L'Eiger
L'Eiger est un sommet individualisé des Alpes situé entièrement en Suisse dans le massif des Alpes Bernoises. Son nom signifie l'ogre faisant référence à son impressionnante face nord. Cette face nord, la plus grande face des Alpes, avec 1 800 m de hauteur presque totalement verticales, fut considérée comme un des trois derniers grands problèmes des Alpes, avec les faces nord du Cervin et des Grandes Jorasses.
Manneken Pis
Manneken Pis ("little man piss" in English), is a Brussels landmark. It is a small bronze fountain sculpture depicting a naked little boy urinating into the fountain's basin. Similar statues can be found in the Belgian towns of Geraardsbergen, Broksele and Hasselt. There is an ongoing dispute over which Manneken Pis is the oldest - the one in Brussels or the one in Geraardsbergen.
There are several legends behind this statue, but the most famous is the one about Duke Godfried II of Brabant. In 1142, the troops of this two-year-old lord were battling against the troops of the Berthouts, the lords of Grimbergen, in Ransbeke (currently Neder-over-Heembeek). The troops put the infant lord in a basket and hung it in a tree, to encourage them. From there, he urinated on the troops of the Berthouts, who eventually lost the battle.
Another legend goes like this: in the 14th century, Brussels was under siege by a foreign power. The city had held their ground for quite some time. The attackers had thought of a plan to place explosive charges at the city walls. A little boy named Juliaanske from Brussels happened to be spying on them as they were preparing. He urinated on the burning fuse and thus saved the city.There was already a similar statue made of stone in the middle of the 15th century, perhaps as early as 1388. The statue was stolen several times. In 1619 it was replaced by a bronze statue, created by Franco-Flemish Baroque sculptor Jerome Duquesnoy, father of the more famous François.
On many occasions the statue is dressed in a costume. His wardrobe now consists of several hundred different costumes. According to an article posted in the History section of http://www.manneken-pis.com, the statue was at one time used to dispense liquor.
The costumes are changed according to a schedule managed by the non-profit association Les Amis de Manneken-Pis, in ceremonies that are often accompanied by brass band music. When the boy's stream is turned on after dressing, the build-up of pressure after such a long abstinence can lead to bystanders being sprinkled, to general delight.
Since the mid-1990s, the Manneken has had a female equivalent, Jeanneke Pis.
Photos of the statue in close-up often give a false impression of its size; some tourists are disappointed to find it much smaller than expected.In many countries, replicas in brass or fiberglass are commonplace swimming- or garden-pool decorations. Manneken Pis adapted as a corkscrew is a common souvenir, considered most risqué [1].
In September 2002 a Belgian waffle-maker in Florida experienced first-hand the cultural gap between Europe and the United States when he set up a replica in front of his waffle stand in the Fashion Square Mall in Orlando, Florida. The Belgian owner recalled the legend as 'the boy who saved Brussels from fire by extinguishing it with his urine' (confusing the legend with an incident in 'Gulliver's Travels' perhaps). Florida's shocked shoppers made a formal complaint. Mall officials said that the waffle-shop owner Assayag did not follow procedures when he put up the statue and was in violation of his lease.
In contrast to this reaction, there is another replica of the statue in Rio de Janeiro, in front of the quarters of Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas (a famous football club from Brazil. There, the presence of the statue is taken lightly (as Brazilians do not deem the nudity of pre-pubescent children as obscene) and the statue has been even adopted as a mascot by that club. The fans usually dress it with the club's jersey after important wins.
It also appears in the Nintendo video game Animal Crossing, as well as the Playstation 2 video game Katamari Damacy, as an item you can obtain.
Manneken Pis also makes a cameo in Asterix in Belgium, when a little boy runs to the toilet. In the Netherlands, there is a small chain of chip shops called manekin pis.
café
Le mot café désigne les graines du caféier, un arbuste du genre Coffea, et une boisson psychoactive obtenue à partir de ces graines. Il désigne aussi son lieu de consommation, le café ou bar ou bistro.
La culture du café est très développée dans de nombreux pays tropicaux, dans des plantations qui cultivent pour les marchés d'exportation. Le café est une des principales denrées d'origine agricole échangées sur les marchés internationaux, et souvent une contribution majeure aux exportations des régions productrices.
Croissants
A croissant (listen (help·info) , anglicised variously as IPA is a butter-laden flaky French pastry, named for its distinctive crescent shape. Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry by layering yeast dough with butter and rolling and folding a few times in succession, then rolling.
The French are famous for their skill in making croissants. Making croissants by hand requires skill and patience (as one batch of croissants can take several days to complete), but the development of factory-made, frozen, pre-formed but unbaked dough has made them into a fast food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor. Indeed, the croissanterie was explicitly a French response to American fast food. This innovation, along with the croissant's versatility and distinctive shape, has made it the best-known type of French pastry in much of the world. In many parts of the United States, for example, the croissant (introduced at the fast food chains Arby's in the United States and Tim Hortons in Canada in 1983) has come to rival the long-time favorite doughnuts.Croissant pastry can also be wrapped around almond paste or chocolate before it is baked (in the latter case, it becomes like pain au chocolat, which has a different, non crescent, shape), or sliced to admit sweet or savoury fillings. In France, croissants are generally sold without filling and eaten without added butter, and sometimes with almond filling. In the United States, sweet fillings or toppings are common, or warm croissants are filled with ham and cheese or feta cheese and spinach.
Rome
(Italian and Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and of the Lazio region, as well as the country's largest and most populous comune, with about 2.5 million residents (3.8 million considering the whole urbanised area, as represented by the Province of Rome). It is located in the central-western portion of the Italian peninsula, where the river Aniene joins the Tiber. As one of the largest cities in the European Union, the Comune di Roma has a gross domestic product of €97 billion in the year 2005, equal to 6.7% of Italy's GDP — the highest proportion of GDP produced by any single Italian comune. The current Mayor of Rome is Walter Veltroni.
According to legend, the city of Rome was founded by the twins Romulus and Remus on April 21, 753 BC. Archaeological evidence supports claims that Rome was inhabited since the 8th century BC and earlier.[2] The city was the cradle of Roman civilization that produced the largest and longest-lasting empire of classical antiquity that reached its greatest extent in AD 117. The city was pivotal and responsible for the spread of Greco-Roman culture that endures to this day. Rome is also identified with Christianity and the Catholic Church and has been the episcopal seat of the Popes since the 1st century AD. The State of the Vatican City, the sovereign territory of the Holy See and smallest nation in the world, is an enclave of Rome.
Rome, Caput mundi ("capital of the world"), Limen Apostolorum ("threshold of the Apostles"), la città dei sette colli ("the city of the seven hills") or simply l'Urbe ("the City"),[3] is thoroughly modern and cosmopolitan. As one of the few major European cities that escaped World War II relatively unscathed, central Rome remains essentially Renaissance in character. The Historic Centre of Rome is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site[4] by virtue of its three thousand years of accumulated history and art.
