WATERLOO MY HOME TOWN

more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

Letter "W"

As you probably know I live in Belgium, in Waterloo which has made history, because Napoleon has lost his battle against Wellington and the most important European countries and had been exilated after that.

Many people ignore this fact and often relate Waterloo rather to the Abba song "Waterloo" with which they won the European song contest "Eurovision" in 1974.

My my, at waterloo napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself
Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war ......

The song doesn't describes the battle but it is a fact that ever since this song became so famous, it was very good for Waterloo City ! With the song came the tourists ! If 35 years ago there were only very few tourists visiting Waterloo and it's famous Lion, now there are thousands coming from all over the world and especially when there is the reconstitution of the Waterloo battle. (here on my travel blog).

When I was in London, people often thought that I talked about the Waterloo Station and that I would live nearby and they didn't know that this station had been named Waterloo in honor of the Duke of Wellington who had won the battle against Napoleon there.

I will not give a history lesson here or copy tourist informations, you can read everything in Wikipedia about Waterloo or just google ! you will be surprised how many links you will find.

Waterloo had been a little cosy town almost a village 37 years ago when we bought our property. Now it is very demanded as a "posh" area to live. It is not far from Brussels only about 15 km connected with a motorway. Therefore you could be in Brussels in 15 min, but this is only theory, usually it takes you more than 1 h on working days and during office hours.

A lot of Scandinavians, English and Americans moved to Waterloo, because English speaking schools like the St. Johns International school and the Scandinavian school, are in Waterloo. Waterloo residents take it easy, learn English and follow the decoration uses for all American holidays. Now you can find easter bunnies and father Christmas in all shops and all the food specialities of all the other countries. Even the famous English Christmas pudding which was almost impossible to get !

Waterloo is a very long stretched city along the main street and is not very large. Along the streets you have many boutiques and shops. Shopping malls are outside the city. During spring time, Japanese cherry trees are blooming and many streets are full of these trees.

We have a lot of parcs and woods around Waterloo and although the population has doubled and many new houses built there is still a lot of green space.

Waterloo is also rather calm concerning criminality. Of course there are lots of burgleries because of the huge villas and rich people living here, but street attacks are very seldom. Haven't even heard of any.

Our farmer who lives near our house meantime became a millionair with all these demands of properties. In 1973, one square meter (10.7) costed 15 € ( today you have to pay up to 200 € (279 $) !

The house were Wellington lived during the battle is in the center of Waterloo just in front of the church and is a Museum today. Old Waterloo residents when they were kids, used to play in Wellington's bed when it was still an empty house. Wellingtons bed is very small, today a 10 year old child would fit in it.

When it rains (which it does very often) you can walk in the small shopping galeries, full of quite expensive boutiques and shops.

From far you can already see the Lion of Waterloo. It was built on the bones of the fallen soldiers and women carried earth to cover them and build the hill. I don't know if that is true, but still it's a thrilling story. The Lion turns his face to England and his bottom to France because they lost !

IN CONCERT WITH ABBA - Maxine

Last Sunday I went to a concert of "Abba the Show" ! I didn't even know exactly what to expect, but I love the songs and so I went with my friend Ilona. The concert hall has 7000 seats and as we were turning around to find a parking space I thought, that all 7000 bottoms for the seats were turning too.

Finally I found a space between two garages and Ilona had to get out to direct me in so that I wouldn't block the garage owner if ever he wanted to go out at 8.30 in a cold and rainy night.

When we finally were seated, I looked around and it was crazy, the hall was full ! I had never expected that. Besides me was an elderly lady, at least she looked like one, but during the show I discovered that she behaved like a hysterical teenager fan, because she waved her arms in all directions and hit almost my glasses from my nose. I got her ellbow twice at my head, but I thought that it is part of the fun and finally it's rather nice that she fell back into her teens.

Indeed the show was great. There was the London Symphony Orchestra playing and the guitarist and trumpeter were still from the original group. Of course they got a terrible applause and the full audience went mad when they played a solo ! Especially my neighbour who stood up and jumped around like a kangaroo in love, although I have never seen one.

I took pictures, the quality is not that good, but still it's a nice souvenir. When they sang Waterloo, suddenly Belgian flags were waved and there the audience really went beserk ! I stood up too and hold my camera high up to film the whole thing, and was quiet happy with the result. The only trouble is I can't show the video to you, because it landed (for an unknown reason) in my recycle bin, which I thoroughly had deleted yesterday. My video is gone of course. Fortunately I found an even better one on YouTube which I add here just to give you an idea of the perfect performance of these two women. They really look and sing like the original Abbas. !







The gentleman with the white hairs is the trumpeter of the orginal Abba Group.

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Please go to The Teach to find more "Maxine on Saturday"