Check out all of my pictures for the day on flickr.
Look at the field from above via maps.google.com.
I had the opportunity to travel to Belgium for work in December 2007. I leapt at the opportunity to go and thought I’d try and see if there was a chance for me to see how paintball is in Europe. The first thing I did was find some discussion boards in Belgium/Netherlands to see what the scene was like.
I was in luck! There was a Dutch Forum that was having large gathering on the Sunday before the conference. I exchanged some emails with the team Captain and set up the day of play. The group was the scenario teams from the forums and they were planning on playing at a field called “Stafort”. I was excited about playing in Europe and meeting new people so I tried to patiently wait for the trip to finally start.
I flew out of Austin on Friday with a stop in Houston into Amsterdam. My flight took off at 1:00 p.m. and arrived in Amsterdam at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday. Of course I couldn’t sleep worth a damn on the plane and I know the best way to deal with jet lag is to push through the arrival day without napping. So, I met my boss and his wife at the airport in Amsterdam (he lives on the East coast). We took a cab into Amsterdam and dropped off our baggage. We toured Amsterdam all day. Saw our share of the usual Amsterdam sights and sounds and by 3:00 it was time for me to push on into Antwerp (where the conference was held). I took a two hour train into the Antwerpen Centraal station. Of course, it was dark, cold and raining on my trip in so I was a bit worried about the next day. My hotel was directly across the street from the station so I didn’t have to trek too far in the rain. I check in and fell into bed. Wow, a 28 hour day can take it out of you.
My alarm went off at 7:00 a.m.. Hey, it’s a paintball day so it wasn’t too hard to force myself out of bed. I transferred my packed gear into a makeshift gear bag and got ready to go. As I walked out of the hotel I was pleasantly surprised to see clear skies. I had prepared for the worst but was spared. In the clear morning, I was able to see the Antwerpn Centraal station. Wow, what a gorgeous old building. You just don’t see stuff like this in the States. It’s in an area in “transition” so there was alot of work going on but still some rough spots in the surrounding buildings. I went into the train station and boarded a train for a 20 minute ride to meet my European paintball buddies.
It was early Sunday morning so the train was almost deserted. I finally got to my station “Kapellen” and looked around. Two guys got out of a VW and waived. We introduced ourselves and got underway. My new hosts were Henk (”Murdock”) and Colin from Team DragonPack. We headed back to Henk’s place which was close to the field to pick up the rest of his gear and wait for the third fourth player to arrive. Martin (”Snow”) arrived within a few minutes so we jumped in the cars and headed off.
During the ride over, I asked about the state of paintball in Belgium. They told me it’s still a very fringe activity and most fields are only accessed through large group reservation with no walk on games. Entry was 30 Euros and paint was 50 Euros a case (~$65 US). It seems to me I’ve seen this before, looks like paintball in Belgium is about where the states were about 18 years ago but Henk and he’s guys are trying to get them up to speed.
We took a short drive to the field. It turns out that “Stafort” is a fort built by the Belgians before World War I. It was a large installation that was ringed by a moat and covered in earth for protection. I learned about it’s history a bit and it turns out that the German’s took the facility during both wars by attacking from the direction the guns WEREN’T facing… Doh! It was transfered from municipal to private hands a about 20 years ago. You walk into the heart of the fort for staging. We got our gear ready and loaded up paint and I took a moment to go check out the field.
It’s amazing large as a ref told me that the overall playing area is about 6 acres. It had a hill in the middle as the field slopes upwards from the moat. The entire outside surface area is playable fields. The fort is right at 100 years old so it now has trees growing on top of the hills. The top has also been trenched to create more playing areas. The top of the roofs have movable bunkers on top to increase the playability.
I went back into the staging area to get painted up and grab my gear. There were right at 80 people there so we were divided into teams. We played between 8 to 10 games. All based around scenarios ranging from the traditional two flag games to “protect the captain”. One thing I noticed from the players was the same tendency I see in scenario players in the US. They tend to engage at greater distances relying on spray-n-pray. I on the other hand like to engage up close and get into knife fights. I didn’t find it hard to get in close with them and fight out with gun skills. My teammates (Henk, Colin and Martin) were more than willing to kick up the tempo with me and take tons of ground while the other players tended to walk into position. This allowed us on several occasions to get into great positions.
We had wonderful clear weather all day until after the last game and it started to rain. Talk about good timing. 
We packed up our gear and headed out. I had a wonderful time playing at Stafort and enjoyed meeting Henk, Colin, Martin and the rest of the Dutch group.
It was great and I’d love the opportunity to do it again.
