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Netherlands, Belgium Leg
Cheston & Katherine Hervey Again, we're not really in Chimay, Belgium (we actually got back to Koblenz about 10 pm) but we went there today and it was unbelievable.
We woke up this morning in Nazareth, which is to the Northwest of Brussels but east of Brugge which is almost on the coast. We drove into Brussel and 15 minutes after entering the edge of the city we renamed it, "The City with the Most Confusing Road System and the Poorest Road Signs in Europe." Once we had gone through 5 tunnels (one of which was the longest tunnel I have ever been through), plowed through an open air, Arab market, scattering a dozen or so people, almost turned down a one way street and got honked at more times than I can count we finally arrived at The Grand Place. Keep in mind that this is the square that Victor Hugo called, "the most beautiful square in all of Europe." Honestly though, in a word: ungrand.
We saw The Mannaken Pis, which is the statue fountain of a little child perpetually urinating. Now that is a monument to the city of Brussels. Center of the EU? Give us the peeing kid.
Anyway, he was dressed in Tour de France gear. Apparently, he has some 800 outfits, each with a carefully placed hole for the stream of water, with everything ranging from drag queens to Elvis, which not-so-shockingly kinda resembled each other.
We hit two museums. The Musea de Brasseries and the City Museum of Brussels. The first...you guessed it was the Brewerey Museum. It was awful. They showed a PBS style video from 1984 on Belgian Beer and served you a lousy pilsner at the end. Tourist trap. We did however meet a nice couple that told us all about Ireland and gave us some travelling tips. They sure were nice dudes.
Now that all the griping is done I can tell you the good things and then I will tell you the BEST thing. The first good thing was the City Museum. It truly was a wonderful treat. They had half a dozen tapestries on display with very unique scenes on each. The three I remember off the top of my head were The Crowning of Leopold II, the meeting of Tristan and Isolde and the Beheading of St. Paul. Along with these were some amazing sculptures. Personally,
I think that sculpting is the most mind-blowing medium in art. I admire painting and photography and music and all that but sculpting just seems the most difficult.
As soon as we walked out of the museum it was noon and we were treated to a bell ringing song coming from the Town Hall.
Since Brussels as a whole had leapfrogged over Amsterdam as the biggest let-down of the trip so far we left earlier than we planned. We had some time to fill up so Yola asks me, "Didn't you want to see one of those Trappist breweries in person?" A brief note on Trappist Breweries: There are only 6 trappist breweries in the world, 5 in Belgium and 1 in Holland. They are actually real monastaries and the monks are the brewers. I have had the beer from all but one of these trappist monastaries: Westverleten. The reason I have not had theirs is because they do not sell outside of their monastary. You have to call in an order to a phone they never pick up and can only pick up your order two mornings of the week. You are not allowed to resell it so you can't even get it in Belgium unless you are at the monastary. In case the suspense is killing you, we did not go to Westverleten, that would be pointless. Instead we went to Chimay, which is the most widely known and distributed trappist ale of all six.
We looked at a map and it looked only a little ways out of the way...not so.
After driving on winding and weaving roads for about 100 km we came to the city of Chimay near the Southern border of Belgium. I was telling Kat and Yola, "It's one of the most popular beers in Belgium, there will be signs everywhere!" Again...not so.
After winding and weaving all throughout the town of Chimay and asking two different people (who only spoke French) for directions we finally found l'Abbaye Notre-Dame de Scourmont, where Chimay is brewed. We went inside to find a monk who reminded Kat of Tevia from Fiddler on the Roof who told us in broken english, "To the right is the Cemetary, to the left is the dining hall and straight to the garden." I politely said thank you like I had come just for that purpose and walked into what was admittedly a beautiful courtyard but not the brewery I was hoping for. After taking a few pictures and mustering some courage I went back in and asked Tevia where the brewery was. He let out a belly laugh, "It's here. But you can't see inside it. It is a monastary. All of them are. You can't see any of the trappistes."
I was crushed.
Then he said, "But go back down the road you came in on to 'Auberge de Poteaupre' which is the white hotel and restaraunt and drink our beer there."
So with a shred of hope left we went there hoping to get to try something that I couldn't buy at BevMo. And we did.
I drank Chimay Special Poteaupre on tap. It is the unfiltered beer that the monks drink as their "Table Beer" and it is exclusively sold at Auberge de Poteaupre. You can't even get it in the bottle. In addition to that, Kat and I got a sampler platter of all four of the cheeses that the monks make. All of which are fantastic. And to top it off, the scenery was unbeatable but I'll leave that to the pictures to explain.
We left Chimay at 5:30 pm and didn't get back to Koblenz until 10. I suppose you could say that Chimay is a little out of the way and since there is no easy road to get directly back to Koblenz so we ended up taking the Autobahn through France and into Luxembourg and then North into Germany. Only 400 kilometers away. At least I got to drive 170 kph on the Autobahn since it was deserted on a Saturday evening. Check the
NEW MAP our our actual route.
Good Night,
Chet
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Blair
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Living Vicariously
So knowing that you were heading into Belgium and that undoubtedly you would sniff your way through the countryside to some monk's brewery, I sat outside my house last night and barbecued ribs with Tony and Denny. We sipped on a Chimay blue, and I thought of Feivel. So with the flavor still on my tongue, I looked up at the sky and sang... "Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight Someone's drinking real Trappiste from the tap tonight. And even though I know how very far apart we are It helps to think we might be drinking under the same bright star. And when the night wind starts to sing a jealous lullaby It helps that monks learned how to export everywhere underneath the same big sky."