On the Belgian Second Life forum there is lately been a lot of commotion about the region ‘Vlaanderen’ (Flanders) and Belgian politics and politicians. The person behind all this is Jurgen Verstrepen, a member of the Flemish parliament and a former radio host. He has put down a huge villa with pool, dance club, radio studio, etc.

So what, you say? What’s all the fuzz about? The party he’s representing, the ‘Vlaams Belang’ has the name to be ‘leaning to the extreme right’ and a history - under their old name ‘Vlaams Blok’ - of being declared guilty of racism. So some Belgian Secondlifers are furious at the thought that with ‘Vlaanderen’ that mischievous party has found yet anther way to convert stupid but innocent souls. Other are disappointed at the fact that out of all political parties the Vlaams Belang is the first one to explore the possibilities of Second Life and yet other figure they should forbid first life politics in Second Life.

My opinion? The smart thing to do is to just ignore them. Don’t visit ‘Vlaanderen’ if you don’t like the idea behind it. Stop complaining. Do something constructive. Build something better. Start your own community. … . They are not even worth the L$ buying a nuke costs! ;)

But we all know that I’m not a girl who listens to her own good advice often, so curious about that giant evil place Vlaanderen is said to be, I figured I’d check it out myself. I went into my inventory, put on my pink camo clothes and TP’ed over.

It was rather disappointing that there wasn’t a single person there. Thus no way to verify if the ’say a wrong thing and you get banned from Vlaanderen’-story is correct and also nobody to see the though pink camo outfit. So I slipped into something more comfortable. ;)

Soon I found Jurgen’s desk. Curious about what file cases he’s working on as a representative or as a talk show host, I decided to take a look at his documents.
Strangely enough the file on the desk was totally empty and so were the desk’s drawers. No documents to be found.
Stupid me always thought parliamentarians are just ordinary people like us but surrounded by tons and tons and tons of documents. My mistake. :D

Disappointed that I didn’t discover anything yet, I walked along until my digital eyes noticed a sign saying ‘tentoonstelling’ (exhibition).
Hmmm. Art. Perfectly lined up and beautiful looking prims? Hawt photoshop stuff?
Nah, forget about that: a lot of pictures with Jurgen’s head on it and some text. Interesting? No! Megalomania? Yes! Kings ordering their portrait to be painted, wasn’t that done mostly during the middle ages?

Things started to get a bit more interesting when I went into his bedroom. ‘Sit’ is still the best picklock to be found in the whole of Second Life and ’sit’ made me end up in his bed.

Jurgen’s the bed: yet another disappointment. No Jurgen there and no animations besides just ’sleep’. I guess he hasn’t explored all of Second Life’s possibilities yet.

// Mr. Morreau/avatar Qualibre Green pointed out to me that it’s actually his bed I found pretty boring, not Jurgen’s. I quote: ‘… is owned by qualibre Greene (sl) and the bed is he’s playtoy.’ Now, does anybody know which bed is Jurgen’s? :D //

Then what does he do in the bed?

Aha! Magazines! Pr0n? A guide to create the perfect Arian looking avatar?

Nope. Some Russian literature on Linux and the Spanish ‘Confort’ magazine. Well, at least he knows his languages.

At that moment LindenLab issued out a warning that they’d close the grid in 10 minutes. Aargh! Did they find out about my espionage activities? Are they trying to boycott me?

I’ll just take a quick peek in the club and then I’m out of here. In the bar I found lot’s and lot’s of booze, some good looking furniture, a dance ball with only one animation and a couple of nice sitting poses.

I do think Jurgen should reprimand his cleaning staff, as there was also a left over empty can of Heineken.
Dutch beer! Has he sold out? Is there already a secret contract between him and the Dutch governement that Flanders will become a Dutch vassal state?

Unluckily just when I wanted to take a closer look at the empty can of beer to search for finger prints, LindenLabs closed down the main grid and thus also closed down my top secret investigation.

The conclusion of this state of the art espionage work? ‘Vlaanderen’ is far from 3v1l and dangerous, but also far from interesting.

Some more (serious) information about ‘Vlaanderen’ can be found in Politiek op Second Life? (Dutch).

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