Whathello

I don't think Kerouac is showing off with his charity anymore than I am with food.
Eceryone draws lines somewhere.
Kerouac cannot spend too much on food that is all.
I went recently to a dinner on the sky in Bruxelles and loved it. The price of the lunch was inflated in order to subsidize the association 'Justine for kids' created by Belgian tennis star Justine Henin.
The best of two worlds as I see it.
With the benefits Justine is building and operating a house consisting of several apartments in which families of children undergoing cancer treatment can spend a week on holiday.
With medical supervision. A superb project enabling brothers and sisters of ill children to close ranks and enjoy time together.

fuzzbucket

Though I would never eat at Byron in London, because I don't like fast food that attempts to pass itself off as a decent meal, it is just as easy to contract listeria, salmonella, e.coli and other food-borne illnesses anywhere in the world where proper food-handling measures are not respected.

Know your restaurant, eat with confidence - undercooked eggs, bloody meat, raw fish and all.

bilboburgler

"life is too short to drink poor wine" is the expression I use. Finding miss priced wines is part of the fun

Coquelicot

I don't get to Paris but I still find this kind of information interesting and useful. Please keep it up, whathello and anyone else.

I know how much we pay for meals in good restaurants in small cities and towns in France, way outside of Paris. If kerouac ate with us, he'd have even more to give to charity.

Tulips

After seeing how much they charge for a glass of wine in California, I thought wine in France was extremely cheap. 12 dollars for a glass of local wine - add tip to that...
It's even more than I pay in London. Very often cocktails were cheaper than wine. That's something I never see here.

In France I get a pitcher of house wine for a few euros.

willit

"Dank u Myriam ..."
Always amazes me that with my limited Afrikaans , I can normally understand written Flemish - even if the spelling seems "Wrong"

PalenQ

dank u wel I often here in NL - like 'donk-uh-vel' - seems what they usually say instead of just dank u?

Whathello

You are right PQ.
But I am not Dutch !
And I pronounce my W much more like in 'Waterloo'.

MyriamC

<<Always amazes me that with my limited Afrikaans , I can normally understand written Flemish - even if the spelling seems "Wrong">>
When we were in SA, we spoke Flemish with our SA hosts while they spoke Afrikaans. We could understand each other perfectly!

PalenQ

In past posts in Holland I said I also heard a lot "Danku very wel" but locals pooh-poohed that - but I have heard it on occasion-maybe as satire?

Underhill

Love the punny topic title.

Wit_Van_Brug

I was in Belgium for the past three days and found it a little weird (although not unexpected) that everyone speaks French in Brussels, but just down the road in Tienen, it's all Nederlandse (not Dutch, I was informed!). Funny chaps, Europeans.

Tulips

Dank U (thank you) is the usual thing to say. Or 'Dank U wel' (thank you very much).
'Dank u very wel' is not Dutch.

Brussel is supposed to be a bilingual town, but many people speak only French.

Whathello

I always speak French in Bruxelles but thought most people would be able to speak both languages.
I'll try my Flemish next time.

kerouac

Good luck with that.

<i>Between 2000 and 2006, the proportion of monolingual Dutch families shrank from 9.5% to 7.0%, whereas bilingual families shrank from 9.9% to 8.6%.</i>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francization_of_Brussels

Tulips

I never assume that people in Brussels speak Flemish, though I do start in Flemish when I'm there, but switch to French if necessary.
I speak to people from Wallonie and Brussel occasionaly and have noticed that they often assume that I speak French; starting in French without asking me first if I speak the language. Once I explain that I'm Dutch, and my French is not fluent, they are usually very apologetic about not speaking Dutch, and praise my limited command of the French language.

Whathello

Bilinguism in Belgium is a myth.
You'll find bilinguals in Bruxelles Antwerpen Leuven and gent.
Forget Flemish in wallonia. Forget French in west vlaanderen Limburg and small towns.
We live 25 kms from Brussels and we could spend our life not speaking one word of Flemish.

kerouac

With several Belgians reading this thread, I would be curious to know what you think about the ban on official linguistic statistics. Living in France, I know the reason for the ban on religious and ethnic statistics here, and I kind of like living in a country with no races and no religions, even if there are some drawbacks when certain needs of the population fail to be addressed due to an official policy of blindness.

I assume (but please correct me if I'm wrong) that it is the Flemish majority which does not want to know the current linguistic situation in the country for fear of losing ground. Then again, no ground would be lost by anybody if somebody put an end to the linguistic division. Ah, it is so simple to outsiders!

PalenQ

first time I went to Bruges I thought I could use my limited French but no one seemed to speak it- yes the language divide seems huge.

Interesting one day I biked between Brussels suburbs and one would be Flemish speaking the one next door Flemish, etc.

hetismij2

Do any of you Belgians also speak your third official language?

I've struggled to find any Flemish speakers on the few occasions I have been to Brussel. English schoolgirl French it is then.