Tips of the iceberg

The other day our teacher of intercultural communication asked us to do what turned out to be a really interesting exercise. It consisted of three parts.
First, we had to write down what we thought defined our country, what legends we had, what we did differently from others, why did we like something more or less, etc. This part was named "the tip of the iceberg" of our country. In my case it was Belgium, so I wrote things like "we like beer" and "we eat a lot of French fries".
The second part was to put us together in pairs and exchange our "tip of the iceberg" with our colleague's one. The point of this was for us to find what was beneath those legends and traditions they wrote about, the history behind it. This was not an easy part. What you would expect is to find the reasons behind traditions of other countries right on the Internet, but it was not that obvious. There is not a lot information about those iceberg tips, the most you find is what traditions exist, but not where they came from.
The third part was to compare results with our colleague and see if what they found was consistent with what we thought were the reasons behind our traditions. I must say, I did not know why us Belgians like beer and French fries so much, but she gave me a satisfying answer. The beer came from the fact that, once upon a time, there was no drinkable water and so they drank beer against thirst. The French fries came from the fact that one day there was no fish to catch so they had to eat potatoes. Then, one day, someone decided to fry those potatoes and the French fries tradition was born. How interesting is that?!
It was really nice to learn something new about my own country, but also about my colleage's country, which was Spain. You really have to take notice that things didn't appear from nowhere, there is a reason behind everything and it is important to know about those reasons. Essentially, what I learned from this exercise is that we should try to learn about the whole iceberg, and not rely only on the tip of it.