MMMMMMMmmm

It's a lovely sunny day today and for lunch I went to the supermarket to find something to eat, and what did I spot!! Strawberrieeeees!! I looooove strawberries, shiny red, sweet, lucious goodness, I just had to have some! I took me a box of those expensive Spanish strawberries and felt like a little girl all over again at the lunchtable with my plate full of my favourite fruit!

If you don't like strawberries, you're dead to me :p HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE STRAWBERRIES! unless you're allergic, possible death is a a valid reason.

There is something sensuous about strawberries don't you think? Biting into one always makes me feel in a state of arousal :D There's a good reason why strawberries are used as a means of foreplay sometimes :D preferably with some chocolate, mmmm. Would definately get me in the mood for looove !



I was born in June so I was a summer baby and enjoyed me loads of fruit mashes in my first months of life, hence my great love for fruit. I always look forward to the first time I get to eat a strawberry again after a long winter, you just immediately feel "summer is near". Unfortunately summer no longer = vacation :(
Right now there's only the foreign strawberries from Spain, and they're quite good! But nothing equals our very own Belgian strawberries, which won't be ready till June. They are sooo much better than the Spanish ones, even sweeter and juicier. If you're ever in Belgium in late spring, try our strawberries, they're fabulous.
A typical way Belgian tea-rooms or snackplaces like to serve them is combined with our famous waffles, which is a must say a very good combination. Belgium is not so bad! See, I do like Belgium, in spite of it's downsides, I'm even promoting it. Belgium should pay me for all the good publicity! It can use it after all the no goverment for over a year crap.
Here, have a waffle, Belgium's great! Come to Belgium.




THis ends my promotion of strawberries. Have some yourself, you know you want to..

Belgians -the 11th coolest people in the world

I was reading the online newspaper at work (indeed very busy here again) and I read an article about the Belgian nationality being picked as the 11th coolest to be according to CNN. Appearantly having perfected chocolate, waffles and beer is good enough to fall under America's cool radar. This all in spite of its tiny size, the crap weather and the shocking child molest cases (I quote CNN). Thanks to the huge amount of scandalous cases involving priests and even a few nuns, that last downside has now completely exploded again. The fact we haven't had a government for a year now because the Flemish (dialect of Dutch) and the Wallonian(southern part of Belgium, french-spoken) politicians are all a bunch of stubborn idiots who refuse to cooperate or make concessions in any way in order to reach an agreement and build up a government. But according to CNN, the Belgians are pretty easy-going about that and don't really give a f# for the most part, while in most countries anarchy would erupt, so we're pretty cool because of that. Yay us..

As for the other ten nationalities on the list? Here they are:

1 Brazil
2 Singapore
3 Jamaica
4 Mongolia
5 USA
6 Spain
7 Japan
8 Botswana
9 China
10 Nepal

Now, most of them deserve to be on the cool- list. Brazil has the half naked dancing girls, Singapore is all exotic, Jamaica has Bob Marley, the USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave, Spain has siestas;big hats and good food, Japan has technology and employees who work 12 hours a day and China is the land where everything is made. Now the three I don't get are Mongolia, Botswana and Nepal.
Not that I don't like the countries, but I can't seem to find a reason for them being cool. What does Mongolia have that's cool? Giant empty planes, horses, nomads living in yurts.. all pretty special, but cool? Maybe it's Ghengis Khan, he conquered Russia and half of Europe or something and went plundering and killing all over, I suppose that might be cool, but come on the guy lived hundreds of year ago, that doesn't count anymore CNN!
And Botswana, why Botswana? Not that I know anything about Botswana, I know it's in Africa, and that's it. Why is Botswana the 8th coolest? Someone please enlighten me about the coolness of Botswana! Is it the wild animals? That's pretty cool, but that would make other African countries equally cool.
And then Tibet, why is Tibet cool? Sure the landscape there is breathtaking and I'm all for freeing Tibet, but would that fall under 'cool'?
CNN is sure using some strange criteria.

And where is Ireland! Surely Ireland deserves to be cool! Maybe it's the chaos that is Ireland's economy. The lack of jobs, the loads of young graduates moving abroad and the rising taxes probably made Ireland rather uncool for the moment. Where o where are the fabulous days of the Celtic Tiger.

working hard or hardly working

Starting anew with the blog, as I totally forgot about the one I started months ago and I got no, yes NO, comments at all! so perhaps my stories were a bit boring :D So hopefully I'll be able to entertain at least one person if I start posting more regularly!

Alrighty, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name's Athena and I live in Belgium. You might know it for the waffles, the amazingly good chocolate and Jean-Claude Van Damme, a very lame actor to be honest, but he seems famous for some reason ! If that still doesn't ring a bell, it's somewhere in western Europe, tiny country squished between France, Germany and the Netherlands. I live by the coast, in a small city called Nieuwpoort. I added a map just below for the less wordly people among us. Its a tiny country really, but there are like ten million inhabitants which is pretty crazy to me, way too densely populated. I like me some peace and quiet.





I'm 23, got my master's degree this year as translator English and Russian and have finally found a job last month!
I work in the Embassy of Ireland in Brussels. Loving the job so far, but a huuuge downside is the insane commute, its two hours by train to get to Brussels, so four hours on the train every day. Yes, I know, that's a bit crazy, and it reaally tiring sometimes. I get up at 6.10 am and get home at 8.10 pm, which is a very long day. I do intend to move at some point, but to be honest, it's so expensive to live by yourself and I'd rather spend my money on more fun things :p and i like having company when I get home.

What else hmm well so I live at home with the parents, and a younger brother. Have two dogs too, love my doggies. The older one is called Annabelle, but we call her Belly, it's a scruffy mix of a Fox and a Snauzer and she's 12. And the other is a greyhound called Fiona and she's 8. In one of the next posts I'll tell you all about my beloved doggies naturally.

Currrently at work actually, ssssh, don't tell ;) Don't have much to do at the moment. I generally occupy myself with visas and the accounts, and general mail and phone answering. Everyone here is really friendly, mostly Irish, which I really like because I love all things Irish. You'll find that out in later posts too for sure. My thesis was on Ireland and I've been there many many times! Ah it's a great country really, so I was so excited to get to work somewhere Ireland-related!

Hmm guess I should find something useful to do here at work then! Promise to not forget to write this time, hopefully I'll eventually get a comment then! Cause I want one!