quote:
Originally posted by Epona:
Now I'm intrigued!! You can't dangle the carrot in front of me and then snatch it away again..... I sense a good story here, c'mon and tell, Epona's waiting.... 
ok. its not that bad though. well, actually, it is... [img]tongue.gif[/img]
when i was travelling through belgium, i bought the go pass (its a train ticket thats worth for 10 trips). the beauty of it is that you can go from one end of the country to the other, and its only 1 trip. so you basically get that and you can go from city to city, or town to town, sleeping a day or two in each, and get to visit almost all of belgium really cheap. but i digress. anyways, thing is one of the first towns i went to is eupen (located near the border with holland) since i wanted to make my way from north to south. it is a VERY small town. there were only a couple hostels and they were family places. i mean, the owners lived there and rented you their rooms. the first one was full, so obviously i went to the other one, owned by a lonely woman of around 100 years old, and luckily there was room. it was a beautiful place, in front of a plaza that overlooked an ancient gothic church and a pub. the town was gorgeous. everything built in stone plus the place was in mountainous terrain with a little river some 2 kms away.
thing is that night i went to the plaza and sat in the pub to have a drink. it was full of locals... old locals. i think the youngest person there must have been 60 years old (i was 22). everybody talking in flemish (kind of dutch mixed with german) and i couldnt make out a thing. well, since i was bored and had nothing to do or nobody to talk to, i drank... i drank a lot. i must have downed 5 big glasess of beer (im not a big drinker, btw) when i decided that it was a good idea that i mingled with the locals. so i started trying to communicate with the people there in a mix of spanish, english, french and aufriedersen (all i know in german). must have made quite an impression, cause some invited me drinks, which i was happy to accept.
things kind of go hazy after that, and i remember little. i do remember saying something... i dont know what, but it must have been pretty offensive because suddenly everybody stopped talking and started to stare at me like they were going to stake me and burn me to death. it was amazing really.
my conservation instinct kicked in and i made a quick exit, only to find out it was really late and the ladys house i slept at was already closed. she was either deaf, or didnt care, cause no matter how much i pounded her door or rang her doorbell she never opened. so i decided it would be natural to try and climb to my window. after all, how hard that could be...? very hard, especially when youre drunk. after a couple of minutes of feeble attemps, i was spotted by people exiting the pub... when they saw me in my poor attempts at climbing, they hastily decided i was a thief.
to make it short, i was severely beaten up after a short chase through the streets of that little town, and thrown in the only cell in the police headquarters. the next day the put me on a train with half of the population looking at me in the station like i was some sort of vicious criminal, and warned never to step on eupen again.