Home » Belgium » Brussels Nov 2001

Korpewelten and Waffles

Brussels Nov 2001

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 15:49:49

Displayed times (last time: )

I spent a weekend in Brussels on a work social trip and I went with no particular expectations which was just as well. The little I know about Belgium and it's culture didn't particular recommend Brussels as a top-ten must see capital. Chocolates, beer, Jean Claude Van-Damm and the EU commission hardly make me break out into a sweat of enthusiastic desire, well except for the first two.

We left Waterloo early on Friday evening with a predicted arrival time just before midnight in Brussels. Eurostar started out with its customary composed and efficient service and in its all too frequent fashion chucked it all away about 40 minutes from the entrance to the Tunnel. For admittedly prudent reasons (sercurity) the train was delayed for two and half hours while the police boarded to perform some mysterious unspecified task. My offer of £20 to anyone who would run hysterically screaming from the cabin the moment the police entered was sadly not put to the test since we never saw them at our end of the train.

During our sojourn I retired to the bar where I discovered the South American game of Perudo. Perudo is a liar's dice game which involves equal amounts of logic and bravado and, hopefully, large quantities of alcohol. Initially players seem to think that the game revolve around statistical prediction of the outcome and spend ages agonising over whether to call "five-fours" or "six-sixes". As you progress however you realise that the dice are more or less ancillary to the game and all you really require is a poker face and balls the size of a planet. You then bluff your way through successive rounds until you end up in a hombre-a-hombre battle with someone who has balls the size of Jupiter and go down in a blaze of glory. It was a pleasant enough way to while away a couple of hours.

So we trailed into Brussels sometime around two in the morning and proceeded through customs to await a taxi, ...