BRUSSELS-NAMUR. 29th August-1st September

Friday 29th August (continued). Started off well. Went down to reception (hotel in Brussels - I'd just showered and was ready to go out). Thought I'd get all the gen re : where the internet shop was etc, and had my newly-acquired map of Brussels and a pen ready so I could get him to mark things on it for me. But he insisted on taking me outside and showing me : 'internet that way, supermarket that way' and so forth. Then I walked up the street, and suddenly realsed that I didn't have my map or pen. Back to reception, but not there. So I had to work my back to the centre of town to get another map, and fortunately came across 2 roving 'tourist information' ladies who gave me another. Two days later I came across the missing map and pen in the back left-hand pocket of my trousers - being right-handed, this is a pocket that I never ever, ever use -except in Brussels. I found the internet shop, which was masquerading as a 'games center'. So, as I'm starting to wilt a little, I spend the entire weekend either lying in bed or at the internet shop, which is only about 300 metres away.

In Paris, the internet and 'phone shop was also about 300 metres from the hotel, but there the resemblance ended. In Paris, there were a dozen or so poky and airless cubicles out the back, with an equal number of phone booths out the front, and invariably one or more persons would be bellowing into these phones, contending with the racket from a noisy and raucous cafe next door. The establishment in Brussels was everything that an internet cafe should be : a very large room, with big circular tables with about 8 terminals around each. If you wanted a cup of tea or a toasted sandwich or a hot meal you just ordered it at the counter and they brought it to your computer. All the the weekend there wouldn't have been more than a quarter of the terminals being used, but what was interesting was what seemed to be a very addictive card game that was played at several long tables at the other end of the room, mainly by guys in their late twenties or thirties. People dropped in or left all the time and there could be thirty people say, playing and talking, but it wasn't intrusive. I eventually asked one of the staff what game it was, and he said that it was a combination of chess, cinquieme(?) and fantasy games. That it's played in pairs, under the strict eye of a moderator, and that every card has it's own rules. I remarked that they seemed to use a good deal of English expressions while they were playing, and he said that was because some of the players were Dutch, others Flemish and others French, and English was a sort of lingua franca for them.

The hotel room was small, but very modern with wardrobe-like cupboard doors opening into a
modern and perfectly proportioned ensuite. Heaven forbid that I ever have to permanently live in a one-roomed apartment, but if I did, I couldn't imagine one more pleasant. Friday night the hotel (about 30 rooms) was full up, and people were coming and going and hollering to about 2am, but as the internet shop wasn't open till 11.30am I laid abed till nearly then. Saturday night it seemed very quiet, and I was just nodding off about 11.30pm when this enormous firework display began. I had seen adverts for some sort of marathon 2-day pop concert going on over the weekend, so it could have been something to do with that. Maybe my head was still full of all the WW1 stuff I was looking at in Ypres, because it occurred to me now for the first time how much a big fireworks display ( if you're lying in bed listening to it), sounds like the soundtrack of a WW1 movie.

Anyhow, the night wasn't quite yet finished. After the fireworks, I fell asleep for a couple of hours, and then got up to go somewhere. Unless it's a very cold night, I like to have the window a bit open, so that fresh air blows onto my face, and I'd left the curtain open a few inches at one end. Jumping back into bed, there was this bright light shining into my eyes through the gap I'd left in the curtain. I realised that there was the large window of another room at right angles and almost touching my window, and at first I thought that it was a reflection of a low moon on that window. But I realised that it was actually a light bulb in the other room, and I sat up to pull the curtain closed. Then I dimly noticed a guy in the other room, and what caught my attention was that that he seemed to have four arms. So I thought, hello, and groping around for my glasses, I saw that the second pair of arms was actually a pair of legs, and there's this heterosexual couple, starkers, playing mothers and fathers about ten feet away from where I'm sitting up in bed. They weren't kids, probably in their late twenties, and I wish I could report that their performance was a continuation of the earlier pyrotechnics of the evening, but alas, a very pedestrian and unimaginative affair, neither of them appearing to rise to the occasion, and I was sort of glad when the light went off and I could get back to sleep.

Sunday night was very quiet, and I was away early Monday morning and caught the train to Namur, at the foot of the Ardennes. Lonely Planet had some details for the youth hostel there, so I rang them when I arrived, and they said to come after 4pm. I left my gear in a locker at the station, and walked around the Citadel at Namur. This is a massive fortress, built on a high rocky outcrop above the city, which has been extended and built upon for centuries. Arriving at the hostel on the dot of four, I told them that my hostel card had been stolen, which is actually true, because the last one I had (about 15 years ago) was stolen from my then flat in Hawthorn. So they issued me with a temporary card. You have to pay 3 euros extra a night, and get a stamp for each night, and after you have 6 stamps the card becomes a 12 months membership, and you then pay 18 euros (or whatever), like everyone else. My companions in the 4-bed dorm were a boy who has just arrived in Namur from Madagascar to study at some sort of music high school ; Norman, a heavily-accented Glaswegian who is on day 2 of a 14 day cycle trip in Belgium and France ; and a phlegmatic Belgian man, also a cyclist. Norman is the sort of person who has an opinion and/or anecdote to suit every occasion. He is retired, but appears to have been doing these sort of trips most of his life, and despite the apparent similarity in our ages consistently addresses me as 'son' or 'boy'. The Madagascan boy had an exam today, and has another tomorrow, and the other two appear to have cycled many kilometres today, so we are all abed by 10pm.