What is your country famous for?

[irinmisfit92]

Corruption, definitely. :goof:

Indonesia's one of the leading countries in poverty and corruption.

BUTTTTT it has really good food and people. They're kinda conservative and repressed sometimes, but at least the food makes up for it.

What about your country?

[Darcy88]

Hockey, maple syrup, harsh winters, international peacekeeping, comedy, being well-mannered and nice, in some parts of Europe we're known and adored for our contribution to WW2, and that's about all I can think of right now.

[kiki1982]

Chocolate, beer, the worldrecord for the longest forming a government (although that is about to be broken by Bosnia :rolleyes:), cristal, pâtisserie to a certain extent, early medieval art, a painting stolen in the 1930s and they never saw it back (one of the greatest art thefts in the world), being the battle field of WWI, design (apparently), rock music (Das Pop), fashion also (particularly handbags)...

Wow, I didn't know Belgium was famous for all that!

[PoeticPassions]

Chocolate, beer, the worldrecord for the longest forming a government (although that is about to be broken by Bosnia :rolleyes:), cristal, pâtisserie to a certain extent, early medieval art, a painting stolen in the 1930s and they never saw it back (one of the greatest art thefts in the world), being the battle field of WWI, design (apparently), rock music (Das Pop), fashion also (particularly handbags)...


Yep, probably going to be broken by Bosnia... and then I will post on here again, and we will be famous for that.

Besides, also the largest mass massacre and genocide on European soil post Holocaust.

We have some great food though. And beautiful women (from what I have been told). Plus the country is amazingly beautiful-- with turquoise rivers, amazing cliffs and hills, mountains, and lakes.

[kiki1982]

oh, oh, for being the very first country on the continent (second after the UK) to get a train running and to industrialise (that's why to this day trains still drive on the left and not on the right like in all other countries). For Poirot.

:piggy:

[Emil Miller]

Hypocrisy and self-righteousness are among the most notable attributes but there is also the seaside postcard:

http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/2685/article13007630ab1845b0.jpg


http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/1167/postcardaa018a1.jpg

[Annamariah]

Sibelius, sauna, and salmiakki! (If you don't know what the last one is, it is black candy, and yes, it tastes good. At least most of us Finns think so, though most foreigners don't agree. If you're interested, check out this blog: http://www.salmiyuck.com/ ) Other traditional things are sisu and Kalevala.

Finland was the first country in the world to elect female members of parliament. The fact we survived the Winter War against the Soviet Union can also be considered a small miracle.

Nowadays Finland is known for Angry Birds, Nokia and our good educational system, mainly our excellent PISA results. Then there are forests and thousands of lakes, nightless night in the summer, snow and darkness of winter... and Joulupukki (Santa Claus), who lives in Korvatunturi in Lapland. And metal music, Nightwish, Apocalyptica, HIM...

[Helga]

bad economy, volcanoes and snow I guess can't think of much more.... this time of year the post office gets a whole bunch of letters to santa clause so I guess that is something.

[tonywalt]

Beaches, I would imagine. I kind of like Christmas in the tropics for some reason, that's my favourite time and place.

[Varenne Rodin]

Michael Jackson, Hollywood movies, Apple pie, Salem witch trials, genocide of native Americans, JFK, Abe Lincoln, slavery of African Americans, abolition of slavery, continuing racism, upholding the bill of rights (tearing it down, building it up, ripping it to shreds, does it still exist?), Elvis Presley, baseball, leaving England, Boston cream pie, New York cheesecake, New York city, Mt. Rushmore, Las Vegas, the California gold rush, the old west, Billy the Kid, Brad Pitt, bullying, sharing, immigration, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, beaches, 9/11, World Wars, military super power, Stevie Wonder, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Disneyland, Disney. I could go on, but I'll leave some for someone else.

[JuniperWoolf]

Hockey, maple syrup, harsh winters, international peacekeeping, comedy, being well-mannered and nice, in some parts of Europe we're known and adored for our contribution to WW2, and that's about all I can think of right now.

Also, Celine Dion.

...Again, we're sorry.

[TurquoiseSunset]

Also, Celine Dion.

...Again, we're sorry.

...and Justin Bieber. You people are shameless, tsk, tsk.


Edit: Oh right...South Africa.

We are famous for:

The Good
- Nelson Mandela
- Table Mountain
- Faura and fauna - The Big Five, Fynbos and megadiveristy, great white sharks, etc.
- Gold and diamond mining
- Cradle of Humankind (for now at least)
- Heart transplants
- Braai, boerewors and biltong
- The Kalahari
- Wine.
- Irma Stern, Pierneef, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Olive Schreiner, Alan Paton and J.R.R. Tolkien was born here.

The Bad
- Apartheid
- Corruption
- Anglo-Boer War
- High HIV infection rates
- Electicity troubles
- Crime, directly related to...
- High poverty and unemployment rates
- Townships/Squattercamps

[Helga]

you gave the world most of the stargate crew so I am willing to forgive!

[osho]

My country is famous for a few historical sites and is rich in cultural heritage and of course the people of this country are considered peace loving. We are famous for our natural bounties and we can glory in our temples, pagodas, kings and knights.

All these are trashes. It is famous for bloodbaths, for famine and epidemics, for shortages and political sabotages, drug trafficking, adulteries, homosexual monks, corrupt political cadres and most businessmen drowning the Titanic built by our ancestors, and the ancestors we prided on too built on the ruins of their own people, one class ruling over the other.

[Calidore]

Edit: Oh right...South Africa.

We are famous for:

The Good
- Nelson Mandela
- Table Mountain
- Faura and fauna - The Big Five, Fynbos and megadiveristy, great white sharks, etc.
- Gold and diamond mining
- Cradle of Humankind (for now at least)
- Heart transplants
- Braai, boerewors and biltong
- The Kalahari
- Wine.
- Irma Stern, Pierneef, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Olive Schreiner, Alan Paton and J.R.R. Tolkien was born here.


You also gave us the most excellent Avengers radio serial.

[tonywalt]

You also gave us the most excellent Avengers radio serial.

Also, Rugby, surfing, and nice looking girls (lots of Charlize Therons)!

[DieterM]

My country is most famously known for being the world centre of kitsch Empresses who alternated waltzing, yodeling and having a nice Strudel and a cup of coffee before running off to Switzerland to have themselves murdered by Italian anarchists. We are the home of addled nannies teaching flocks of children how to sing stupid carols while waltzing (again!) across green slopes. Anyway, we are the country where no one walks or talks: we simply waltz from place to place and hum a Mozart tune instead of communicating.

On a more serious level, my country has been home to Freud, Zweig, Krauss, J. Roth, Torberg, Mahler, Bruckner, Brahms, Schubert, Wittgenstein, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka (non exhaustive list). The luckier ones died in time; the less lucky ones had to flee as another of our products rose to rule the world, killing millions in the process (until being stopped by the Alied Forces). We are moreover the country who brought forth that Particularly Bad Guy with the Ugly Moustache but who managed not only to shush up that fact but even to make believe it was one of his first victims (strangely enough, as most victims don't cheer the way my countrymen did back then).

And today, my country is often mistaken for being the home of kangooroos (sorry dudes, but that's not even the same continent). A country otherwise completely absent from anybody's mind, I guess (apart from its inhabitants, and of course the thousands who opened one of those chick anonymous bank accounts my country offers).

[Paulclem]

My country is most famously known for being the world centre of kitsch Empresses who alternated waltzing, yodeling and having a nice Strudel and a cup of coffee before running off to Switzerland to have themselves murdered by Italian anarchists. We are the home of addled nannies teaching flocks of children how to sing stupid carols while waltzing (again!) across green slopes. Anyway, we are the country where no one walks or talks: we simply waltz from place to place and hum a Mozart tune instead of communicating.

On a more serious level, my country has been home to Freud, Zweig, Krauss, J. Roth, Torberg, Mahler, Bruckner, Brahms, Schubert, Wittgenstein, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka (non exhaustive list). The luckier ones died in time; the less lucky ones had to flee as another of our products rose to rule the world, killing millions in the process (until being stopped by the Alied Forces). We are moreover the country who brought forth that Particularly Bad Guy with the Ugly Moustache but who managed not only to shush up that fact but even to make believe it was one of his first victims (strangely enough, as most victims don't cheer the way my countrymen did back then).

And today, my country is often mistaken for being the home of kangooroos (sorry dudes, but that's not even the same continent). A country otherwise completely absent from anybody's mind, I guess (apart from its inhabitants, and of course the thousands who opened one of those chick anonymous bank accounts my country offers).

We've been to Salzburg three times, and we really liked it. It's a beautiful country. We also liked Vienna.

[Darcy88]

. And metal music, Nightwish, Apocalyptica, HIM...

And Children of Bodom! Saw them live back in my past life as a metal-head.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

A few that come to mind in about five minutes:

The Republic:
Battle of the Alamo, Bob Wills, Stephen F. Austin, armadillos, Cadillac Ranch, Sam Houston, Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr., - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPRNx9GaplY Tom Landry, Mockingbird, Willie Nelson, Big Bend, Dumas, King of the Hill, Jim Bowie, East Texas pines, Bluebonnets

United States:
P-38 Lightning, Walter Brennan - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsnPpt4r7mk , Star Trek, Raquel Welch, Benjamin Franklin, M1903 Springfield, The Beverly Hillbillies, Wild Turkey 101, Artie Shaw, The Chrysler Building, New Mexico, Frank Lloyd Wright, The Wright Brothers, NASA Apollo missions, Grand Canyon, Twilight Zone, AMC Pacer, The Roswell Incident, Charles Lindbergh.

Couple pitfalls along the way: Lady Gaga and the Kardashians

.

[Emil Miller]

Couple pitfalls along the way: Lady Gaga and the Kardashians



You forgot this one Gilliatt.

http://youtu.be/f4-NBaTf1kw

[JuniperWoolf]

Star Trek

Maybe so, but you're still a bunch of Shatner stealers.

[farnoosh]

my turn:

It is famous for being one of the earliest centers of human settlement and one of the greatest Near-Eastern civilizations. The Iranian language is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language group. Persia was a center of the Zoroastrian religion, from which Judaism and Christianity borrowed much (ideas such as heaven and hell).
Persia had huge wars with the Roman Empire. Persia was one of the very important stops on the silk road where goods were traded between the European, Persian, Indian and Chinese civilizations. Between the 9th and 13th centuries Persia was one of the most civilized countries in the world. Algebra and important advances in astronomy and other sciences were discovered there. Even under the Mongols important advances were made in math and science (number theory, calculating machines) and Persia was known for fine crafts and had a culture with a world-wide distribution through about the 16th Century.
And of course the latest would be: 2009 (cheating in) election, M.Ahmadi Nejad,Mir.H.Musavi, killing people in the streets and burying them at night, great oil producing country,nuclear program...and having alot of enemies.

can't think of anything else...oh,wait...They say Persians are very good looking people,does that count?

[stephofthenight]

going to war, forcing our views on other people, and claiming to be free while enslaved to our government.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

You forgot this one Gilliatt.

http://youtu.be/f4-NBaTf1kw

Emil, I'm afraid I raised the ire of the American Junk Food TV gods when making that reference to the Kardashians. No sooner than I mentioned it, the Dallas Mavericks basketball team acquires a player who is married(?) to one of them.
It was irritating enough to hear that name 5 to 6 times a day as one attempts to go about their daily rotine, now it will be broadcast Ad nauseam.

Give me Elvis!

[Emil Miller]

Emil, I'm afraid I raised the ire of the American Junk Food TV gods when making that reference to the Kardashians. No sooner than I mentioned it, the Dallas Mavericks basketball team acquires a player who is married(?) to one of them.
It was irritating enough to hear that name 5 to 6 times a day as one attempts to go about their daily rotine, now it will be broadcast Ad nauseam.

Give me Elvis!

During the two months in August – October 2010 when 33 miners were trapped in a Chilean mineshaft, one of the miners, Edison Peña, entertained the other miners by singing Elvis Presley songs to them.


I suppose the idea was to make them all the more determined to escape.

[Alexander III]

http://www.buzzmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/berlusconi-blow-jobs-like-stev-jobs-apple-e1318261813565.jpg

[Emil Miller]

http://www.buzzmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/berlusconi-blow-jobs-like-stev-jobs-apple-e1318261813565.jpg

Actually, under Berlusconi it was called Bunga Bunga when 17-year-old Moroccan belly dancer Karima El Mahroug - who calls herself Ruby - said she had attended "bunga bunga" parties with other women at Mr Berlusconi's villa in Milan.
I have been reading a conversation by Der Spiegel with Romano Prodi who is a former Italian Prime Minister and opponent of Berlusconi in which he says "You cannot imagine how I have suffered in recent years. Wherever I went, Italy was only Bunga-Bunga. In Peking my wife and I were laughed at, in Kenya the park rangers pointed to the apes in the trees and said: "Look they are making Bunga-Bunga."

[Maximilianus]

Geographically: the Valley of the Moon in the NW, the Andes to the W, the 7 lakes to the South, the Iguazú falls up North, etc.
In meals and desserts: asado, yerba mate, dulce de leche (milk caramel), rice pudding, our versions of pizza, spaghetti and schnitzels, etc.
Complaints: women complaining about men and men complaining about women, calling one another the source of all major griefs, yet they often gather in curious physical ceremonies that eventually lead to getting laid. Ring a bell? Happening elsewhere?
What's more, like an amusing national sport we complain more than what we do to address the causes of our complaints. We even complain about whatever is right, because what's right ain't just right enough.
Hospitality and friendliness: we may be perceived as suspiciously friendly by foreigners unused to our level of friendliness, most curiously by some of the same foreigners that rained down here in swarms of locusts and took advantage of such "weird friendliness," as many of them put it. We tend to get physical even with strangers. Where others would place an oceanic distance while chatting to each other, we get close enough for the kiss and hug maneuvers while we talk, especially among close friends or acquaintances, and foreigners unused to it seemingly get jumpy about the intense contact. Do we take a dive into people's unwilling butts? Not really, but if it pleases you to think that we are lusty then go ahead... we don't give a damn really... foreigners may think us weird but we think of foreigners as a weird cluster too, so we are pretty much even in the field of social etiquette views.
We are so friendly that when immigrants cascaded upon us we received them with open arms and they made a pretty fine living down here, yet when some of us needed to emigrate the treatment received upon arrival wasn't exactly equal in several occasions. I often warn my vassals of the inconvenience in being overly friendly, and of how sometimes it has no retribution, but they just won't listen to their king.
Like in most societies today, the king is merely a decorative figure.
We don't listen to clearer minds, yet we pay both ears to the halfwits outside the house: the feature.