Belgium…

Best place I’ve road cycled, really liked Mons and Brugges, Nice train and place to put bike easily

Lovely gallery and church in Mons

Don’t know anything else about the place but I like what I saw

Lived there for 3 years, it’s a canny place.

Great beer and food.
Some lovely towns and villages.
Good base for travelling to other parts of Europe.
Brussels has some good mountain biking that starts in the city so its easy to get a nice ride in.
There’s marked routes all over the place.
Its a great place to watch live music, loads of bands and good venues.

It rains a lot though.

I’d never been until this year. I think it’s great.
Cyclocross, incredible beer, bonkers language and Poirot! What’s not to like? 🙂

its got all the best road bike races and it goes nuts for cyclocross. whats not to like. oh and beer

Anyone mentioned dEUS yet?

Andy

Something you are never far from in Belgium:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

There’s much to like in Belgium, especially as a cyclist and mountain biker. Belgium is home to THE most rabid cyclocross hysteria you’ll ever see. A lot of people bash the mountain biking possibilities in the country, but there is some decent riding to be had, for sure. Big drop riders can look elsewhere, but true XC people will really enjoy the country. And any mediocre ride is immediately canceled out by a post ride beer, which as you know, is the absolute best beer in the world. Plus the overall vibe and personality of the country is great.

My first visit to Belgium as an adult (I think I passed through on holiday as a kid) involved:

1. Missing the ferry to Zeebrugge, and having to talk our way onto the Rotterdam sailing.

2. Cycle touring in November in Flanders. Icy, cold wind is an understatement.

3. Drinking A LOT of good beer.

4. Eating good food.

5. Hanging out with Belgian friends, including an ex-Quickstep dev squad rider

6. Going to the Gent Six for three evenings in a row and bouncing in the track centre with the Erik Zabel fans.

7. Going to the Hamme-Zogge Superprestige cross (by bike) and getting so snowed on it took us hours and hours to slip-slide our way back tyo Gent.

Subsequent visits have focussed on riding the RvV sportive and watching one of the world’s truly great sporting spectacles at the top of the Kapelmuur while pissed on more Belgian beer.

I like the flatness, the sense of desolation to the landscape, and the fact that on the day of the Ronde it’s like the Ashes, Wimbledon final and FA Cup final all on the same day.

Love the place.

As someone has already said, if a LOT more people in the world could get their heads around the concept of discretion and not shouting about how great they are, the world would probably be a MUCH happier place.

The OP wouldn’t like it if he ever went there though

Freddy Maertens: Fall From Grace by Freddy Maertens
Niet Van Horen Zeggen : Not From Hearsay

8 TdeF stage wins in 1976.

Don’t mistake your ignorance with Belgium’s pointlessness.

HTH

Belgium is great. As already mentioned, beer, bike races, Tintin, Plastic Bertrand. Lot of people wearing black, the whole place was decorated in the 80s and they have a nice ironic self-deprecating sense of humour.

To that I would add the highest percentage of cat ownership in Europe, and the art, both surrealist and primtive.

Rene Magritte alone justifies the entire country. And who can’t like Hieronymous Bosch ?

I have had some great holidays in Belguim, however they do say that New Zealand is the Belgium of the South Pacific, I prefer to think of Belgium as the New Zealand of Europe.

Freddy Maertens

Got to meet the great man first time I went to Belgium. Working, as he is interviewed in that film, in the RvV Centrum in Oudenaarde.

We then sat in the cafe drinking coffee after we’d been out in the snow to ride the Koppenberg, and he stood with us as we watched a cross race on the TV.

http://www.crazyaboutbelgium.co.uk/belgium/vlaeminck.htm

In fact, according to the border controls I am still in Belgium, under my New Zealand passport (entered on NZ left on British) and I quite like to keep it that way. Just have to remember not to flash the kiwi one in Europe again !

Van Damme

This one man is reason alone for a country to stand tall and proud in a gratuitious full moon pose.

<hijack>I had breakfast with Van Damme at the Atlanta Olympics</hijack>

iDave I used to like you, now you are my all time hero. Can I touch you perrrrleeease?

Magritte!

I sailed to Belgium for a long weekend this summer. I was expecting Ostend to be a dreary half deserted town with not much going on at night.

How TOTALLY wrong was I! The place is vibrant, full of good shops and restaurants and the nightlife was awesome. For some reason, it felt like a very busy ski resort when we were doing the circuit of bars and clubs one night. A real mix of styles and cultures. There was no bad behaviour, or people dressed like chavs, just unaffected normal people. Remarkable considering the bars stay open until at least 4am and everyone was hammered.

The place was very clean and it was evident that your average Ostend Belgian has a much better standard of living that your average Brit.

There are lots os high rise apartments overlook the huge promenade and beach, but it wasn’t ugly, we just don’t do large development on our coatline. The marina with it’s tallship and the church are very attractive places to hang out.

In all a very pleasant surprise. I wouldn’t hesitate to go back and am pretty amazed that this fantastic place has remained so obsure.

What made me laugh was a Belgian guy who we got chatting to after I commented on his fixed wheeler. It turned out he loves cycling in Devon and goes there every summer. He was raving about it which only underpins the notion that the grass is always greener. Mind you Devon is a lot nicer than most parts (apart from all the hills).

BEER, over 1000 breweries in such a small country
The Ardennes, good mountain biking, good food, beautiful little villages

“I lived in rat-infested houses with twenty other people, where there was no front door and I had one blanket and very little food, but there was a brotherhood there between us because we were all the same.”
– Peiper speaks about his early days
as an aspiring amateur in Belgium

http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/riders/2005/interviews/?id=allan_peiper05

Allan Peiper still lives in Belgium.

I did some work in a place called Mechelen a few years back. It was ok.
there were quite a few Belgians who’d have nowhere to live if the country ceased to exist. Oh and Opglabbeek. That was a big flat expanse of land with a funny name. (edit) oops, in Holland 🙂 !

Only one mention so far for the film In Bruges:

Excellent film.

I’ve been to Bruges, three times, twice to watch the start of the Tour of Flanders and once to roll down the start ramp myself for the 260km Sportive of the same name.

Nice place.

So speaking as someone who doesn’t drink or eat much chocolate, finds watching cycling tedious, especially cyclocross (surely the most ridiculous discipline), I think I’ll leave Belgium to all you culture vultures and iDave…

You haven’t actually been there though have you Loddrik? If only it was more like Merseyside…

Ah, loddrik, we can’t all help the limitations of your cultural proclivities.

No, ’tis a cross I’ll have to bear…

iDave, so by my declaring that Belgium would likely not be for me, I just wonder how you deduce that the only places I would warm to need be like Merseyside…?

aar eeh, calm down…

I’d leave the (attempts at) humour to others… 🙄

by the way, who were all the famous Dutch you know of?

Armand Van Helden
Dutch Schultz…..

I’ve always fancied a holiday in the Ardennes but haven’t been yet. Anyone know what the cycling is like round there?

Belgium is fantastic! Not only the Beer/Choc/Chips/ the people ore fantastic.

But the number one reason by almost a metric mile is the Chimay Moto Classique – As you can probably tell a classic motorcycle race held on public roads, and I raced it this year! A Motorcycle race, sponsored by a beer company!!!!! FFS, on entry you are given a 1L bottle to ‘enjoy’ at your leisure!!!!!

Turn up the sound on this – only if you like motorcycles flat out – Check out how close people are to the ‘track’

Best Country Ever…..

I lived in Holland for 4 years and have to say, Belgium was our regular escape route – particularly weekends in Antwerp. Better food, better beer, better service, not so uptight and generally a lot more fun loving and laid back bunch of folk to hang out with.

What he said. I also endured 4 years of Holland, made endurable by heading south as often as possible. Amazing the change just one km across the border.

Famous Dutch people – Van Gogh ? Surely you have heard of him ??

Stayed in Brugges once we hired some silly dutch bikes for a spin along the canals to Holland, look at some windmills. Stopped at a town about 50 metres into Holland, and every second shop rented adult films. And every second car in the square had Belgian number plates. Vive la difference…

I lived in Holland for 4 years and have to say, Belgium was our regular escape route – particularly weekends in Antwerp. Better food, better beer, better service, not so uptight and generally a lot more fun loving and laid back bunch of folk to hang out with.

What he said. I also endured 4 years of Holland, made endurable by heading south as often as possible. Amazing the change just one km across the border.

[rant and generalisation mode on] Oi! As a Dutch person I need to defend my country here! The differences between the Dutch and Flemish really are not that big. Yes, the people in the Netherlands are more big-mouthed, rude, arrogant and calvinist and as such Belgium is more akin to the English lifestyle I would say. This may be why some of you who lived in the Netherlands fled there. For example relatively few people over 30 regularly go to the pub in the Netherlands – life takes more place inside people’s houses. Also people in Belgium are more polite (and more backstabbing when you are not with them – just like in the UK :P) and the roads are in a poorer condition. However similarities are great as well: both Belgium and the Netherlands are pretty conservative and at the moment very schizophrenic. Equally, people in boht countries have a great sense of humour (the Dutch variant is darker and harsher and a bit coarse) and are (still) fairly equal with regards to the differences between poor and rich. [/rant and generalisation mode off]

Coming back to the opening post’s questions: the cycling culture, the Belgian Ardennes (nice mtb’ing), the beers, chips, mayonnaise, pub culture, friendly people, incredible historical cities, historical figures (Rubens, Jacques Brel, Eddy Wally), great music, the saxophone etc. It’s a great country and definitely worth multiple visits!

Van Gogh

Tell you another thing, loddrik above most of us here would get the pronunciation bang on 🙂

I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the waffles!! And the weekly outdoor parties on a Friday night.

The Magritte exhibition is also good, and I’m normally bored to tears by museums.

Spent most of my summer there this year getting thoroughly trashed on what is frankly the best variety of beer that I’ve ever had, and dancing on tables in Le Corbeau.

Delirium needs to open a branch in the UK, until then I’ll be relying on sites such as http://www.beerboxx.com/belgian-beers.html?limit=40 to get my fix.