@prisoner-monkeys I can imagine the Australian attitude gets on your nerves, but Belgium, on the other side of the expectation spectrum, gets on my nerves as well. We have far too much of the just-happy-to-be-here mentality, which is why we never accomplished great things outside of sports very few other countries care about, like cycling, motocross and three-cushion billiards. It wouldn’t be so annoying if they wouldn’t throw the same excuses around all the time (The Dutch are taller than us — China?; China has a much larger population — Norway, Sweden?; they have better facilities — Jamaica, build our own?).
It goes beyond sports as well: how many Belgian companies, artists or scientists do you know? Probably close to none, because there are very little successful ones and if there are, they became famous after leaving this country, mostly to France, Holland, Germany or The States. Everybody with talent and/or ideas knows they need to get out of here asap.
The only advantage I see to it, is that it gives us some sort of a neutrality by default. Which, I think, is why our insignificant little country has produced many high-ranked diplomats, such as two secretaries general of the NATO, two presidents of the IOC and the first president of the EU.
