Yea, I wouldn't really care if we didn't have Belgians here. :p

http://techdirt.com/articles/20081201/0028202978.shtml

Well, what would you do if you were in NYC and didn't have a thing to do.

Of course you should pick a pub/bar where bartenders know how things work: hear, see and shut up we say (literally translated).

Keep your ears open and your mouth shut?

I agree, you don't go blabbering about your clients, especially if they're foreign politicians. Tard ass.

Of course, according to the article the guy only flew to NYC to get drunk, or something. There were no meetings, he went anyway.

Either way, it's not very smart to get wasted in public when you're in that position - ESPECIALLY not in the Belgian café in NY city when you're a Belgian minister. Like, seriously. Go to pretty much any other bar in NY and no one would have even recognised him...

I'm not exactly a fan of a big brother society, but you know this can happen if you're a public person. So meh.

lol, good action shot there.

You'll be hard-pressed to find any pictures from Belgians where they're not drinking a beer of some sorts.

I was surprised J's house pics didn't have any beer crates in the background!


EDIT: found this...Jupiler cathedral!

Hah... let me share some of our national drink:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakija

I drank very little of it in my life (so I don't count as a real fond of it). But quality rakija is even healthy and you won't get a fat belly from it. The taste is specific so there is nothing else I could relate it to, to describe it. Or maybe I do: once I tasted sort of Japanese "Rakija" whose taste could be compared in some finesses to Rakija's. Still I don't expect any of you had chance to taste rare and expensive Japanese national alcoholic drinks.

Haha, slivovice!! That brings back memories of the Czech Republic. They were pretty stoked on that stuff too...a kind of plum liquor, right?

Once, I got a bottle of home-made slivovice from a Czech friend. She'd put it in a waterbottle, and adapted the label "dobre voda" ('good water') to "dobre ne voda, ale sílna", "good but not water and strong".

I let it sit on my kitchen table for a while, and then my parents came to visit me...my mum came home from a long walk in the city and was really thirsty and saw the water bottle with the transparant fluid (and couldn't read the Czech label)...so she put the bottle to her lips and took a few chugs. Last time she'll drink from a bottle that she doesn't understand the label of!

Czechs were more into Becherovka, btw. But slivovice is cool too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becherovka

Slivovitsa!

I remind you rakija is more popular to the south. I won't make a research, but I also think Serbian slivovitsa got numerous awards. Worth tasting.

I believe you, it was more popular in the South of CR too (Moravia etc.)

Sorry, I didn't know the Serbian way of writing it

It is just transcription to English. All ways of writting it are provided in the article above.

I am fairly certain we have had that around my family gatherings but my family is czech, so that would make sense. Hell in my family they still speak czech, although about all I could do is order a beer. But that passes as enough. And honestly I don't really go around much of my extended family anymore. And my grandfathers alzheimers is so bad his czech is getting pretty bad depending on how old he thinks he is at the time or who he thinks he is speaking to.

well, I've certainly never had any, though I'd be interested to try it. Most of my 'national drinks' are pretty well known... for Germany it'd be Jaagermeister, Schnapps, Apfel Korn and of course. For American I guess it'd be whiskey (Jack Daniels). I don't consider most American beers to be worth the time it takes to pass them.

American beers ftl man...even their copies of Czech pilsner suck

I didn't know Shiny was of Czech descent, cool.

As for Slivo...I remember some teambuilding weekend out in the country: we arrived with the team from work and sat down at the tables outside the hotel. 5 minutes later, the waiter comes out with a treat from the hotel; a shot of slivo for all of us. Yeah...that was the start of a REALLY fucked up evening involving unlimited free beer and wine, a Czech girl, the woods, a pool and naked people running around.

I saw more dongs on that night than the last few years combined From a distance, that is. Imagine the awkwardness afterwards...these were ALL colleagues. Most of them direct colleagues. (not the girl, thankgod...she left for Germany on Monday for 6 weeks)

lol, wow, I've never had a work experience like that. Even the Army didn't scar me with dongs-galore. Is this some sort of European thing or do you work for some sort of European Union Department of Nudity and Beer.