10 Reasons! - A quick Worldwide Glance 
 

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING DUTCH
1.   You can get arrested for growing plants, but not for smoking them.
2.   You can make jokes about the Belgians and still drink their  beer.
3.   a. You can legally kill yourself
      b. You can legally be killed.
4.   You're exactly like the Germans, except that nobody hates you.
5    You think you are a world power, but everyone else thinks Copenhagen is your capital.....
6.   You get to insult people and defend yourself by saying it's a national tradition.
7.   You can put your finger in a dyke and it will save your country.
8.   You live in the most densely populated country in Europe, and still you've never seen your neighbours.
9.   If the economy is bad, blame the Germans. If a war is started, blame the Germans. If you lose your keys, blame the Germans.
10. Bikes are public property. Locks are a challenge.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING BELGIAN
1.    You get to speak three languages, but none of them  intelligibly.
2.    If other countries want to fight a war, they will do it in your country.
3.    You can brew drinks out of fruit, and still call it beer.
4.    You are either
       a. like the Dutch, just less efficient
       b. like the French, just less romantic
       c. like the Germans
5.    Decent fries. Real mayonnaise. Great chocolate.The best beer.
6.    No one knows anything about you, except for the Dutch and French and they make fun of you.
7.    More scandals in a week than any other country in a decade.
8.    You can drive like a maniac on the road and nobody cares.
9.    Nobody can name anyone who is famous and comes from Belgium.
10.  Face it. It's not really a country, is it?

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING FRENCH:
1.     When speaking fast you can make yourself sound gay.
2.     Experience the joy of winning the World Cup for the first  time.
3.     You get to eat insect food like snails and frog's legs.
4.     If there's a war you can surrender really early.
5.     You don't have to read the subtitles on those late night films on Channel 4.
6.     You can test your own nuclear weapons in other people's countries.
7.     You can be ugly and still become a famous film star.
8.     Allow Germans to march up and down your most famous street humiliating your sense of national pride.
9.     You don't have to bother with toilets, just shit in the street.
10.  People think you're a great lover even when you're not.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING AMERICAN :
1.   You can have a woman president without electing her.
2.   You can spell color wrong and get away with it.
3.   You can call Budweiser beer.
4.   You can be a crook and still be president.
5.   If you've got enough money you can get elected to do anything.
6.   If you can breathe you can get a gun.
7.   You get to be really obese.
8.   You can play golf in the most hideous clothes ever made and nobody seems to care.
9.   You get to call everyone you've never met "buddy".
10. You can think you're the greatest nation on earth.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR  BEING NORWEGIAN:
1.   You get to pay the highest taxes in the world.
2.   You can kill baby seals and eat Rudolf the Reindeer.
3.   You live in total freezing darkness half the year and get 24 hour ozone-hole radiation the other half.
4.   You can get capital punishment for smoking dope.
5.   You can go skiing in your knickers.
6.   You get to hate the Swedes and beat the Brazilians in football.
7.   You have to be a woman to get anywhere.
8.   You don't need to worry about land prices rocketing - its fairly spacious.
9.   When abroad you can impress people you meet with stories about killing polar bears and shagging penguins- and they believe you.
10. You can actually get bored with blondes.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING ENGLISH :
1.   Two World Wars and One World Cup.
2.   Warm beer.
3.   You get to confuse everyone with the rules of cricket.
4.   You get to accept defeat graciously in major sporting events.
5.   Union jack underpants.
6.   Water shortages guaranteed every single summer.
7.   You can live in the past and imagine you are still a world power.
8.   Bathing once a week - whether you need to or not.
9.   Ditto changing underwear.
10. Beats being Welsh.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING SCOTTISH :
1.   You ain't English!
2.   You ain't English!
3.   You ain't English!
4.   You ain't English!
5.   You ain't English!
6.   You ain't English!
7.   You ain't English!
8.   You ain't English!
9.   You ain't English!
10. You ain't English!

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING IRISH :
1.   Guinness.
2.   18 children because you can't use contraceptives.
3.   You can get into a fight just by marching down someone's road.
4.   Pubs never close.
5.   Can use Papal edicts on contraception passed in second Vatican Council of 1968 to persuade your girlfriend that you can't have sex with a condom on.
6.   No one can ever remember the night before.
7.   Kill people you don't agree with.
8.   Stew.
9.   More Guinness.
10. Eating stew and drinking Guinness in an Irish pub at 3 in the morning after a bout of sectarian violence.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING WELSH:
You've got to be having a laugh right now, haven't you?

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING ITALIAN :
1.   In-depth knowledge of bizarre pasta shapes.
2.   Unembarrassed to wear fur.
3.   No need to worry about tax returns.
4.   Glorious military history prior to 400BC.
5.   Can wear sunglasses inside.
6.   Political stability.
7.   Flexible working hours.
8.   Live near the Pope.
9.   Can spend hours braiding girlfriend's armpit hair.
10. Country run by Sicilian murderers.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING SPANISH :
1.   Glorious history of killing South American tribes.
2.   The rest of Europe thinks Africa begins at the Pyrenees.
3.   You get your beaches invaded by Germans, Danes, Brits, etc.
4.   The rest of your country is already invaded by Moroccans.
5.   Everybody else makes crap paella and claims it's the real thing.
6.   Honesty.
7.   Only sure way of bedding a woman is to dress up in stupid, tight clothes and risk your life in front of bulls.
8.   You get to eat bull's testicles.
9.   Gibraltar.
10. Supported Argentina in Falklands War.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING GERMAN :
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10.
Give them a second chance

1.   Oktoberfest.
2.   Okotberfest-beer.
3.   BMW.
4.   VW.
5.   Audi.
6.   Mercedes.
7.   On a highway you can travel at a speed that would bring you  to jail in any other country of the world.
8.   You do not have to learn German as a foreign language.
9.   You think Sauerkraut is delicious.
10. Contrary to common belief laughing is not forbidden by law (yet).

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING CANADIAN :
1.   It beats being an American.
2.   Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground.
3.   You can play ice hockey 12 months a year, outdoors.
4.   Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground.
5.   Where else can you travel 1000 miles over fresh water in a canoe?
6.   A political leader can admit to smoking pot and their popularity ratings will rise.
7.   Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground.
8.   Kill Grizzly bears with huge shotguns and cover your house in their skins.
9.   Own-an-Eskimo scheme.
10. Only country to successfully invade the US and burn its capital to the ground.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING AUSTRALIAN:
1.   Know your great-grand-dad was a murdering bar steward that no civilized nation on earth wanted.
2.   Fosters Lager.
3.   Dispossess Aborigines who have lived in your country for 40,000 years because you think it belongs to you.
4.   Cricket captain not afraid to cry live on TV.
5.   Tact and sensitivity.
6.   Bondi Beach.
7.   Other beaches.
8.   Liberated attitude to homosexuals.
9.   Drinking cold lager on the beach.
10. Having a bit of a swim and then drink some cold lager on the beach.

TOP 10 REASONS FOR BEING GREEK
1.   You get to shout about your culture although the only real culture most Greeks have is what is growing between their toes.
2.   The police are even more corrupt than the criminals they are supposed to be chasing.
3.   You can blow your nose in the street by pinching it between the thumb and forefinger and trumpeting forth without everyone around wretching their stomach contents up at the sight.
4.   Old women can sport moustaches.
5.   Young women can sport moustaches.
6.   Men can be hairier than the average grizzly bear and not get put in a zoo.
7.  You get to call the bouzouki a musical instrument when the rest of the world sees it as an instrument of torture.
8.   You are the only nation to have lost its marbles and still wants to let everyone else around the world know about it.
9.   Ridiculous bureaucracy.
10. Nana Mouskouri and Demis Roussos.

Submitted by Lisa Davies of Melbourne, 25/5/2000