Day 5: We are not alone

We were happy to sit down for dinner with Henk. Day 3 was all go go go and we only had brief chats while exploring and driving from one site to the next with the aid of his walkie talkies. He expressed how impressed he was with Matt’s driving skills. He was pleasantly surprised by how well Matt was able to handle a manual transmission car. We also had a chance to ask him some general touristy questions about Belgium. Here’s a sample of the conversation.

Cess: So what is Belgium famous for besides beer and chocolates?

Henk: Mussels!

Matt: Muscles? Jean Claude Van Damme?

Henk: No no, mussels, like oysters. If you like mussels, you should eat some.

Cess: Is Belgium famous for anything else?

Henk: Pedophiles.

Cess: I can’t bring those home to Canada!

Yes, we certainly had a lively conversation!

We spent the previous evening in our luxury hotel packing everything up so that we could leave bright and early in the morning. We woke up, got dressed, packed the car, and took advantage of the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Our goal was to be on the road by 7:30am. Bart and Matt had been contacted by a local urban explorer during our trip preparation last month who showed interest in accompanying us with a few friends to some of their local sites. We agreed to meet them shortly after 8am at a site.

Our first site was a former veterinary school. We could see that it was being repurposed along with other buildings in the complex into loft style condos. The building was three stories tall. The majority of rooms stood empty save for a few pieces of furniture. A collection of specimens in formaldehyde filled jars still occupied the basement. Some previous urban explorers had moved some of these specimen jars to the upper floors to stage some macabre scenes. An auditorium still contained banks of seats but a large number of them had been piled up in the back of the room. Surprisingly not all the discarded textbooks were in Flemmish or French. A few were in English.

Our next destination was an abandoned school. It too was being repurposed but the progress was much more advanced compared to the veterinary school. The one outstanding feature of this school was a very long hallway with archways at periodic intervals. Corridors branched out from this hallway leading to subsidiary buildings.   

When we were done, we thanked the locals for spending some time with us and exchanged some information regarding sites we had visited and some other local sites that they had knowledge of. They also provided some touristy advice for my benefit: shopping! If we get a chance to take a break from urban exploration, maybe I’ll get to do some shopping. ;) Stay tuned!

Update on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 4:59PM by Cess

A classroom scene in the veterinary school:

A friendly discussion: