Gigolo in Leuven (Louvain)

A city built around its university

Leuven has a hundred thousand inhabitants and a good part of them are students. That makes the city young, affordable and lively in the evening, midweek too. The Oude Markt has cafés on every side and is called the longest bar in Europe for good reason.

From Amsterdam it is about two hours’ drive. An evening is possible, but with a night’s stay added it runs more smoothly.

What we can do together in Leuven

The Town Hall, which looks as if someone worked lace in stone. The Grand Beguinage, a complete little quarter of brick that is utterly silent and sits on the World Heritage list. The University Library with its tower. And the Dyle, which partly runs beneath the city and surfaces again in a few places.

Outside the city lie the Hageland with its vineyards and the Meerdaal Forest for an hour’s walk.

Language

Dutch. English and German work too. I do not speak French.

Who I come here for

For women who have been married twenty years and somewhere along the way stopped bringing it up. For women who have just split up and wonder whether they still can. Widows, whose body is ready before the head is.

And in Leuven more often than elsewhere: academics. Researchers, doctors in training, lecturers who from Monday to Friday know exactly what they are doing and have no footing here at all. That is no contradiction. It is almost a rule.

Couples write to me here too. Everything that is possible is set out under my services.

Discretion in an academic city

Leuven is small and the university world is smaller still. The chance that you know someone is real here. I greet no one first, and if you speak to me I am whoever you say I am. We come up with that story beforehand.

Would you rather meet well outside Leuven? Brussels is half an hour away and no one there knows you.

Practical

Two hours’ drive. For Belgium that is short, and you see it back in the travel costs, which you hear as soon as a date comes into view. After that the amount does not move.

An evening that runs late costs nothing extra. A Saturday does not either, nor does New Year’s Day. Booking as a pair is the same price as alone.

If you are still on the fence

Writing commits you to nothing. Some of the women who email me do it months before anything goes in the calendar, purely to find out how it works. From some I never hear again. Fine.

I do not follow up. There is no “one more thing” three weeks later, and my calendar does not need to be full. If it is not right, it is not right.

What it is not

I am not an agency. No list of men to point one out from, no agent passing on your preferences, no file your name stays in. You write with me and you see me. That is the whole setup.

It is also not an exam. Nothing is expected of you in looks, experience or nerve. Your body does not have to look like anything, your age is no obstacle, and what you want you do not have to defend.

An evening or an overnight

Two hours is manageable, so in Leuven a single evening is fine. Still, most people end up choosing the night, and that has little to do with the drive.

The first hour goes to settling in for almost everyone. If there is half a night behind it, that hour does not count. If there is pressure behind it, it counts double.

When in doubt, pick the longer option. Going home earlier is always possible. Adding a few hours the moment it is just getting going is a good deal harder.

Where we meet

Usually a hotel. In Leuven there are plenty around the station and on the edge of the center, and for a longer stay an apartment often works better: your own key, no front desk to pass.

Home is an option too. The only thing that counts is whether you can sit there in peace. In a building with students above you, where you hear the stairs creak, you are usually better off in a hotel.

What women often say afterward

Rarely anything about the sex, though that comes up. What returns more often: that no one was watching a clock. That a question got asked and the answer stayed with them afterward too.

And almost always, usually laughing, that they took far too long to write.

How it starts

Send me a message. Where you are, and when you could. You usually have an answer within a day, and after that you set the pace.