over.



update: after saving this post, I remembered something from my childhood. My sister was on an exchange program in Canada...long before e-mails could be sent or blogs could be kept. We had to simply write letters and as a treat for Christmas, my sister had filled a cassette tape with stories and had mailed it to us. How great to listen to her voice again, lots of times.
At the start of her tape she intended to sing the Brabanconne....but instead she sang the tune of the Eurovision song contest :p, and she didn't realise she had made a mistake.

...maybe my sister should run for prime minister now???

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