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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

- some words on Belgium, or at least parts therein

In 2006 I was studying, retract, "studying" at the Universite Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.  The school came about when there was some disagreement between the Catholics and the Protestants at the University in Leuven.  Leuven is in Flanders, which is the Dutch northern part of Belgium.  They tend to be on the Prod side.  The agreement ended with the Catholics getting the boot.  And so in '69 they acquired some farm land in Wallonia (the French side).  A town was built in the valley.  There is a 2-3 level parking garage which the town is built on top of.  One escalator comes up on one end in front of the grocery store and inside the small mall area.  The other comes up in front of the movie theatre on the other end.  Who's idea this was, and how the hell it got approved, I'll never know, but it works.  The train pulls up just next to the town.  Due to the instability of such a design, the town is by necessity cobble stone.  You can't go a day without seeing at least one cast in this small town, most likely the summation of beer and cobble stone.  Cars are only allowed to drive in the town during a one hour period in the morning to make deliveries.  There are few trees.  Dogs defecate on the street.  A lot.  But not as much as the student population pukes.  The students seem to party Sunday through Wednesday.  They go home on Thursday to get food and clean clothes and then come back to party.  No one goes to class.  Only foreigners.  Instead of one day for studying before exams, they get two weeks.  During that time, they stay up days on end reading the books they haven't touched since classes started.

A few words on the parties.  Each department has a "Cirque".  This is like a co-ed fraternity.  They have silly hats and lab coats.  The hats are covered in various pins and the labcoats are decorated with things relating to their department most likely.  From what I remember, each Cirque had a party a certain night of the week.  And they all had their own place to have these parties.  Small concrete rooms usually.  One large place, Casa, was manned by a Cirque each Thursday.  They rotated.  If there were bathrooms here...or anywhere in town besides my apartment, I didn't see them.  And they certainly weren't used.  If you were dancing at a party and needed to vomit, just do it there.  Pee?  Why bother moving when you can easily just pull it out right there!  Outside?  Who needs a tree, just squat in the road!  The clothes you wore to Casa you never wore again, except maybe another Cirque.  They were completely unusable for any other function after one hour in these places.

I went to one Cirque and found it necessary to urinate.  I am not Belgian.  So a friend and I took to the street nearby and parked it amid some bushes.  After taking care to hide our bums, we exited to find 3 Belgian girls dropping trow right in the middle of the street, in a line, on a hill.  By the time we realized what was happening it was too late and we were dashing up the hill trying to avoid the yellow streams.

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