ScubaBrucie

Nemo 33, for those that don’t know, is a unique divesite in Brussels, Belgium. Think of it as an overgrown swimming pool, or as an inland divesite that has been roofed over.

The name comes from it being 33 metres (over 100 feet) deep and from the water temperature being kept at 33C. Their website is: http://www.nemo33.com/ . Nemo is filled with fresh water from a spring that is heated using solar panels on the roof, it is not chlorinated like a swimming pool.

It is very easy to get to Nemo, there are trains to Brussels from the UK as well as mainland Europe. The airport is connected to the train system and their are low cost flights there. Brussels has an extensive and efficient tram system which will take you to the door of Nemo.

When you get there you pay your 20 Euros and go into a bar restaurant, which has windows into the pool so you can see the diving, and wait your turn. Everything is timed like clockwork. You are allowed into the changing room at ten to the hour. You are allowed to snorkel for ten minutes starting on the hour. You then kit up and dive and have to be out on the next hour, so you get about a 40 minute dive.

We went on Sunday and there were just 4 of us in our hours use of the pool. The whole place is immaculately clean and you can see the full 33 metres easily through the crystal clear water. All we took with us were our masks and dive skins. They won’t let you take much else because they are so concerned about cleanliness, we had to reassure them that our skins had been through the washing machine since they were last dived. Nemo provide all your equipment. Regulators, BCDs, shortie wetsuits and fins. All in very good condition. You do not need weights, in the fresh water and the steel cylinder is enough to take you down. A computer would be good to take with you, this is one pool you could easily get bent in, though we just used a dive watch.

For the dive we obviously did the deep bit first. This was strange in that right from the surface you can see your own big shadow on the bottom, 33 metres below, and as you descend it gets smaller and smaller. There is no artificial lighting in the pool so you really do get the sensation of depth. On the ascent there are some “caves” to explore. You can surface in a couple of air spaces, one has been painted to look like the inside of a cave and the other to look like the inside of a submarine!

The changing areas is clean with cold showers and lockers that take 50C pieces. The restaurant seemed popular with people after their dives.

There is plenty of other stuff to do in Brussels. It is where NATO and the EU are based. Belgian chocolate and beer are rated among the best in the world and they are seafood mad, especially for mussels which they cook in many different ways. The Grand Place in the centre of Brussels is one of the finest squares in Europe and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts have world class collections of paintings.

So is Nemo worth doing? The answer has to be yes because it is such a unique dive. Would I do it again? The answer here also is yes, but only a) in the middle of winter to keep current or b) if I happen to be in Brussels anyway. It would be a brilliant training venue but for leisure diving there is not too much to see and do in the pool so I wouldn’t want to dive it a lot just for pleasure.