The mole in Deventer

Jan's company had a team event last weekend in The Netherlands and we were playing "The Mole". I used to be a huge fan of this Belgian internationally succesfully tv show. If I would already have been blogging in the beginning of this century you bet this blog would have been full of theories, conspiracies, comments and discussions on the contestants of the series. Can there be any interesting tv-program: it's a quiz, it's action, it's logic, it's emotional intelligence, it's different cultures and landscapes, ... And it was one of the first "reality shows" however with a concious choice that the viewers could not vote persons off, ...falling off is purely based on knowledge facts gathered by the contestants, so no popularity show.

Anyway, if you've never seen The Mole, I pity you ;)

And now we got to play it ourselves. The weeks beforehand we had to fill in some "intake questions" about ourselves. We also could indicate whether we'd like to be the Mole or not (although a yes would imply several preperation meetings in The Netherlands....it seemed quite obvious to me that the Belgians would not be the Mole , although apparently that was not so clear to others).

And so we arrived...some colleagues, some partners, some Dutch, some Belgians, some female and some male and we got divided in 4 equal groups.

The assignments were not so spectacular obviously as on tv...it has to work for any group of course. But it was fun playing games and observing the others and making guesses. And guess what: I got the Mole. But so did someone else and he answered more questions correctly so I didn't win. But I'm sure happy that I tagged the right name from the start....As soon as you start observing someone you always see suspicious things so I've been lucky. Gosh, I was even tagged by 2 persons as the mole while I thought I was playing too eagerly to succeed. But once the paranoia has set, even that must be suspicious :p.

It sure was fun and if I ever need to organize an groups event in Belgium I'm sure look up if something similar is available in Belgium.

We stayed overnight in Deventer nearby and explored this lovely historic trading city the next morning. Most streets were still deserted on the Sunday morning which made it almost more enjoyable to stroll through the cobblestone streets and admire the typical static trade houses and the big squares lined up with terrasses.



When entering the city we had parked right at the edge at the first free parking space we found. When we started walking we noticed an older lady having a social chat to an old man just on the sidewalk: she was wearing a leather bikini and high leather booths and was standing in one of the many neighbouring door/windows, each of them with one bar stool in them, some of them occupied but most of them empty on the Sunday morning. Prostitution is quite visible in Belgium too but in the Netherlands it's always that little bit more right up your nose :p. And so you end up parking at 2 meters from the widespread legs of some (ugly) hooker. Anyway, I thought it was funny. All at all the "red light" district in Deventer was pretty sad and unimpressive.