Once upon a time, France had a son named Wallonia

and the Nederlands had a son named Flanders

One day a bunch of crazy stuff happened in Europe blablabla

After all the crazy stuff subsided

Flanders was like ''Hey Wallonia''

Yeah

I'm gonna move out of my parent's place

and I got this new rad appartment

but I kinda need another guy to help me pay for the rent

I don't know, you're kind of a cool guy, I guess, would you like to be my roommate?

Yeah, sure, I guess, why not

But, just for the record, I don't speak any Dutch

Oh no worries, I don't speak any French!

And that is how Belgium became a country, kind of

Hey everybody I'm your host, Paul Barbado

you've all probably at least heard of the name Belgium

and if you have: congrats!

That's not enough

let's dissect the flag

First of all, the flag of Belgium looks like the flag of Germany knocked over to the left side

But just keep in mind the color sequence is black-yellow-red not black-red-yellow

Also the flag has an unusual proportion of 13 to 15 making it almost a square

The flag's colors are direcrly corolated to the country's code of arms

The black representing the shield and the determination

The yellow the lion and generosity

And the red representing the lion's claws and tongue and the crown

As well as bravery and strength

Speaking of strength, you gonna need a lot of it

to understand this next part

00:01:24,180 --> 00:01:25,900 If you gonna learn anything about Belgium

the one thing you have to understand

is how the country is split up

this is very important

So pay attention, Brandon!

Oh, wha... wha... Azerbaijan?! Yea

Dude, that was like eight epidodes ago!

First of all, Belgium is located in Europe

Right under the Netherlands and northeast of France

Right at the foot of the North Sea, next to the English Channel

In the most fundamental way I can put this

Belgium is divided into three regions

The Dutch or the Flemish speaking north region called Flanders

The south or French Walloon region called Wallonia

And the capital Brussels acts in itself as a third region

And functions in a completely bilingual way

Most of the people in Brussels speak both, Dutch and French

However, French is a little bit more prevalent

Got it? Ok, good!

'Cause we're not done

Each of the Flanders and the Wallonia regions are then divided in 5 provinces each

Making a total of ten provinces

Brussels doesn't count and it's considered its own region

Not belonging to either Flanders or Wallonia

Even though, if technically it's completely ingulfed in Flanders

But then again the region around Brussels

Has a French administrative area around the city

Called the "BHV", or the "Brussel Halle Vilvoorde" County

In which large numbers of French minorities live

And can be judged in French

Even though, it's in Flanders

Still with me? Good, because it gets even crazier

The French also have administrative centres in the southeast and the southwest regions of Flanders

And a Walloonian municipal exclave in the west Flanders province

Called "Comines Warneton"

Even though, most of the people there speak Dutch

Furthermore, the Flemish have one municipal exclave in the "Liège" Province in Wallonia

Called "Voeren"

Oh! We're just getting started though

Then you have the German speaking minority in the east of Wallonia

In the "Liège" province

Who are making propositions to create an 11th province

Called "Eupen Sankt-Vith"

Speaking of Germans, Belgium has a lot

And I repeat

A lot of weird territorial claims and boundaries

For one, there are technically five German exclaves

Hidden right along the border of the "Liège" province in east Belgium

However, these exclaves are only separated from mainland Germany

From a Belgian train track

The "Vennbahn"

Which is no longer in use

This means that you can be in Germany

And you have only 10 metres between you and Belgium

Between you go back into Germany

The smallest of these German exclaves is just a small house near the German town of "Konzen"

With a front yard less than two hectares in area

Oh, but wait! There's more!

Then you reach the ever so confusing town of "Baarle Nassau / Hertog"

In which there are 22 Belgian enclaves in the Netherlands

And eight Dutch enclaves in Belgium

Seven of which are counter-enclaves, or

A part of the Netherlands in Belgium in the Netherlands

These borders, at first, make no sense

Apperently, they cross awkardly through streets, buildings, restaurants, stores

And even houses

A person can literally wake up in one country

And shower in the other

The rule is: Whatever side your front door is on

is the country that you pay your taxes to

The reason why it's so confusing is because, long story short

There was a guy ruling the area, called Henry I Duke of Brabant

Who gave parses of land to Godfried II of Schoten

Who ruled the area to the east

And in an attempt to build an alliance

So that his enemy Dirk VII wouldn't expand his influence

Long story short

Henry's land became Belgium and Godfried's became the Netherlands

To this day, the two countries have stayed true

To Godfried's and Henry's agreements

And have spilt the land exactly how they did

But wait! We're not just done yet

Finally you have the confusing "Lys Rivièr" River

in the border between the Walloon province of "Hainaut" and France

Starting in the town of "Halluin" in France

This river zigzags for about 26 km with multiple river islands

And land pieces that act like pene-enclaves

Until it all stops at the town of "Armentières"

Each side has in equal seven enclaves each along the river

Ok! Now let's talk about the landscape

00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:43,380 It's mostly flat, outside the cities

there's farms and forests, pretty lush in green

However, the World Wide Fund for Nature ranks Belgium pretty low in terms of their environmental performance

And the water quality was the lowest in the EU

Mostly due to the high population density

Belgium isn't really agriculturally driven

I mean, economically most of their revenue comes from

machinery, pharmaceuticals, diamonds

Many of which were imported from the Congo

We'll explain about that in a little bit

And service and industry jobs as well

Ok, that's about it - moving on

00:05:12,620 --> 00:05:14,140 Now, this is where things get really strange

In the shortest way I can put this

Belgium is like an artificial country

With technically no distinct former idendity

In which two region kinda became roommates

And the respective communities have a government

with the same power as a central government

Hah, and you thought Andorra was confusing

with that whole co-principality thing

Brother please, I'm Belgium

Sit down and I gonna give you a lesson in complicationmanatics

First of all, Belgium has a little less than 11 million people

At about 57%, the slight majority of people, are flemish

From Flanders

About 42% are Walloon from Wallonia

And 1% German from the German community

Keep in mind, although it's debatable

The terms "Flemish" and "Walloon" are more in reference to "linguistic communities"

And not ethnicities

By definition, you could have a Congolese guy in "Liège"

Identifying as a Walloon

And a Maroccan guy in "Antwerp" identifying as a Fleming

As long they speak the languages and become citizens

That's pretty much it

In terms of race though,

About 77% of the people identify as ethnically Belgian

And the remaining 23% identify as Non-Belgian

In origin, some of the largest groups being Maroccans, Italians, Turks

And even Congolese from the Democratic Republic of Congo

As it was a former Belgian colony, along with Rwanda and Burundi

Which is where a lot of the diamonds

We talked about earlier

Come from

The Belgians even took over a small part of China for a couple of decades in the 20th century

In Tianjin, after quickly gaving it back

And to this day pictures from the Belgian-Chinese colony

Are some of the rarest fotos you can find in historical archives

As we mentioned, Belgium has three distinct regions

Flanders, Walloon and Brussels

However, regions weren't enough

And so Belgium decided to split things up even more

Into communities

Due to German speaking minority, predominatly in the southeast

Belgium created a semi-mediarary third community

Even tough only about 1% of the country actually speaks German

Less than the amount of people in Belgium who actually speak arabic

And has instituted three seperate governments

And parliaments, one for each language group.

The Dutch, French and German

Each of these governents actually has as just much as power as the central government

Wait what?!

On top of that, the French and Dutch communities are allowed to provide

cultural and social services to the citizens in Brussels

But not in the other region

This means that a family living in Brussels

Could possibly depend upon the central government for taxes

The French government for community centres

The Dutch government for schools

And the Brussels government for the police force

Four government acting at once

And then you have a King!

Long story short, Belgium became a constitutional monarchy that started in 1830

With Philippe I as the current head of state

They are the only monarchy in europe with no actual crown or lavish robes and cepters

They gained independance from the Netherlands,

French speaking Wallonia joined along and then they chose a German prince to become their first king

In terms of culture, Belgium can be attributed to a lot of things

For one, some of the world's most renowned surrealist artists came from Belgium

Like Rene Magritte

Cartoons like the "Smurfs" and my homeboy

"Tintin"!

I have read almost every single one of those comics

Aint nobody mess with Tintin. That dude is mad boss

The national dish is mussels with French Fries and mayonnaise

Belgians will tell you that fries originated from Belgium

And of course, Waffles!

They make some of the best chocalate in the world

That rivals Switzerland. And of course

Everyone's favourite Belgian: "Jean-Claude Van Damme"

They host the headquarters of the EU and are typically called upon to help Europe administer their diplomatic affairs

Affairs with other countries we will discuss in:

00:08:25,340 --> 00:08:28,160 Oh, Belgium, Belgium, Belgium - when will you learn

First of all, Belgium is a very neutral country

After gaining independence from the Netherlands

Belgium quickly rose to become one of the leading powers of the industrialized Europe world

And it was a founding member of both, the EU and NATO

This means that since day one Belgium has had a huge entourage of affiliates

That they have kinda kept close

However, some are still closer than others

The UK has always been a good buddy of Belgium

since they played a pivotal role in the independance of Belgium

The US is also a good friend and to this day they still commemorate the "Battle of the Bulge"

In which the US played a huge role induring the liberation of Belgium in WWII

The only country that might have a little bit of a distaste towards Belgium

Might be the Democratic Rebublic of Congo

As they were occupied and became a colony for little less than a century

Belgium kinda did a lot of "things" to the Congo

Although tensions are generally eased off a bit today

And numerous Congolese people immigrate to Belgium yearly

There is still a somewhat aversion

That lingers on in in the back of each Congolese mind

When history is brought up

Of course, as you would guess France is a close friend too

Whom not only played a role in Belgium's independence

But also culturally resonates with the south Walloon region as well

The Netherlands is a close friend as they jive well with the Flanders region

Dispite the fact that they have a somewhat friendly rivalry with each other

Over the years many referendums have actually passed in Belgium

In which they almost considered re-annexing themselves back

To their respective neighboring contries,

The Netherland and France

However, they just can't seem to do it

Even though the sense of nationalism is kinda weak

Except during soccer games

In which they go all out Belgian pride

They still can't seem to let go of each other for some weird reason