Martin was kind enough to delay our departure for Zuid Limburg by a day while we waited to see if Jeremy would come back to the hotel. When he didn't my pride took over and I did not want to wait for him either the next day and we took the still new smelling Mercedes out of the garage and started south to Maastricht and Valkenberg where Van der Meer, the owner of the club and an old friend of Martin's, lived.
We drove from Amsterdam to the Hotel Castle Neerekanne on the Maas River precisely on the border between Belgium and The Netherlands. It was the most interesting, tranquil and beautiful hotel that I had ever stayed at. Martin joked that, even though we had adjoining rooms, I would be sleeping in Belgium tonight and he would be sleeping in The Netherlands. He then told me about a place where he once peed on Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany all at once called Dreilandpunkt not far from where we were.
Maastricht was nothing like Amsterdam. It was a beautiful and relaxed city with no canals and no graffiti but plenty of tulips. Valkenberg was even nicer. It was in the beginning of the Ardennes in an area of great natural and pastoral beauty. Van der Meer was a delightful host and his villa was actually a converted small castle.
That night we had a wonderful meal prepared by his chef in the large baroque dining room and afterwards we went into a beautiful library filled with leather bound books and sat in front of a roaring fire while we drank port and nibbled on chocolate from a small chocolate factory from somewhere called Gulpen. The chocolate was much much better than anything Godiva had ever produced.
Van der Meer looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "I hear that you had quite a bit of fun in Amsterdam."
I blushed and then laughed and said, "I enjoyed your club the most of all."
Van der Meer looked at me speculatively and said, "Would you like to see my businesses in Belgium?"
"I thought you were Dutch?" I asked.
"I am, but for tax reasons I have two clubs, of a different sort, in, or I should say just outside of Lanaken, Belgium."
"And what kind of clubs of a different sort would those be?" I asked.
"I own two brothels, one is for twenty to thirty year olds and the second is for thirty to forty year olds." he said.
"You mean that you only allow men of a certain age to patronize the two?" I asked.
"No, No," he answered laughingly, "the women in each brothel must either be between twenty and thirty or thirty and forty. I will not employ any girls younger than 20, although 18 year olds may legally work in brothels, because I think a girl should be at least 20 before she decides to enter the life and take money for sex. She needs to give it away for a few years first in order to know herself and men."
"Are you a good pimp?" I said with a bit of a cheeky smirk.
"I am not a pimp. I am one of the best and most progressive employers in the area. I will not employ anyone beyond 40 even though many women are at their most beautiful and attractive beyond that age because by the time a woman in the business is 40 she should be a millionaire and able to retire and pursue other interests. I provide a child care facility for my single parents and for my married employees. Many of the women in the area with a child and no husband want to work for me because I provide safe employment for them and excellent pre-school for their children. And my clients are among the most successful men in Limburg and many of my employees have met their husbands in my brothels." Van der Meer answered in a very serious manner.
"I'm sorry, I did not mean to insult you, I know very little about the brothels or prostitutes other than the sad stereotypes." I said.
"Would you like to see my brothels and talk to some of my employees?" He asked.
"Yes, yes I would. That would be very interesting to me and I would be afraid to ever go near one of those places otherwise from what I have heard and been told." I said.
"A lot of what you have heard and been told is true also. Tomorrow I will first take you to a friend's brothel that I often supply girls too when they do not meet my standards. I will not tolerate tattoos, piercings, girls who use drugs, smoke or even drink too much too often. I only employ the kind of women that the kind of client I want to attract would consider marrying, and if fact many of them do." He said with some degree of smugness.
The next day we started out by touring his friend's brothel and I found the experience very distasteful. The girls were attractive in a hard sort of way, but all of them either had a tattoo or metal hanging from their noses, navels, lips, or brows. The place reeked of cigarettes. The few customers I saw did not seem very successful, clean or well-mannered. When we left I asked Van der Meer how much the girls made an hour.
"They are all basically self-employed," he said, "and they typically charge 50 euros upfront and whatever they can make in ‘tips' above that. I do not allow tips in either of my houses and my girls charge two hundred euros an hour. Each girl has a website with photographs a brief biography and a list of what they will and will not do during that hour."
"How do you know that your girls don't take tips?" I asked.
"Each room has a microphone in it for security as well as two different panic buttons that the girls can push at any time that will bring Bruno or Jan up from the cellar. But by having the right kind of girls I get the right kind of clients and in all the years that I have been open I think that they have only had to come upstairs once at one house and never at the other. As far as the clients know there are no men on the premises of either houses and it is important for the women to feel and be in control at all times as much as possible." He answered.
