It's time again for your weekly dose of information about Belgium. Life in East-Belgium has settle back to normal again. Right now there are no more traditions - neither alcohol related nor other. The next biggest celebrations will be Easter.

Most college and university students, however, will say that the next biggest event is the remembrance day of St. Tore (Saint Bull) which is the patron saint of the students in Liege - where I'm studying as well. Those celebrations will be held in mid-March. Students take over the whole city. Where ever you look, you'll see young people in white coats (or what is left of it). It's unbelievable how much beer can be consumed in just two days and how many students won't be able to attend lessons for the week to come.

I won't talk about this subject any further. However I wanted to keep up another tradition: In all of my past columns, I mentionned how important beer is for the Belgian social life, so I had to mention it in this column as well.

With all that unhealthy eating and drinking going on in Belgium, people also need a past time which brings them back on their feet. Is there anything that is better than doing some kind of sport to cure a hangover?

What ever discipline you choose, you'll be able to practice your favourite sport in Belgium. On the international scene, Belgium is only known in a few sports. But where it is know, it really excels. Belgium is very strong in motorsports, swimming, table tennis, judo, billiard and cycling and sometimes soccer.

Belgium used to have its own Formula One pilots Thierry Boutsen and Jacky Ickx are certainly the most well known drivers. Boutsen even won one the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide if I remember correctly. While Adelaide used to be the most fun Grand Prix in the world, the most beautiful race track is in Belgium: Spa-Francochamps. It's only about 25 Km from where I live. You could compare it to Mt. Panorama near Baththurst only with lots of forests. The race track at Francochamps is right in the forest which makes it very nice and shady. The bad part is that there is also a lot of rain. Ususally when the Formula One Grand Prix is being held, rain is just a short distance away. This makes the race even more exciting.

Among the top 10 in the table tennis championship, there is also a Belgian: Jean-Michel Saive. He's been playing against most of the Chinese champions and also held the world championship a few times. Eddy Merckx, also a Belgian is one of the most successful cyclists in history.

Most primary and secondary schools have compulsory sports lessons where students learn all different kind of sports. In their spare time, students have a lot of opportunities to join one of the many clubs. Almost each village or town has its own soccer club. Soccer is the biggest sport in Europe and Belgium makes no exception. There are several soccer leagues divided by national and provincial leagues. The leading club of the first league only moved up from second to first league this year. It's been the first time that a newcomer has dominated the league in such a way. This has caused quite a stir. Soccer differs from Rugby League or AFL in that the players don't try to hurt each other and they mostly use their feet to move the ball - which is round - across the oval which is rectangular.

The next European Soccer Championship will be hosted in Belgium and The Netherlands. It is the first time that two countries host this event in the same year. However as these countries are so small, it doesn't take very long to get from one soccer stadium to another.

If you don't like to play any sport yourself, then there are lots of TV channels that offer sports coverage. At home we have a total of 24 different TV stations from all over Europe, mostly French, German, Belgian and Dutch channels. Currently there is only one channel that I don't understand: the Italian Raiuno. We've even got one channel called Eurosport which is specialized in sports broadcasting. It's like Channel 9 when cricket is on: commercials all day long interrupted by a game once in a while.

We also get lots of Australian culture on TV. Broadcasting stations from Germany, Belgium and France all carry TV shows like Neighbours, Paradise Beach, Home and Away, Flying Doctors, Heartbreak High... Some people might want to argue that these TV shows are Australian culture.

I was basically brought up on Neighbours and was quite surprised when I watched it for the first time in Australia: Europe is about 3 seasons behind. So if you've missed any episode, you just have to come to Europe three years later to see it.

Although we have so many channels, there's hardly anything interesting on TV. Some parts of Belgium have even more channels than we do with even less interesting shows. By installing a satelitte dish, you can get another 20-30 channels. Around 90% of Belgium has cable TV. In East-Belgium an even higher percentage of the households has cable TV.

If there's nothing on TV, you can still turn your radio on. There are lots of local radio stations in Belgium as well as some a couple of national and foreign stations. And there is at least one car driving around in Belgium which is advertising SAFM - an South Australian radio station. You guessed right, it's my car and my favourite Aussie radio station which I haven't listened to for 3 years now. Belgium is one of the countries where Techno music and house originated. "Technotronic" was the first group to have a huge success world wide with an early song called "Pump up the jam". Other groups followed, "2 Unlimited" is also a well known name in the techno scene who has also some roots in Belgium. Other bands include "Vaya Con Dios", "The Radios", "dEUS" and "Soul Sisters". Songs that are currently in the charts in Europe take 3 to 6 months to go "Down Under".

As always, if you have any comments, questions or corrections to make, don't hesitate to contact me. You can reach me on the Internet at joe@buff.euregio.net or by fax +32 80 642 285. Or you have to wait until July or August when I'll be back to beautiful Australia.

That's all folks!

Joe Buff.