In Brugge

Belgium is an absurd country.  This statement is as good as any to resuscitate a moribund blog, maybe better.  It seems to come out of nowhere, spiteful and inexcusable, but was chosen with care.  It will turn out to relate to the unfolding post and, by doing so, recall one of the main themes of this blog.  Last Friday evening in a Eurostar somewhere under the Channel, I remembered that sentence as the beginning of a Streiflicht column in the Süddeutsche many years ago.

The Süddeutsche is a serious newspaper, Germany's best, a quality daily in the lingo of the trade.  The Streiflicht, on the left side of the front page, above the fold and just below the masthead, is a comment on one bit of the day's news, somewhere between humorous and satirical but never malicious.  Belgium has its bit of daily news, but I don't remember what triggered that particular column.  I had laughed hard and clipped the column from the paper.  Since then, most associations with Belgium have been purged from my brain.  Now all I can think of is cherry beer.  (The post could end here, having neatly made it back to the first line.)

My preparation for the trip that started on Friday consisted almost exclusively of imagining things and trying to remember what I had once heard or read.  It didn't come to much.  There was a Scientific American article on Lambic beer when I was in college, but that's not at my fingertips anymore.  A week or so before departure and increasingly lost, I went out to buy a film that appeared to have been issued by the local tourist office.  It was a bit of a scam.

In Bruges provided much factual information on the prevalence of cobbled streets and lovely canals roamed by swans, of brick houses half as old as time itself and soaring gothic monuments, romantic enough to make you cry, and featured the belfry in all its splendid octagonality.  But it also contained a joke about chocolate and murderous child molestation and had an elderly gentleman hurl himself off said belfry and land with a thud of crushed bones on the town's market square, next to tourists halfway through their comprehensive beer sampler, cherry, Trappist and all.

Late at night I was sitting underneath the belfry and had a beer.  It was not a cherry beer, and no one crash-landed on the cobbled ground.  The belfry had long closed for the night.  The beer was a bit frustrating.  I could only get taster sizes, chosen from what seemed like 178 varieties.  Being German I prefer a simple beer in a big glass.  But this was Belgium.  Sample sizes kept appearing on my table, the liquid evaporating faster than I could sip the foam off the top.

In Brussels earlier in the evening, announcements were made in three languages, here transcribed into a fourth.  "For trains to Holland, take platform three.  For Germany, press 5.  If you want to stay in Belgium, please hang up now." My connection was half an hour off.  As I ambled by the departure displays with no rush whatsoever, I realized that the earlier train was five minutes late and made connection with a nominal gap of zero (being luckier than Flucha who had to do an overnight pitstop in Frankfurt because for her seven minutes weren't enough).

On the market underneath the belfry, the good vibes lasted long past midnight.  It was mild, almost seasonal, and chatter wafted from table to table.  I learned that hello is Flemish for hello and that swearing in Mexican gets you a cheap beer.  I also learned that cheese as a snack is best consumed dipped into thick mustard.  Before, this would have struck me as absurd, but it went down a treat, one of many oddities we would encounter and enjoy over the weekend.