In one sense, having the best thing you’ve ever done occur so early in your life might seem a bit anti-climactic.  I mean, isn’t it going to be all downhill from there?  Quite the contrary, I have led the most fortunate of existences since then, and it all traces back to 16 years ago today.  I’ve had the unmitigated pleasure of spending the last 16 years with my best friend, a great advisor, a rapier wit, my good luck charm, and the most beautiful person I know.

Pretty sweet deal, huh?

So, yeah, the best thing I ever did happened 16 years ago today, and that’s just fine by me.

Happy day, sweetie!

(BTW, I’m still impulsive and foolish.  Never give up those things.)

Our hotel is quite close to the sights, so after some cooling off in the room, we made our way out into the city, walking around this old town and seeing what it had to offer.  By the route we took, what it had to offer was restaurants.  Dozens upon dozens of them.  After a stop at one of the cheapish ones (and, really, nothing is cheap in Belgium) for lunch, we wandered some more, eventually finding a grocery store for some necessities, then winding our way back through the mass of restaurants to the Delerium Cafe.

So, here’s the thing about the Delierum Cafe… it’s kind of a beer mecca.  Delerium Tremens is one of the most popular strong belgian beers (though I’m more of a Delerium Nocturnum man, myself).  This bar has that, and 2003 other beers.  It holds the Guinness Record for most beers available.  Downstairs is where the orgy of beer is – all of those 2004 beers are in the bottle selection there.  Upstairs is the more modest, yet totally mesmerizing, tap selection.  So many good beers, with all the kegs visible behind the bar, and the taps dangling temptingly in front of you.  The menu is like a wish list.  Tonight, I had a Buffalo Bitter (yummy, nice bitterness profile), a Joup (yummy and sweet), Gouden Carolus Christmas Ale, an Orval bottle (aged one year), and a Bersalis.  That, and Tisha’s 2 beer and one water  for €22.60.  A bargain!

We also met Pat, a grad student spending the summer in Europe doing research for his Ph.D., and enjoying the fine beers of Belgium while he’s at it, since the archives are closed on Mondays.  A wonderful, many hours-long chat ensued, and before we knew it, it was after 8 and time to get some supper.

Tonight, we opted for some fast food for supper, since we weren’t up for a big two hour meal.  Also, even with fast food, you can get a fine Belgian beer in the proper glassware!

I love this country.  Tomorrow, museums and the Grand Place!

‘Night!

Speaking of beer, it was off to the Brouwerij De Halve Maan for a pint of their Tripel (Straffe Hendrick) — wonderful!  After resting our bones, we made the trek back up north to spend the evening relaxing at a place that would serve us good food and beer.  And we found it in the Bierbrasserie Cambrinus, with over 400 beers available.  While watching the Men’s Wimbledon Final play out live (holy cow, 30 games in the final set!) we sipped on a variety of incredibly delightful brews, including the much-sought-after Westvleteren trappist beers.  I had an 8 (their dubbel), followed by a 12 (their quadrupel).

Both were delightful, each with its own complexities to decipher.  I may be committing heresy here, but I can say in all honesty they’re not the best beers I’ve ever had.  I know, I know, some will say I’m losing beer credibility by saying this, and I can accept that.  But let me be clear.  I’m not saying they’re not good.  They are.  And their rarity alone makes it worthwhile to try them if you ever get the opportunity.  But, in each case, I’ve found something else in the style I like better.

The Westvleteren 8 pours a dark brown, with a rich head that reduces down to a few millimeters after a few minutes.  But the head stays with the beer the whole way down the glass.  It’s very impressive!  The aroma is delightfully complex, bringing all of it’s character to the nose.  I found the flavor profile nicely masked the alcohol, so it didn’t feel like you were drinking an 8% beer.  A nice bitter finish on this one.

The 12 poured even darker, and its nose gave no hints what lay beneath.  Sweetness rode the front of the liquid, followed by caramel and roasted malts.  No real bitterness to my tongue, but the variety of flavors again masked the alcohol — this one at just over 10%.  It reminded me of a stronger version of Dogfish Head’s Raison D’être. Totally worth the €6.75 for the bottle, and please try it if you get the opportunity.

But, I’ll admit it, having had Ommegang’s Three Philosopher’s, I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted a better quadrupel.  And Maredsous’s much easter to find Dubbel is, IMHO, as fine a dubbel as Westvleteren.  Not as uinque, I’ll grant you.

I guess if you get the opportunity to try the Westvletern, take it, savor it, enjoy it, and remember that you’re tasting what few get to.  But if it’s not the best beer in the world, don’t beat yourself up over it — you’re not alone.

A short walk later, and we retire to the hotel at around 9ish.  Tomorrow, we check out, and make our way to Brussels!

Pics here.

Anyway, the downside to leaving the windows open at night is that they’re open in the morning.  When you have an east facing room, this is important.  At 8AM, I awoke to the sun beating on my face.  There are worse things you can have beating on your face when you wake up, so I counted myself lucky and began the day.

After a nice breakfast in the restaurant downstairs, we hiked our way north into the city.  Brugge is a beautiful place — very old city with narrow cobblestone streets.  In many ways, it reminded me of Vieux Québec, which is certainly backwards, but there’s where I first visited.  We walked north through the city until we reached Markt Square.  From there, we engaged in a mini city walk — I say ‘mini’ since it was abbreviated by what seemed like a large number of weddings going on at the church in Burg Square, and a lack of interest in the paintings in the museums here.  Still, it was a beautiful walk, and the scenery is simply delightful.

Upon reaching the canal, we took a 30 minute canal tour on a boat.  It was a nice way to both see the city from an angle one does not easily get, and to beat the heat since the breeze from the boat on the water was simply fantastic.  After the boat tour, we made our way through various streets and alleys to the south end of the city , whereupon we decided we were ready for lunch.

Remember this — when having a meal in Europe, plan at least two hours.  It’s a nice relaxed pace here, but it can seem slow if you’re not expecting it.  By the time our lunch was done, it was 3:00, and we took the tour at Half Moon Brewery, the only local brewery in  Brugge.  They produce three beers — a golden ale (6%), a dubbel that’s darker (7.5%) and a tripel at 9%.  I tried both the golden and the dubbel, will try the tripel tomorrow.

The tour was neat — we got to see the ‘historic’ brewery, no longer operational and everything beyond primary fermentation now happens offsite.  Still, we got to climb lots of stairs, see the view from the roof of the brewery, and taste some grains.

After the tour, we decided to make our way to Beertje, a pub that has been universally recommended — they have over 300 beers.  At least, that’s what I read.  I cannot confirm any of this, since we learned upon arrival at the pub that they are closed from late June to July 8 so the employees can go on holiday.  It seems an odd time to close, since I imagine it’s a top tourist destination, and we are most definitely in tourist season here.

So, alas, no Beertje for me.  But since we’d already made our way to the north of the city again, we looked for another beer destination.  Next on my list of good beer pubs is De Garre, which was not too far, so we made our way there.  Finding the first floor full, we made our way upstairs, found a table, and in minutes were enjoying the house tripel.  We were also fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a lovely couple from Athens, GA at the adjacent table who were on the tail end of their European adventure, and celebrating their engagement (congrats Dustin & Kristin!)  Dustin’s a beer guy, who works for Terrapin Brewery in Athens, a place whose beer I hope to sample some day soon.

We whiled away the hours talking about everything beer and Europe, and before I knew it, it was 7:30, I’d had many, many, fine beers, and we were thinking of supper.  So, we wandered east to a wonderful Pasta Restaurant (Pili Pili), where we enjoyed fine pasta, more beer, and some great desserts.

Eventually, realizing it was 10:00, we decided to make the long walk back south to our hotel.  And now, here I sit, watching the sky slowly dim as it approaches 11PM.  Off to sleep, and another Belgian adventure tomorrow!

Pictures here.

Happily, the problems were sorted out by afternoon, and by the time we go to the airport for our 9:15 flight, things had returned to normal, thankfully.

We hopped on the plane, a nicely equipped 767 with fancy schmancy business class lay-flat seats (which we were fortunate enough to be flying), and after a short delay we were in the air.  The flight was nicely uneventful — I watched Watchmen, had dinner, then lay down to sleep.  Four hours later, we were beginning our descent into London.

Now, originally, our plan was to go from London to Dover (via train), hop a ferry to Calais, France, and spend the night, catching a train to Brugge the next morning.  Alas, Calais was looking kind of booked, so I got us booked into a hotel in Brugge (Boathotel De Barge — yes, it’s a boat).  But once I started working it all out, it was looking like we’d be frantically making our way to Brugge via train and ferry, and one missed connection meant a very late arrival.

Well, I’ve had enough of those types of things in my travels, and prefer to spend my vacations relaxing as much as possible.  So, I found us a flight from London to Brussels for a reasonable price on British Airways and booked that.  Upon our arrival at LHR, we simply made our way to Terminal 5, waited an hour, then boarded a very empty plane to Brussels.  Then, arriving at Brussels, it was an 80 minute train ride, with one quick transfer, and we were in Brugge, about a 10 minute walk from the hotel.

We enjoyed a nice, though large and expensive, meal at the hotel before retiring to our ‘cabin’.

Oh my, yes.

I must do this.

I was positively fascinated by the sheer brazenness of his action.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I don’t know if he ever actually noticed I was watching him, but he wouldn’t leave the area as long as I was there, going back and forth to different racks as long as I was still shopping.  I wandered over to the rack from whence he got his shirt, noted the empty hanger on it, then picked out a shirt of the same style he had taken, and made a show of holding it up as if I was checking it out for purchase, even comparing it to his shirt since he was at the adjacent rack.  I was tempted to ask him what he thought of the shirt; ask him how he found the fabric and if it was comfortable.  I was likewise tempted to take the empty hanger, walk over, and simply say, “Here, you forgot this.”

Instead, I left the department, returned a minute later and he was gone, empty hanger still hanging on the rack.  I didn’t do a thing about it.  Would you have?

Back when I worked retail — yes, I did my time at Radio Shack — I caught a shoplifter or two, usually teenagers.  In those cases, my goal was to prevent the loss of merchandise, not get someone arrested.  As a retail worker, I don’t have any power or authority to prevent someone from leaving the store, and I could, in fact, get in trouble if I did try to detain someone.  So instead I’d walk up behind them, say something clever like “You’ve either got a walkman from that shelf in your pocket, or you’re way too interested in resistors than anyone should be.”  The usual result of something like that is Drop It and Run.  Fine by me.

But I never had to confront someone who I couldn’t take on if it came to that.  And, since this wasn’t my store, I wasn’t about to start.  I suppose I could have reported him, but I doubt it was have helped since, as I mentioned, when I left the department he disappeared faster than a Fox News anchor’s credibility.

Maybe I’m assuming too much.  Maybe my tank top-wearing compadre simply wandered over to a cashier and produced the tag for the shirt he was wearing, saying “I’ll be wearing this out.”  Certainly, unless and until he left the store, he hadn’t actually done anything wrong.  Still, I found it amusing.

This man has created musical and video compositions mixed together from various videos gathered on YouTube.  To be clear, he’s not mixing in video with existing music, he’s creating music and video by editing the video, using samples to match the pitch and sound he’s looking for.  He explains it here:

What’s particularly astounding here is not merely the quality of work he’s produced, but also the raw material from which it was created. The very existence of this new work required such a vast amount of flotsam, which YouTube is all-too-willing to provide. Without the widely present “I must be broadcast so everyone can appreciate me” mentality, this project could likely not have existed.  It’s recycling on an entirely different level.  I positively love it.

It’s not one that will ever be realized, but imagining it makes me happy in all my happy places.

I just wish that for every spam message that annoys someone, the person who generated that spam message gets a slap in the head.

Nothing violent, nothing injury inducing.  Just one of those smacks to the back of the head.  Like this.

The say that spammers spam because for every thousand people they annoy, they get one person who buys whatever they’re selling.  I just like to picture the results if those 1000 annoyances result in 1000 smacks to the back of the head.

Oh, and we should also get to slap the people who buy the spammer’s snake oil, too.

It’s a pretty picture, innit?

Then you can turn it into a MacBook Nano.