10 days in- Embrace the Belgian way

10 days in: Embrace the culture

I’ve now been in the small Belgian town of Westmeerbeek for 10 days now.  Its fair to say I’ve already had ups and downs but I’m learning how to fit in better by going about life more like a Belgian.  Pretty much all week I’ve had a niggling cold which forced me off the bike for a couple of days, however, my team manager Guido took me to a local bike shop called  ‘Van Eyck’ to stop me feeling sorry for myself.  This was an absolute Aladdin’s cave of a bike shop stacked with everything from ‘Pinarello’ to ‘Museeuw’ all lined up and ready to test.  The pick of the bikes was the cyclo cross bike of former world champion Neils Albert, hung up to be admired and photo’d by me and the many other middle aged men that keep Belgians bike shops going!  I could have spent several hours in the shop quite happily. 

I rounded the day off with a true Belgian supper, Frites and battered sausage from the local frituur, a chip shop to us Brits.  Asking for Ketchup in there got me a funny glance from the owner, it seems it is completely true that Belgians always have mayonnaise on their chips!  Saturday was team presentation day.  I set off in the morning for a quick 3 hour spin with my two English housemates.  That was about as good as the day got unfortunately, 40 minutes into the morning ride I managed to crash on a small cobbled section, crashing is all part of bike racing but of all the days to decorate myself with some new scars…team presentation day! Having sourced some bandages from my team mate Adam, I patched myself up and headed to Tremilo for our team presentation.  We were all called backstage and were presented with a smart suitcase.  This was stuffed full of new kit.  I only just managed to get changed on time and burst out of a backstage curtain onto the stage and nestled myself between a couple of big lads on the back row in order to hide my bandages and pasty legs.  The presentation itself was amazingly high profile, 300 or so people packed into a local drama hall to watch both the junior and under 23/elite team be presented.  A local celebrity comedian made a speech and the television cameras covered the event for a local channel.   You can just see my head 3rd in from the left on the backrow! .  We toasted success for the year ahead with a ‘pintjeur’, basically a half pint of Belgium’s famous local beer. Many handshakes and, to be honest a couple more ‘pintjeur’’ later and we finally got back home.  I hope your all enjoying the blog, if there’s anything about Belgian life you want me to cover, just post in the guestbook.