Belgium!

I am in Belgium! I don’t really feel like I’m here. We came on the Chunnel, so I have neither flown, nor been on a ferry.

We’re in a beautiful medieval city called Leuven, which is west of Brussels, very much in the middle of the country. I’m here to accompany Fiona who is playing in a festival. It’s actually a violin festival, which I find almost too intriguing. Will the majority of the music be classical? Will Fiona’s esoteric electric violin set be considered avant guarde?

The journey here was incredibly speedy. I took the train from Victoria to Maidstone where Fiona picked me up in the car.

The Chunnel is a surreal experience. You effectively drive onto a train, and sit there, in the car itself, as the train hurtles underneath the sea. You know you’re stationary, but at the same time, you’re also aware that you’re moving, so it can be quite bewildering when you actually start driving again.

The north of France is a fairly underwhelming place. It’s essentially flat and full of factories and farms. The motorway hugs the coast, passing between places with deep military significance, like Dunkirk and Ypres. I’ve never been to either. One day I will. It strikes me that you can’t call yourself a true First World War nut until you’ve experienced the Last Post at the Menin Gate.

Our journey to Leuven took us around the edge of various Belgian cities, which I suddenly realised I wanted to visit: Bruges, Ghent, Brussels... We were apparently within a stone’s throw of the famous Atomium, which I would have liked to have seen again for old time’s sake. I remember going there as a child and being really rather impressed. It’s a giant metal stainless steel structure shaped like some sort of atom. A quick google reveals it’s actually “the unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified 165 billion times.” Because I don’t know what any of those words mean in context, I’m gonna have to take Wikipedia’s word for it.

Upon arriving at our hotel, we were informed by the man behind the counter that there had been a computer system malfunction and that the hotel was over-booked. He was way too chirpy as he told us that the solution was going to be for one of us to stay in his hotel and the other to stay in another hotel which they would organise for us. Obviously we kicked off and explained that we would both be staying in the SAME hotel, that they should have told us in advance that there was a problem, that this new hotel would have to be comparable and that they were basically very stupid if they expected us to schlep across town and check into another hotel without any form of reimbursement.

So, five minutes later, we were back in the car looking for the new hotel, which, it turned out, was next to the train station. Leuven, it seems, is fairly ethnically diverse. I don’t know why it surprised me to discover this fact. I think I’d always thought of Belgium as being one of those whiter-than-white places. I think I may well have assumed that the Walloon-Flemish dichotomy would deter wide-scale immigration, which is, of course, a fairly spurious argument.

Our new hotel turned out to be rather lovely, with a fabulous woman at reception who spoke very good English, which is somewhat atypical in these parts. 50 miles north, in Holland, English is practically an official language.

We dropped our bags off and headed into the historic city centre, which is charming. There’s a glorious, ancient town hall with some of the most ornate stone carving I think I’ve seen since visiting Notre Dame.

Leuven was “sacked” by the Germans at the start of the First World War. Buildings were damaged and destroyed and 200 people were killed. The university library was burned down, and hundreds of thousands of precious books were lost. One wonders what the point was. Did orders come down from above telling the troops to behave as appallingly as possible? It’s strange, I’ve always felt that the German invasion of Belgium was rather “hammed up” by the British powers-that-be to get the people behind the war effort. When you start to read about 200 people being murdered in one city alone and the mindless destruction of art and books, the stories of priests being strung up and used as bell clappers start to sound more plausible.

We had some food in an Italian restaurant on a street the lady at the hotel reception recommended. It was pleasant enough although it took me a long time before the waiter understood that I was asking for vinegar. I managed the word in three languages, which I thought ought to have been plenty. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when he went away and returned with a napkin!

There was a slightly surreal encounter at the end of the meal as well, when the waitress came up to us, smiling sweetly, handed us the bill and said “I hope you don’t need a receipt.” “Actually, yes I do” answered Fiona. She looked a bit non-plussed, disappeared and, seconds later, returned with a receipt. We couldn’t work out whether we’d just had a lost-in-translation moment, or whether she was telling us that she couldn’t be bothered to press the receipt button, or walk across the restaurant to the till!

Meanwhile, three English women had appeared in the place. “Ooh it’s a bit quiet”, said one, “never mind” said another, “we can make it louder!” As I left the restaurant, I could hear them shouting at one another, and, once again, I felt ashamed to be British. It’s a sleepy little Belgian city. What on Earth were they expecting? And frankly, on mainland Europe, us Brits have got a duty to keep quiet and be charming.