Anything Funny about Belgium?

Today I tried to find jokes about Belgians, and actually didn’t find any that really were funny. I guess it is just a sign that out of this boring nation you can’t even make funny jokes about, or I have very bad sense of humour. Have to say I really doubt the latter, even though recently I haven’t been on my “funniest” mood.

I have now lived in this country for three years, my first year I lived in a small town called Mechelen, which was very bad choice to live in. A single person who doesn’t know anyone in the country should never move to a small town full of Belgian families that do not mingle with the scary foreigners. Ok, in Mechelen there also live other foreigners, but they are other kind of foreigners that Belgians do not like and they stay pretty much to themselves as well.

Then the last two years I have lived in Brussels, which is probably the ugliest capital in the world, filled with foreigners; mainly EU people & north Africans. Once when I asked in a bar from a couple that where they come from, I got a reply that “we come from here” meaning Belgium, have to say that I was very surprised about that answer. So based on that there are some real Belgians in Brussels, but you really get used to the fact that people who talk to you in a bar in here are foreigners. In general the locals are not interested in meeting new people; and they tend to stay with their old friends and normally do not move further than 15 kilometres from their parents.

I think this nation is even more introvert than my own nation. Though, I don’t know how it is to be a foreigner in Finland and how easily you make local friends there, but at least when Finns are drunk then they are very social and find themselves talking fluent (or “fluent”) English. But what does Belgians; they don’t even ever get drunk! They just drink their glass or two wine, talk about politics and then head home for steak and fries.

Just thinking, that I tend to spend all my free time out of the country. And that is the great thing about Belgium (yes I am just about to say something positive about this tiny country!); it is very easy to travel from here and thanks to its location you can fly almost anywhere in Europe within max two hours. In addition you can take a train to London, Paris, Cologne, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, etc. 

In October I will be taking the train first to Amsterdam and later to Luxembourg - can't wait!!!

..and here's an example of a joke that i found earlier today about Belgians..

A Belgian came into a bar and ordered a beer. The waiter put a coaster and a
beer on the table.
Ten minutes later the Belgian ordered another beer. The waiter brought him
the beer and saw that the coaster had disappeared. So he fetched another
one..
Ten minutes later, another beer. And again the coaster was missing. This
time the waiter decided he would not lay down another coaster..
- "Hey" the Belgian said, "where's my cookie ?"

Bloody Koffiekoeken !

Good news, bad news, no news, well what ever happens, you then get koffiekoeken! At least in our Belgian office. Koffiekoeken is a Flemish (Dutch) word and it basically is a croissant type of sweet pastry filled with sweet of stuff. 

The fundamental problem to me about these pastries is the fact that they are not particularly tasty, but still filled as much calories as a warm meal at lunch. If I really need to have 500 kcal eaten by a couple mouth fulls, then I’d rather eat some delicious chocolate instead of this fluffy tasteless pastry. Although, I do occasionally end up eating them, basically due to the fact that I've felt hungry. I've never really had a graving for them, but I guess the reason for this is the fact that back home (Finland) our "koffiekoeken" is different and of course much tastier, at least to us Finns.

The reason why I started to think about these pastries was the fact that this morning we got some good news in the office, and then of course there were THE box; full of koffiekoeken. This time I ended up having one as I didn’t eat breakfast, so I substituted my yoghurt & banana breakfast with a koffiekoeken filled with vanilla stuff and covered with chocolate. Then after the announcement I Googled a bit to find the amount of calories of one koffiekoeken has. I was bit surprised about my findings, somehow I just don't get it that how come something so tasteless has so many calories. It's like paying 100 Euros for jeans from H&M, crazy. So you should at least have quality calories if you want to eat so many at one go. 

So now on, when there is any kind of “koffikoeken-moment” in the office I won't touch those calorie bomps. And if my sweet tooth decides to bother I'll rather take a chocolate bar from the vending machine then. One should at least like the unhealthy stuff one eats.

Lazy Sunday and thoughts about training

It is another grey day in Brussels. Though despite the look of it; it is a good day for jogging! Not too hot, not too sunny and not raining. But not sure if I’ll get my wide butt off from this sofa. I have trained enough for this week, so I don’t have an urge go got to the Royal Park to do my training today.

I started training almost daily, bit over a year ago, as my close friends did encourage me to do so. This was to cheer up my not-so-good mood, and the endorphins did the trick. Also a very cute trainer in the gym didn’t hurt either, hehe.. Have to say that I don’t get why people do drugs, they just should head to the gym and get over dozed from endorphins!!

During the first couple of months of this new exercise routine, I was basically glued to the cross trainer at the gym and lost about 7 – 8 kg. Since then I’ve been dropping weight, but not in such a speed anymore. Anyhow in total I think my weight now is down about 12 kg since last summer, and I’ve gone down size or two, depends on manufacturer and piece of clothing. Have to say this really feels very good, especially since I haven’t dropped my beloved chocolate from my diet.. Nor actually changed my diet at all :D I guess if I’d have changed a bit of my eating habits then I’d have loosed more weight. Then again my goal has never been weight loss, but feeling good. Loosing weight just was more like a very nice side product to my hobby.

Although I do have to admit that occasionally I get bit stuck on the weight issue, and then I start writing down what I eat. This actually happened again today, I guess third time this year (noticed a weight gain this morning..). But writing down what you eat actually is a nice way to avoid extra snacks, and in addition it also makes sure that you also eat enough. When I do it, I use a Swedish website for it, http://www.matdagboken.se/ and it is very useful as you can find most of the food products there and also you can enter your calorie consumption from training. One very good feature of that site is the fact that the basic service of that website is free. I’ve seen similar sites before, but none of them has been free. I wouldn’t buy that kind of service as I tend to use it irregularly and then it’s bit annoying to pay for it.

Now I am bit afraid how my training will go in the future, as I decided not to renew my gym membership. They raised the prices by almost a double and I also am bored with the cross trainer, which I’ve been using when visiting gym, if I don’t attend a class. Recently the only class that I have been to is Body Pump, as my gym stopped having XCO classes that were very fun (by that cute trainer that I mentioned earlier). So, don’t see a reason of paying for the membership, if I just occasionally go there.

As I am bit of “equipment & outfit junkie” when it comes to sports, I bought myself a pair of long running-tights last weekend. Hope they’ll encourage me to go out to jog when the weather gets colder and evenings darker. I do look bit funny in them, but I don’t care what people think when they see me training. If they are bothered with my looks, it’s their problem not mine ;). Anyhow now I am fully set for jogging in bit colder weather, and I hope the dark and cold nights don’t prevent me putting my trainers on and going out for a “run”.

In addition to cool jogging outfits, I’ve had to buy myself Polar heart rate monitor to show the time and heart rate of my training and an iPhone to track my routes & to listen music. Wondering how come anyone can train without some fancy equipment on them? ;)

….Went jogging after all today, and of course it rained.. not very clean trainers anymore.

Saturday nite at home

.... and i got a brilliant idea - to start a BLOG !! As so many people seem to do it and I tend to have an odd desire to write. In addition have to admit that I occasionally bug people around me with useless emails, or numerous FB updates. So why don’t I just collect my sometimes quite silly thoughts into blogs. Then I get to write as much as I want, and some people get bit more time to do more important things as their inbox won’t fill up with emails from someone called Jenny. Well, at least they’ll receive less of them, I suppose. ;)

Another note; I am not a native English speaker, nor writer as a matter of fact ;) .. So you can expect many spelling and grammar mistakes, but I prefer using this language over my mother tongue. As have to say English is easier language, and of course my goal is to have a global audience, and that is just not possible with my dear Finnish language. Although, I do want to believe that Finnish is a world language!!

I assume that anyone, who may stumble to this very first post of mine, knows me well enough.. But just a little recap: I am in my VERY early thirties, living in the ugliest capital in the world (also called as Brussels), work in trading environment, love to travel, exercise and set some exciting goals to my life.

Back to my “starting-a-blog” business… Now I’ve been surfing a bit to find a free blogging site. Wondering if I’d like to use an exotic Swedish site. I call it exotic just because it seems like for people, basically outside Nordic countries, Sweden sounds more exotic than Finland. (Well, some people that I've met in my travels didn't even know that Finland is a country... )Then there is always an option to use an English site, but isn’t that bit boring. If I’d like to have a bit of challenge then I could take a site in Japanese, but I am afraid that’d be bit too much of a challenge! I think I’ll now go for a Finnish site, as I AM a Finn and proud of it! ..even though not too eager to live there, but that’s another story.

I suppose a blog should have a theme. Mine really doesn’t have one, as my life is filled with many little things not one major thing that I could keep writing blog after blog.. Or does it..? Maybe living in Belgium, and complainging about it could be a theme; not to forget my jogging hobby! But then again with my concentration skills, I don't think I could keep up with only one theme. So, we'll see where my thoughts take me.

Have to say I am quite excited about this, and now starting to wonder how long I can keep up with this.. Well, no-one could have believed last September that I still would carry on with my exercise routine that I started now over a year ago, so there is something in me that doesn’t allow me to quit.. But I do get also bored with some stuff, let’s see if this will bore me some day. 

[...it became really late - went to bed - and now it is Sunday morning..]

...after well slept night and long breakfast, I realised that the Finnish blog-website doesn't really serve my purposes.. So had to be boring after all and use a site in English..