Brussels: Let's get (manneken) pissed!

Feb/march break is upon us and it started with a great big Belgian Beer Summit bang! Erik and I met up with Hannah, Tricky and Kevin in Brussels on Friday. It was a great couple of days. While we were able to fit in some other things, our cultural exploration of the city consisted primarily of food and beer.

Day 1:

The first afternoon we had some lunch and promptly set out to find the best French fries in Brussels, based on a tip Kevin had picked up from a friend. When we got off at the bus stop where it was supposed to be, we were a little confused and disappointed since there didn’t seem to be any beacon of French-fried goodness to be seen. Then we realized that what we thought was a public restroom in the middle of the open square with a long line trailing behind it was what we were looking for. We each picked our sauce and were handed a giant (small and large seemed to be the same size: huge) paper cone of fries. As we reveled in our delicious find, we were entertained by a girl playing soccer with a stick.

Having downed a huge cone of fries each, we decided to bypass dinner and go straight to beer. We headed over to a bar Tricky had heard about which serves 2004 kinds of beer BUT couldn’t actually get into that part as it was super crowded. Though there was a section right above it that had an impressive-enough collection of Belgian beers on tap. We each had a couple of rounds and thoughtfully rated each one. Hannah kept a list of all the beers we had (not a single repeat!) over the course of the weekend and I think at some point I’ll add it to the ones I’ve tried at the Darou and publish it.

After beer it was back to our über classy hotel for socktoberfest festivities. We had bought a can of chickpeas and some salad dressing at the supermarket earlier on, and for our traditional Socktoberfest meal we combined the two to make a surprisingly delicious (and more surprisingly tunafish-tasting) snack. We drank a little more beer, watched a little Russia Today on the TV (apparently Russians are really into sushi these days) and went to bed.

Day 2:

The next day there were waffles (sadly not as good as the ones I’d had with the family on my last trip to Belgium, but certainly tasty) and we saw the city’s famous peeing boy who was decked out in his carnivale costume.

Manneken Pis--Brussel's BELOVED ode to public urination.

We checked out the Magritte museum and then had lunch at a delicious asian noodle house complete with a noodle-making/pulling girl in the window who we watched for several mesmerizing minutes while waiting for a table.

Then we set out for “the Beer Museum” which we were a little skeptical about but figured couldn’t pass up seeing as it was beer summit and all. This turned out to be more of an adventure than we thought since apparently there were two people with the last name Bertrand important enough to name a street after in Brussels. So we took the metro out to the first Bertrand street which was a pretty residential/sketchy area, only to discover that the address didn’t exist and we actually wanted to be at the other Bertrand. We got our bearings, had a tasty little ice cream break at a cute little place back in civilization, and then continued on our way. The Beer Museum was basically just an enormous room filled with beer bottles and a little fake-saloon.

Tricky playing along at the Beer Museum's bar facade

It did however come with a very informative pamphlet of all the different kinds of Belgian beers and a free glass of their special brew. The best part though, was the adorable wait staff who were all over the age of 70. The man who helped us was particularly cute. ( At a vote later on in the trip, he was named “person of the trip”. Second place went to a tall guy we’d seen in the metro station.)

After that we went back to the fry place and shared a little pre-beer appetizer and headed off to a bar Tricky Hannah and Kevin had found earlier and where the wait staff was super eager to advise us on our beer selections. One particularly enthusiastic waiter, when serving us a round, proclaimed “welcome to my paradise!” The beer was drunk and the votes were tallied. (That night we also spotted the person who would be voted “most sculpted beard of the trip”.)

And that was it. Short but sweet. We got up at four in the morning so Tricky Hannah and I could catch our flight to Vienna and Kevin and Erik could get their early trains to their respective homes.

As soon as we arrived, Hannah and Tricky went right to work showing me around Vienna. We had delicious falafel, Vienna’s famous sachetorte (a tasty chocolate-apricot cake), and I learned to avoid tourist traps like the guys dressed like motzart who roam the streets of Vienna looking for victims to pay exorbitant amounts for shitty concerts and tours.

I think it’s going to be a great week!