Category: Travel

[Edit: I forgot to link to some photos.]

So we trained down from Mechelen to Brussels for one more night. We picked up our luggage that we had left at the Marriott when we swung through Brussels at the start of our trip.

We began our last day of beer tourism trying to get to 3 places we didn’t make it to on our first pass through Brussels (Mort Subite, t’ Spinnekopke and Bier Circus) as well as one place we did visit and we wanted to visit again, Delirium Cafe.

We started at Mort Subite. It is a place of faded glory. All the beer tourists, plus many non-beer tourists, have this place on their tours. It is worth going for the architecture and to see professional snotty wait staff at work. Though they were nice to us.

We had

• Mort Subite White on tap. Ok. A decent gueze
• Faro. VERY sweet. This is, basically, a gueze that has sugar added to cut the sourness. Many guezes are flavored with fruit or fruit juice. This is “straight”. A rare treat if one loves gueze.
• Chimay white. After the Faro, one is not going to taste alot, so the next beer is almost a throw away.
• Orval. Yummy again. I must say I always enjoyed Orval in the US, but enjoyed it much more in Belgium

We then went to t’ Spinnekopke. It is a local’s place, but is well regarded within the beer community. It was here that we really needed our “beer to order while reading the menu” AND our “backup beer”. They were out of our first choice, so we had to go with the backup beers:

• Achel blonde. a very nice blonde that I have had on numerous occasions in the US and Belgium.
• Quentine Ambree. We have had several beers from this brewery and have greatly enjoyed all of them. This was no exception.

We spent a lovely hour or so sitting outdoors in a little square in a quiet residential neighborhood full of young women wearing headscarves chasing their rugrats. Reminded me of Cairo.

Except for the good beer part.
And the quiet part.
And the women in Cairo don’t chase their rugrats so much as let them run around and occasionally yell at them part.

But other than that, it reminded me of Cairo.

From there we were off to Bier Circus. Another great place with a fantastic beer list. According to Kaddee’s notes, we ate there and really enjoyed the food. [shrug]. We drank:

• Dupont Biologere. a 3.5% beer. Which is RIDICULOUSLY low alcohol for a Belgian. Very light and easy drinking, though a little disappointing.
• La Binchoise Blonde. My notes are scribbled and blurry at this point. my notes either say “tasty” or ta-sobe. At this point in the evening, they are both equally likely.
• La Moneuse Blonde. lively, more like what I expected from the Biologere. Unfiltered, yeasty and slightly “sparkly”. very tasty.

And we managed one more beer at Delirium Cafe. We had:

• Saxo blonde. surprisingly hoppy with a nice dry finish. very nice
• Villers Triple. floral and full mouth feel, slightly dry.

Then it was off to our hotel room for a bottle of Malheur 12. A beer bottled and finished like a champagne. Not bad, but we both prefer Deus.

Sleep.

[Edit: A couple of crappy photos here]

We spent 3 nights in Mechelen at the Hotel Carolus. It is attached to and part of Het Anker brewery.

Our hotel room looked right out over the brewery yard. There is a lovely pub and restaurant attached to the brewery. We drank a few pints of what they had.

We had:

• Gouden Carolus Ambrio. An ok amber. Not a big fan of ambers, but this was nice.
• Triple. This was on tap. This is a very nice beer. I drank ALOT of this.
• Classic. Which was also kind of an amber. Almost a tweener beer between a classic british amber and a blonde.
• Margrit. This was a citrus-y, sort of a wit style beer. Very drinkable. light-ish in alcohol (maybe 4.5?)

We had multiple rounds of these, both at the brewery and elsewhere in town over the 3 nights.

One of the nice things for me about staying at the hotel was the smell of the wort. Anyone who has brewed beer, or been around beer being made, knows the smell of wort. (It is basically unfermented beer). The smell is sweet and heady. A great smell if you love beer. It was a constant background smell at the hotel.

In town itself, we started at der Akker. This is a student and “artsy folk” kind of pub. (ie: cheap). Mechelen is a university town. We drank more Carolus.

From there we went to t Ankenjte where we drank more Carolus. Kind of a one beer town.

Then we wandered over to d’Afspraak and drank La Choufee and Postel Tripple – slightly malty and floral. BIG flavor and nose.

There seems to be a style of pub in Mechelen (and maybe other parts of Belgium) that are referred to as “Praat”. You will see a pub listed as Food and Praat. Some place are listed as Art and Praat. One place was listed as Piano, Mon,Wed,Fri, and “Praat” the rest of the week.

The best I could figure out from context and seeing the word in other contexts is that praat means it is a “chatting” pub. A place where one goes to chat with friends. In other words, no loud music. Some places has “praat gardens” that were quieter than inside the pub. A neat concept.

From there we went to the last “must see” place on my list. The “Den Stille Genieter”.

I don’t know how to describe this place, or the owner. It is a dark place, PILED high with old newspapers, and holiday decorations from Christmas, and Halloween, from who knows what year. The gentleman that owns the place is rather taciturn. I ordered 2 beers and when he brought them, he held them up and shrugged his shoulders as if to say “which beer goes where?”. Rather OCD/aspergers/autistic.

In addition to this, the man casts an odd spell of his bar, none of my pictures came out worth a damn. But I did find a reference to the place online. But enough of the ambiance! What did we drink?

Welllll,

• Westvleteren 6
• Westvleteren 8 They were both beautiful and served at just about the perfect temp 45-50 F. If you don’t know, these are some of the rarest beers, outside of belgium. And even in Belgium, I was only able to purchase them at 2 or 3 places. The monks make a very limited supply. The 8 has some slight spice with a bit of chocolate to it.
• Cuvee de Bouillon – I have no notes here for this
• Westvleteren 12. This is a BIG beer. about 10% alcohol, rather complex. They are so hard to find in the US that this was a little slice of heaven.

And when I paid the bill, the total was 12.25Euro. That is RIDICULOUSLY cheap. Ahh. I could live in Mechelen.

All kidding aside, it would not be a bad place to live. It is a smallish town, on the quiet side. But the university keeps it lively enough during the school year and it is about a 1/2 hour by train to Brussels. If I were ever to be so “lucky” as to land a job in the EU parliament (snork) or work for NATO, I would live in Mechelen and commute to Brussels.

I spent the next day in bed. I never really got up. It wasn’t really a hangover, i think it was just trip fatigue. I slept away the day. A waste I know, but it could not be helped.

We did have a lovely dinner at the Hotel Carolus pub, along with more of their beer (of course)

Finally, we had to leave for Brussels.

We found our way to HopDuvel and opened the door. We were greated by a loud cheer

“YOU MUST BE KADDEE AND JACK! WELCOME! COME IN COME IN!”

Uuhh. “Hi”.

Our American friend on the bicycle, Stefan, had arrived first. He had been embraced by a group of [hard drinking] locals that had spent the day watching the Tour de France at another pub not far from HopDuvel.

The ring leader of this troop was Ronald. He is the gentleman in the tie in the foreground of the photo. He is a pharmacist that owns a couple of pharmacies in town. The young woman and man with him work for a pharmaceutical company. Ronald is a big customer of theirs. They are out drinking on an expense account, apparently.

Ronald had traveled in the US quite a bit when he was younger. He said that he was always welcomed in pubs where ever he went. Americans invited him to join them. They bought him drinks to hear his stories. He always remembered that.

He said that this was a very “un-Belgian” thing, to invite strangers into the group. Belgians are polite and formal, but cold to strangers, according to him.

So now, whenever he sees Americans in a bar, he invites them to join him and buys them a beer. When Stefan showed up, he welcomed him and incorporated him into the group. Stefan told them that Kaddee and I were on our way on foot and would be there shortly. So when we walked in, they were waiting for us.

It really was a pleasant surprise.

To further illustrate how “un-Belgian” it is to invite strangers into the group, Ronald decided to conduct an experiment. He was going to ask the next couple of people who entered the bar to join them. He predicted that they would decline.

He did, and they did. They all said “uh, we are meeting someone” or “we are just here for 1 drink then we have to go”.

It was an interesting social experiment.

So anyway, Ronald was one of the people that was absolutely flabbergasted that we were in Belgium for 2 weeks and weren’t going anywhere else in Europe. The whole “we’re here for the beer” thing.

With that knowledge, he decided that they were going to buy us 10 beers representative of good Belgian beer. They then preceded to discuss the choices, quite loudly and vociferously, as only a bunch of half-drunken bar patrons can do.

I tried a few times to offer input on what we have had, what was readily available to us in Seattle, and what we would like to try. But it was pretty much ignored. I figured, what the hell.

They ordered us 10 beers and we passed them around and tried them. They were all good beers, but they were all beers I could get in the US. [Our local pub, Beveridge Place Pub, has a very good selection of Belgians.] By the time those beers were consumed, I tried to buy a round but the bartender wanted to go home and was closing up shop.

Alas, HopDuvel was not the opportunity to try more beers that I had hoped it would be. But it was a very fun evening talking and drinking with the locals.

Cheers Ronald!

The next morning, groggy and covered in mosquito bites, we stumbled out for some food. We ended up at Waterhuis ann de Bierkant. I had a delicious rabbit stew made with Chimay.

We started lunch sitting outside. But the temperature started to drop and the wind picked up. It looked like rain. We decided to move into the restaurant. Shortly after we moved the skies opened and it HAILED. Gotta love the low-country weather.

While we watched the weather, we enjoyed

• Malheur 6 on tap.
• Gandavum house on tap – a dry hopped. The hoppiest beer I had so far.
• La Trappe Blonde Tripel on tap. Rather weak flavor
• Chimay Tripel on tap (to go with the rabbit stew, cooked in Chimay)

After lunch and waiting for the weather to let up we set off for the tourist office to find our way to a few of the other beer houses we wanted to visit. We were told that they were in a quarter of town that was closed off to public transport and cars because the Tour de France was coming through there today. We are not big bicycle racing fans, so we were unaware that the Tour de France even WENT to Belgium. We could get there, but we would have to hoof it all the way AND places were probably packed with fans. Alas.

As we pondered our options we realized that the big cathedral we were looking at was St. Baafskathedraal, the home of “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” by Jan van Eyck. It is a large work and in very good shape. Included in your entrance is one of those talking wands that will explain the history and significance of the piece. We had expected to go in, look around and be done in about 10 minutes. But we listened to the whole talk. It took about 50 minutes. It was well worth the time. It really is a magnificent piece of art.

After art-appreciation hour, it was SURPRISE, time for more beer!

So we walked to Trappenhuis and settled in for some serious sampling. While we were there, an Australian fellow over heard us talking and joined us. He was an interesting fellow. He is an actor/musician/street performer. His troupe, from Australia, spends the summer living in Ghent and travels around Europe doing various festivals. There was a big festival starting in a few days in Ghent, and he was going to be performing there.

After he had joined us, an American fellow asked to join us as well. He is a (currently unemployed) biomedical engineer from Minnesota(?) on a bicycling/beer drinking holiday of Europe. He had been to several of the breweries and had sampled a lot of beer.
The four of us compared beer notes and swapped stories for a few hours.

We had

• Oude Geuze Boon. Kaddee made quite the face tasting this. It was a very good geuze
• Bonne Esperance – we enjoyed this. Slightly hoppy.
• Achel Bruin – Beauty. slightly sour
• Dikke Mathile – Nice brown/blonde w slight spicy tones
• Ter Dolen Blonde – slightly sweet with a floral nose.
• Rochefort 6 – perfect, as always

We tried for Westvleteren again, but they were out. There were empty cases of it stacked, 6 or 7 high, in the bar. Bummer.

The four of us talked about HopDuvel, another famous beer bar in Ghent. We decided to head there and meet up again. The Aussie headed home to drop off his car and get his bike. [He never showed up. We were all pretty tipsy. I wager he decided to just call it quits]. The American was on a bicycle and he pedalled there.

We were unable to find a tram or taxi to take us there, because the area was still closed off due to the Tour de France. So we walked. It took about half an hour on a pleasant afternoon/evening.

Our welcome when we entered HopDuvel was something special. That will be my next post.

The next day was a travel day. Packed up and headed for the train station.

Right next to the train station is this huge flea market held every Saturday. We put our luggage in a locker in the train station and wandered through the flea market. It was a interesting experience. Apparently it is a common place to shop for furniture, clothing, housewares, art etc. One could easily furnish an entire apartment from scratch in one (very busy) afternoon at this market.

I know if I ever end up living in Ghent, I am gonna rent a truck and park it around the corner and go shopping here to get my apartment started.

On the train, we were *bad*. There were a couple of American women who headed to Ghent for the day. They asked tons of questions and really had no idea what to do in Ghent. They had no guide book. I got the distinct impression they were looking to latch onto someone as a tour guide. We ditched them. I felt bad. For about 5 minutes.

We stopped in Korn Markt square on our way to our B&B for some lunch.

And beer

• Petrus Gouden Tripel
• Pilaarbijter Tripel Blond
• Tripel Karmaliet
• Duvel

After lunch and a stroll around the square to find an ATM, we made it to our (rather disappointing) B&B above a bakery just off one of the main squares in the old town.
We started our beer tourism of Ghent at Aba-Jour, a nice place on one of the canals. Great food, prepared with beer.

To drink we had (ordered Westvleteren, but they were OOS):

• Agustijn Grand Cru – very nice
• Villers Tripel – fruity, and somewhat spicey. great companion to the food
• Gentse Tripe- floral with a nice finish. Very good beer
• Pater Lieven Blonde – slightly malty for a blond. Smelled like socks.

We then returned to our mosquito and fly infested B&B for a crappy nights sleep.