VW Mania

Mechelen, Belgium
31st July - 1st August 2004
The endless talk of going to a European dub show and a road trip finally had been organized - with a phone call to P&O our trip was booked. Although our trip to a non-UK show had become reality it wasn’t going to be the way we had always imagined it. Rather than going in our own modified dubs we ended up going in Slugga’s company owned Ford Focus - Oh great!
The rush home from work couldn’t have been any more exciting; arriving back and meeting with Jelly, Mark (aircool) and Slugga at my place and after packing the car we were off – Four dub nuts Speeding towards the ferry. We ended up missing our destined ferry and so waited an hour for the next one loitering around the port terminal just endlessly being excited for how this weekend was going to pan out.
A short ride on the ferry and blat through France and we had arrived in Belgium passing the show ground we had spotted modified dubs parked on streets everywhere! We were all getting too excited being on foreign shores and on the verge of being with the modified Euro dub scene that we hadn’t experienced yet. After meeting the robotic petrol attendant Slugga had been going on about before, we had finally arrived. A relieved Lee had greeted us as we all duped him into thinking we had taken a wrong turn and ended up near Spain, the silly boy. Upon entering Lee’s pad I had been gob smacked at how gorgeously retro his place is, it was pure 60’s chic I fell in love with it!
After a good nights sleep on Lee’s retro furniture, we all woke up to amazing weather, all sun and no clouds. It hit us all: we were going to a major Euro dub show!
The excitement was too much as we drove to the show we started seeing loads of Euro dubs gathering on the roads. We had to park in the overflow car park, yet the cars there were of very good quality. Upon entering, the show area was moderate as it was half empty, walking through the trade area my eyes popped out as I could see so many things u could not buy in the UK. We had twigged that Saturday was a chill out day and all the gorgeous dubs were parked all in the campsite, which was AMAZING! Never have I seen this kind of atmosphere in a dub event: all the show cars parked up with tents everyone laughing and barbequing in the gorgeous summer weather; there was a real Euro feel to it. German rap played through megaphones, the Dutch participants drinking and sunbathing.
At one point Mark was duped into picking up a wallet only to find it was pulled away from his hands via a fishing line to the howl of some crazy Germans! To our amazement we had arrived to find a huge man-made lake with sand so much so it had looked like a miniature Mediterranean beach full of dubbers!!!!! Our jaws had dropped, at that point we knew for a fact that we were going to be here again next year for sure along with our bucket, spade and trunks.
After the show we were shown around Lee’s F3000 team workshop and its 2 stripped out competition cars. We had an awesome time from playing with the teams scooters to competing against each other on the tire changes; a funny video exists somewhere with Slugga’s effort of his so called tire change ending up with Lee running after the wheel which had been destined to crash into the teams carbon panels!
The day had ended knowing we were going to see a lot more and so we chilled with a relaxing Belgian meal in town and drank at Lee's local bar. Later, we ended up in some nightclub tucked away in suburbia resembling the one in the film ‘Blade’. After a fruitless hunt for a strip bar we ended up getting back and finishing our night with crap Belgian porn.
Sunday morning again we woke up to hot summer weather. Sunday was show & shine day with some truly gob-smacking show cars, cars u only see in print form – but these were right in front of us! We also bumped into very familiar faces namely rajmirch, Darren & Lucie, James from the golf magazine, Darren aka G-man and Bob along with the Westside bunch. To our dismay after letting them know of our disappointing search for a strip club we were told that the campsite had a Miss VW contest which ended up in a wet topless orgy – These crazy Europeans!!!
As the day died down it was time to head home after going through some heavy traffic and Slugga blasting the focus on the French roads. A short ride on the ferry, and it was back to Blighty. Just how good was that trip? Well we’ve agreed not to bother with International again… bring on Essen, Forum and Worthersee. I guarantee it’s definitely something you should do at least once! Is there more of a laugh than gunning it down continental roads with mates, going to a major Euro dub show and drinking in bars to silly hours??
Words by Pola, pictures by Pola & Jelly.