Dave's autobiography extract - Belgium gets the treatment

'Along with Sweden I rate Belgium, famous for being not famous and infamous for being boring but in reality its Sundays that do it when the country closes down and retreats to a couple of well hidden restaurants for lunch, inevitably they are very crowed with half the population inside each.

Of course they have apartheid there, Walloons are French and have the larger part of the land mass but not much else other than a chip ( or frite)on their shoulder. They have great cities like Liege which I don’t know and Charleroi which I do as I once got so drunk there I wouldn’t come out the toilet on the train and nearly missed the airport and flight home. That was just one bottle of Trappist at lunchtime, foolishly sans food. Charleroi is a rather grim black coal town abandoned by industry and the rest of Europe, a grand design to modernise and put the trams underground was partially completed and many former routes abandoned. The new trams served points suitably distant from any inhabitation to deter most passengers, thus the renewal was abandoned or put on ice which was then used to chill a few more Pastis before lunch. English needless to say isn’t spoken but attempts at French are welcomed and the people are astonished but welcoming of a visitor. The capital Brussels when open, oh Sunday we know is closed, Saturdays almost as bad, when do they shop, Monday to Friday they compete on the roads in a perpetual whacky race for survival forbidden now to park as they once did a la mode across the pavements, middle of roads, crossings, intersections etc.A multi cultural society but apparently living in bresionable harmony, certainly mI’ve never had any bother filming around Gard Du Nord station nwhich is abiouty as ethnic as you can get, once burnt out buildings and shady characters now it loioks set to become a trendy bohemian spot.

Leuvan is a neutral state a bit like the Vatican which lies east of Brussels or Bruxelles or is it like Derry stroke city. In Leuvan they have a university and brew Stella Artois. They also have an Irish pub where against the boom of a live band I asked a fellow drunk what they thought of the Walloons (French speakers), northing he replied, we never think of them.

Another other country is Belgium, which shares common capital with the other Belgium, co existing in a parallel universe bonded through time and space and unreality through the European Union. Here they exist as a model village based on the Netherlands. The chief attraction is Bruges which I have never seen, perhaps its only in the Shearings coach brochure and then Ghent which I can verify as having both beautiful buildings, a chiming clock, trams and if you are lucky trolleybuses, unless you either have no affection for electric traction or you are my friend John in which case they are withdrawn from service the moment he shows his face. The railway station is conveniently placed by the bus station or vice versa and of course probably just vice if that’s your inclination. Ostend stretches with its suburbs along the entire coastal border of Belgium, that’s the model village not the former coal mine country. Here endless rows of cafes vend mussels and frites or meat balls if you are squeamish. The coast is also served by a tramway, a much modernised relic of a former extensive network of countrywide routes called the Vicinal. Near the border there is a city dedicated to shipping and diamonds, Antwerp is actually a spy centre, polluted by Dutch agents so don’t go slagging of the Dutch here. Everyone of course speaks English and it isn’t really that impolite to launch straight into it as asking if they speak English would actually seem an insult to their intelligence and certainly mean they don’t watch television as half that including the adverts is in English anyway.'