Hồ Chí Minh (1890-1969) was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary who led the resistance against French colonialism, and subsequently against the US invasion, until his death from heart failure six years before the liberation of Vietnam.(PW)
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What’s different in the mentality between southern Dutch and Belgian people? I thought that southern Dutch and Belgian culture was the same.
Sucks to hear tho. Is there a Dutch immigrant community you can connect to?
Congrats on you team becoming champions btw. I wish it was us.
Well we’re both Catholic and there is some overlap in cultural stuff in that. We both live a more ‘bourgondisch’ compared to Northern Netherlands. But we Brabanders are still Dutch so we still have that directness in us. The main difference is, is that everyone is really closed up here it seems. You very rarely get personal questions anywhere. I’ve worked in several different places and I rarely talk to my coworkers about my weekend for example. It’s difficult to become friends with Flemish people let alone find a friend group to get into.
Most of my friends here are Dutch lol. They experience the same issues so it’s not like I am unlikeable or something. Belgian people have explained it to me as Belgian people getting ‘stuck to their local church tower’ in that all of their friend groups and most of their lives get decided by where they are born and they are hesitant to break free from that, so it’s very hard for people at a later stage to come into existing social groups.
Maybe it’s the same for people coming to The Netherlands as well, idk. It’s not like The Netherlands is perfect or something. But in my experience at least the Belgians are far more reserved than I am used to as a Dutch person.
Also, hierarchy is much more respected here. Where at home I would regularly chat with the ceo’s of the places I worked at, that is not done here. At my first job here I just walked into our CEO’s office to ask him a question and he seemed mortified lol. And I think that results in some rigid social structures as well where a lot of people seem sort of helpless or incapable of finding solutions themselves if an authority figure is not present. Idk you have to experience working here to understand it I guess. Some sort of ‘we’ve done this for ages now and we can’t change it’ mentality, even if things get outdated.
Also, Belgian men, for the life of them, cannot seems to save themselves if their lives depended on it lol. Very rarely I see a Belgian guy with actual strong, independent opinions, who is able to cook, clean, whatever. There is like this insane passiveness surrounding a lot of them and I often find myself wondering if there is anything going on in their mind.
Now, this all sounds very negative of course and I don’t want to be disrespectful or anything but sometimes you just need to vent lol.
Yeah this just sounds like capitalism’s effect on community not unique to your situation or location. Individualistic tendencies and competition kill community.
Making friends is hard. I’ve lived in a few places and if I have been able to plug into a local community it has always been as somebody’s +1. Even if there is generally openness and welcome to the new community there is always a bit of hostility from several members.
If you don’t move away from your family and childhood friend group, many of them will move away from your hometown. The ones that remain will bring their new connections into your community changing it’s fabric and sometimes causing unbrigable rifts. People will have drama and there is no accountability to resolve those differences for the good of the community. The elders who would traditionally mediate these sort of rifts are just as consumed with individualism and factionalism so the feuds never are resolved.
Interesting, thought that Belgians would be more open