Belgian Barracks

Visited Soest in January 2004, the Belgian barracks have gone, one is part of NRW University, the other was a big pile of rubble. The quarters area has been sold off,some of it is in private hands the rest in the hands of rental agencies. Moehne school is now a German Primary School, only the Naafi is unused.

There were several Belgian/Belgique barracks in Soest. The one along B-1 on Hiddingser Weg, enroute to inner city, is as mentioned totally gone. An upscale housing project is slated for this site.

Across B-1 is now the NRW Techincal School.

The Kaserne on the south edge of town, just past the old Married Quarters is, as far as I know, still there but largely, if not totally, abandoned and overgrown.

There was another Kaserne as well but I was never familiar with it (the Canadian kids and Belgians never mixed except when the Canadian kids picked pub fights with poor Belgian soldiers who just never understood why some 17 or 18-year old had just hauled off and slugged him....).

Further to this, I recently received word and photos via a contact over on www.ruhrmemories.ca that the NAAFI (formerly the Canadian CLFEX, formerly CANEX formerly MLS) has now been completely demolished.

For those who lived in married quarters circa 1970s/80s you will remember Paddy's Bar aka The Milch Bar along Kanadischer Weg, kitty corner from NAAFI...also gone, as are all the shops along that strip.

As Steve_Graham notes above, the old Married Quarters are now in private hands or rented out. Judging from some fairly recent pics it looks as if the area has been well-maintained and doesn't look all that different from when these were PMQs under both the Canadians and the British. On one of my forays through various Soest-related sites I came across a real estate site that listed some of the apartments (flats) for...gosh, I forget now....900 Euros (I have a dreadful time with zeros and decimal points, but I am pretty certain it was 900 and not 9000), and those were the ones being sold, as I recall. Seems a reasonable price to me given some of the medieval half-timbered houses in the innercity of Soest are going for well over a 1000 Euros, 1700 Euros etc. and they have nowhere near the space or airiness the old quarter do.