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ok, just a quick thing before i head to bed…

Are you all acquainted with the popular childrens book ‘Everybody Poops’???

I am assuming it is used by parents to help children potty train. Anyhow, when I get back, I think I’m going to write a book for travellers to Europe entitled

‘Everybody Smokes’.

Or, maybe even

‘Everybody Smokes here. Lots. They really, really smoke here a lot.’

Or,

‘Philip Morris Must Be Really Glad for Europeans, Because They Sure Smoke A Lot’.

Yes. Those of you who’ve been here will smile and agree. Those of you who havent, they smoke here a lot.

One more interesting thing. I’ve been using my Eurail pass a fair bit, and have discovered an unexpected benefit that I may be able to use for hockey. It seems I am developing a keen sense of balance. Why, you ask?

Well, let’s just say that it’s not super easy taking a leak standing in a train toilet while the train is travelling nearly 300 kph. You have to be creative.

Anyhow, shawnna is glaring at me ’cause the computer is in her room and she wants to go to bed, so Merry Christmas folks!

Pictures! Come get your pictures!!!

Not a lot of time has been spent cropping these photos, we’re generally lucky that they’re all in the correct orientation…. Click on the image below to head to the set.

Hey Folks,

So its down to crunch time for the good old boys from VBC Guibertin. The last four regular season games are upon us and the standings in the second half of the top division are as follows:

1. Puurs 16 points (sponsored by Duvel beer, how can they go wrong.
Apparently when we go there for the last match of the tour, we get a nice gift set of two duvels and a glass, preferably to be imbibed after the game cuz as Popper will tell you, Duvel’s pack a wallop.)

2. Kapellen 10 points (but apparently their right side has just wrecked his ankle for the year so we’ll see what happens when we play them)

3. Halen 9 points (team features another Canadian, Nathan Bennett and the fattest setter in the league, probably has something to do with his trick of taking a full glass of Duvel, wrapping his lips around the outside of the rim of the glass and swallowing them in one go)

4. Eisden 8 points (team we have to beat next weekend, we’ve already done it once so far after xmas)

5. Guibertin 6 points (only team in the league featuring not one, not two, but three Canadian Studs. And we’re usually all on the court at the same time, save for when i get liberoed out.)

6. St. Vith 5 points (another team we have to beat)

My goal is to finish 3rd or 4th which keeps our club in the first division and gets me home before the end of march.

In other news, a couple weeks ago, i made a weekend trip over to the
homeland. Checked out the sights in Edinburgh and spent an enjoyable evening in a pub with a few locals that took me in and invited me to sit at their table. After a few whiskies, Tennant’s and McEwan’s, i was having a hell of a time understanding Daniel, Kirin, Angela and Fiona (first night in Scotland and I actually met a Fiona, go figure). The only thing i could really understand was them saying ‘Ah Mikey me boy!’ before they crammed another drink in my hand. Three hours and four drunk scots later, Kirin stumbled to the door, retched, gave Daniel a big brotherly hug and headed home with the girls. I was left with Daniel who decided we should go looking
for a more lively establishment. En route to a new bar, Daniel kept mumbling how what with him being a small scale narcotics dealer, he could get me anything i wanted and not to worry about paying for any more drinks that evening. I declined the drugs but followed him into a nice looking martini bar. He proceeded to order two shooters at 4 quid a shot. Then opened his wallet to find no cash. I ended up footing the bill, he got us kicked out for being too drunk (i was fine i swear) and then he proceeded to puke the four pound shot all over himself while still walking, pretending the while that everything was peachy. He seemed a little ticked as i left him at the bus stop after harassing the bouncer but i’d had enough.

So, after seeing the sights and enjoyably having my name said properlyi headed home sure that i a had a good story to tell Chad. I told him about my adventures with Daniel, the self admitted ‘Miserable Cunt’ (forgive the use of the word but i heard it about 100 times that night) only to have him tell me about the bar that he and Nathan stopped in on the way home from a nights
partying in Leuven. It was a small place with neon lights in the window that was open at 4 in the morning. The two unsuspecting canadian lads walked up to the door to find it locked and rang the buzzer for service. ‘Are you open?’ they asked of the lady who answered the door. Of course she said. They went in, ordered two beers, wondered why no one else was there and set to talking. Next thing, two scantily clad women came from the stairwell and
started being very friendly. When one of them whispered ‘Now i take you upstairs and fuck you!’ in Chad’s ear, they realized they were in a brothel.

So, Brothel by mistake or miserable cunt puking up 4 pound shots? Cam sided with the Brothel story.

Not much else to report, there’s been a few more Thursday night parties at the club. Cam has gotten naked again as well. He’s established quite a reputation for himself and has even been called CHippendale’s by the team’s management. Once again, I have pictures for those interested. That’s it for now, hope everyone is well.

Cheers,
Mike D

Hi People,

Well the euphoria of our first league match victory was short lived as over the past two weeks we played the number 2 and number 1 teams in Belgium respectively. A couple of Sundays ago, Roselare came to visit us complete with their Mexican stud Ivan Contreras, hot and fresh from the Norceca World Championship qualifier, Ralph Bergman, a German National team middle and Kid Texiera from brazil. First thing i noticed was that their hitting warmup was very impressive. Our assistant coach said before the match that i would be lucky to touch any balls that Bergman hit and that he would buy me a 50 cl
beer after the match if i stuffed him. It just so happened that i crashed him on the second point of the game (to quote jim clive, ‘even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometims’) and Chad went nuts and turned to the AC and made the drinking beer hand gesture. JF reluctantly paid up. I guess that fired the team up a bit because we managed to win the first set but then lost three straight. Pretty good for our little team.

Last Saturday, we traveled to Maaseik. Maaseik is the perennial belgian champion and play every year in Champions League against the best teams in Europe. Last year they made it to the top 8 and from what we saw on Saturday, they’re looking to do better this year. Let me put it this way, their team budget is roughly ten times ours, they have padded theater type chairs for their fans and a VIP bar adjoining the gym for after the matches complete with shirt and tie waiters. Their three middles are all at least 4 inches taller than me and will all be picking pieces of me out of their ass for the next week or so as i didn’t even get a finger on any of the balls
that they hit what with them all being way OT. On the bright side, i didn’t get blocked myself. It just goes to show that when you shut your eyes and swing hard, good things happen.

Yesterday there was a 24 hour relay bike race here in Louvain la Neuve. I liken it to Storm the Wall but with a massive all night party with about 50,000 people spread out throughout town all drinking beer and dancing to cheezy french tunes. You’d think that with that many people drinking that much beer there would have to be hundreds of porta potties but no, its piss at will more or less wherever you want.

I might have mentioned this in the last email, but the tbird house in Belgium now has three members with the addition of Cam ‘seeks’ Secret. Cam didn’t enjoy the first week of training, he was pretty sore and actually had bruised forearms from digging balls, its true, i have pics. Cam has really taken to the laid back lifestyle and oddly enough, doesn’t mind partaking in the beers of belgium with chad and i.

K i gotta run,
Mike D

ps we have a phone now 011 32 10 86 75 91, and always like hearing from people

Hey everybody! (a la Dr. Nic),

So i ran into this eccentric old belgian man the other night in Gembloux. I was with Chad, Aaron, Riley and Cam (who was in town trying out for the team). His name was Lulu, and “He likes to be drunky!” Riley was practicing with the team from Gembloux so the guys went along to watch but decided to have a few beers first at the pub. I went up to the bar to get the first round and this jovial belgian gentleman with a large nose and handlebar mustache noticed that i was stranger in these parts. He immediately decided to come drink with us and much to our delight pulled out a fat wad of cash
and proceeded to buy 5 rounds to our 1. He even complained when we insisted on getting one. He also enjoyed singing Frank Sinatra tunes at top volume, swearing loudly in french at the young barman who kept pestering him for the bill (something about “breaking my balls you young bastard”) and playing the Air Trumpet. Who plays Air Trumpet? His other favorite trick was to place his thumb halfway down the outside of a full glass of beer and then in one gulp take it down to his thumb. The second half of the beer is then polished
off in one gulp with an internal rotation of the glass in order to get good beer sud coverage around the entire glass. This he told us is the only way to drink beer properly. I learned alot about french swears and alternate names for male and female genitalia that night.

Well last sunday ( a week and a half ago) was our first league match and we headed out to Torhout near the coast in the Flemish part of Belgium. The gym wasn’t huge but there were probably close on 1000 people there and a full 10 piece brass band that belted out cheezy tv themes THE WHOLE MATCH. And i mean the whole match. All 3 sets of it, we got hammered pretty good. That night, on the way home, chad, riley and I got a good tour of the Brussels red light district as we dropped riley off at the bus station. Our libero had the car window open and his tongue hanging out down the whole strip. I gave new definition to the term window shopping.

On another note, our team made an acquisition before the trade deadline. Smashing Cam “Seeks” Secret has joined the team and arrived on saturday in time to wathc our first home match this past sunday. We played St. Vith and came away with a fairly easy 3-1 victory. The crowd was awesome and the team management was ecstatic. The match was a tonne of fun to play in and reminded me of the good old days at UBC. I’m pretty glad i came over. Needless to say, a bunch of beer was had that night. Not much else to say right now. Cheers folks and happy thanksgiving!

Mike D

Ok, a quick run down of what has happened so far (and the reason for no posts):

34 hours Vacnouver –> Amsterdam.

Amsterdam –> Hasslet Belgium.

Water polo tournament in Belgium.

Belgium –> Northern France (Vimy ridge).

France –> England

London for three days. That city if full fucking on.

Dublin

Dublin –> Belfast –> Dublin

Dublin –> London –> Barcelona

Barcelona –> Nice

Nice –> Monaco –> Nice

Nice –> Zurich (tomorrow)

Water polo tournament in Zurich (Saturday)

So it has been a little crazy. I had always thought that I would hang out in a country for a bit and really “get into” the culture. Not the case.
So heading out for one last beer in Nice after a long hard day in Monaco. Man, Monaco is like some one took swank, put it on steroids and then sculpted a country out of it. I have a feeling that any homeless people that should some how manage to breach the gates of Monaco end up in someone’s fish tank feeding the pet squid.

Oh, and Belgium, by far, is still the best place for coffee. Nice came close, helped along by a one pound pastery that was chock full of chocolate and butter. But the Belgians have the whole presentation thing down. And DAM good coffee. The caffeine monkey would be very happy here. Broke as shit, but very happy. Then again, the monkey would probably fucking hate the French.

Oh, and OD, congrats on the car.

Ciao
Wolf

Hey folks,

Its been a busy week here, its amazing how much time it takes to sample all of the quality BEvERages that Belgium has to offer. After the first month ofprofessional beer tasting (that’s what I came here for right?) our official top five list is as follows:

5. Duvel (one of the teams in our division is actually sponsored by this brewery and not surprisingly, a number of them look like it if you know what I mean)
4. Bush (despite the amusing name, at 10.5% this beer isn’t for pussy’s hee hee hee)
3. Zulte (a nice rich nutty beer that you couldn’t see through in bright daylight)
2. Leffe Brun (also rich and nutty)
1. Hoegaarden (don’t know why I came all the way over here to get this one when its available at all the Frog and Firkin type restaurants in Vancouver.
I guess it’s the fact that its about 2 bucks a glass compared to 5 at home.
I inquired about drinking it with a slice of lemon like we do back home and got a bunch of blank stares and one guy even bared his teeth at me so the lemon is out for now.)

On a less important note, some of the guys from our club took some of the younger kids from the club to the Memorial Van Damme (no Jean-Claude aka The Mussels from Brussels isn’t dead, unfortunately, its named after someone else) one of the six track meets in the Golden League. There were 50,000 rabid track fans there and the highlight of the night was when Maria Mutola of Mozambique won the 800 m meaning that she won her event at all 6 Golden League meets and won 1,000,000 dollars.

Yesterday, we played our first Belgian Cup match against a team from the second division. They have this rule here that when you play a cup game against a team from a lower division, you start down 3-0 in the games to 25 and down 1-0 if it goes to the fifth set. Well, we were a bit tight and anxious the first two sets and lost them but then settled in to win the next three pretty handily in front of a rabid crowd of 100 people in Zulte (same place as the beer listed in 3 above). So now we move on to the round of 16 against another first div team St. Vith sometime in October. That’s it for now.

Cheers,
Mike D

Ok, if any one needed to check out London it would be you. This place
has 24601 written all over it.

First, you have a few pints, get nice a happy, then hit the tube. Go
surf the tube for a bit then hope off. Hope off where? It doesn’t really
matter. Where you pop up will be interesting. Then you walk for two
hours and get some candies. Then back on the tube. Maybe even towards
where you started. This place is an absolute transit/walkers paradise.
And distractions!!! I didn’t get to one place that I had intented to go
today. It was like I had ADD (oooohh, what’s that?). I just kept walking
around bumping into things. I even managed to bump into Buckingham
Palace by accident.

This place rocks ass. I am sure it would suck to live here. But
visiting is fun. Total Chaos.