We had been talking about it for a long time...and finally we set a date to do a whole weekend of exploring with one the best belgian explorers: suspicious minds! It got even better when we heard Telefunker & stef would also be joining us.
A great big thanks to susipicious for finding some awesome places for us all to explore that weekend.
Here we go....chateau HH. This place might be squatted, there might be people living here, probably junks.
The main gate is closed and we walk alongside the stone wall surrounding the property and find an easy spot to get over it, but also see a light burning inside.
We talk it over and decide to first knock on the door. We're talking entering someone's home (legal or illegal) and that's something different. We knock, but there's no answer, we shout...no answer. We walk around the house and try the other side, same here, nothing.
Every possible entrance is locked, except for one little window. There's some doubt if we should do this... Suspicious is the first to go in.
The room is filled with trash and it smells, this is not beautiful at all and clearly used by junkies.
The doors are locked, but there's a small staircase going up. We go up to the 3rd and highest floor to work our way down from there.
We enter a beautiful space and it's clean. This place may hold some serious beautiful spots.
Then a door is violently opened and a guy stands in front of us with a hammer in his hand : "how the hell did you get in?"
"Through a window at the back", we answer. The guy shouts that's impossible because he locked everything. We tell him we actually did and are not talking bullshit. He doesn't believe us and says something like "wait here i'm coming down with you guys and you show me". He walks back through the door he came out and we decide not to wait for this guy, but to go out and leave.
We're outside in the garden when the guy catches up with us. He lost the hammer and is fairly calm now, telling us he wants to talk to us and he wants us to show how and were we came in. He puts out his hand and introduces himself, so do we and we start talking.
The guy turned out to be awesome! He's a squatter too, but he decided to claim the house because the junkies were trashing the place. He kicked 'em all out and still does so almost every night.
He cleaned up the place and already got the electricity working again and show us he has a hard time with the plumming (the pipes exploded due to frost in the winter). He shows the whole house.
Thanks again for that and respect for trying to get this house back in its glory.
when: january 2009
with: suspicious minds, mrtnski, telefunker & stef.
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Ben benieuwd wat jullie er vinden....