In Europe its always the small remote villages that seem to have seedy secrets. You know the ones where everyone’s related to each other and if your car was to break down your legs would appear in the butchers window the next morning. I’ve seen the movies so i know this to be true.
It was 4am and due to heavy snowfall our visibility was limited to a few meters. This wasn’t helped by the wipers freezing to the windows three minutes after we previously unstuck them. Try as we might to persevere it was getting stupid so we pulled up at a nearby service stations, polish truckers our only companions. The weather eventually eased up and we were faced with two choices. We could either continue off into the night at a slow and steady pace, sleeping at our next location. Or we could stay at the hillbilly truck stop, risk getting face raped by the friendly locals and then not be able to leave due to road closures. Decisions decisions.
Needless to say we chose to drive on, the lonely road devoid of houses, shops even farms. There was absolutely nothing, we were in the middle of nowhere. Fifteen minutes passed without seeing a thing then suddenly in the distance we saw a faint red glow. The glow grew brighter and brighter until we passed a small house with a neon outlined window. A small stool was placed in the middle and a single van parked to the side of the house. We joked that it looked like something you would find at the red light districts in Amsterdam.
We continued on, two minutes later another red house this time with a figure in the window. We looked at each other, the same expression on our faces. Surely not, what would a hooker be doing way out here it must be a mannequin. We drove for another ten minutes and found nothing, maybe that was it?
Then bang we hit it, the hooker capital of Belgium. A small village with no more then thirty buildings, hookers pole dancing in the windows beckoning in lost travelers. Worn and lined looking men in trench coats, eyeballing the cars that drove by and bars you’d half expect to see a man being thrown out of the window at any minute. This was something out of the wild west. All around, seedy seduction was the name of the game and then half a mile later it was gone, the empty road returning once more. We vowed never to speak of what we saw, and to pass it off as a result of sleep deprivation.
Anyway, the power station. It was big, it was clean, there were giant dogs walking on two legs patrolling with machine guns. You know the drill.
