Day 2: A Train to Nowhere and Back

It's part of every European vacation, right? We got on the wrong train. Well, we got on the right train if we had wanted to go to Louvain. But we wanted to go to Louvain-la-Neuve, in quest of the Hergé (creator of Tintin) Museum. Was that too much to ask?

The ticketing machines didn't like our credit cards, so we had to go to customer service. We didn't know there were two Louvains, and the agent assumed we wanted tickets to plain old Louvain (apparently nobody goes to Louvain-la-Neuve), and off we went. Thanks to my phone's gps, we realized after about half an hour that we were heading in the wrong direction. So we got off at the next stop. This turned out to be a big mistake.

The next stop was an unstaffed station in the middle of nowhere (or at least that's what it felt like). And, like magic, we'd traveled from mostly French-speaking Brussels into all-Flemish speaking Nowhere-land. We couldn't understand a word the robot was saying over the loudspeaker, but we did learn after twenty minutes of waiting that the scheduled train wasn't coming. So we waited some more. We followed the Belgians up the stairs and over the tracks to another platform as (apparently) a platform change was announced. Then we followed them over to another platform as (yet another) platform change was announced. I was starving, at this point, and still quite jet-lagged.

We finally made it back to our starting point in Brussels, where we had a mediocre lunch. But all this disappointment only served to make our next stop even sweeter...or should I say, sourer?

It was time for Cantillon Brewery. Cantillon is a small family brewery (aka brasserie aka brouwerij) known for its lambic beer. While most beer is fermented with carefully cultivated yeast strains, lambic is left to collect wild yeast from the air so that it spontaneously ferments into a sour and delicious concoction. It's also flat, because it's aged for a few years (the carbonation seeps slowly out of the barrel). It's (sadly) hard to come by, outside of Belgium.

Lambic is the base for all the beer produced at Cantillon, including the gueuze: a blend of old and new (still bubbly) lambic. I like the idea of calling gueuze "Brussels Champagne". Also, gueuze is really fun to pronounce properly in Dutch. Try it out!

Are we in the right place? I think so!

The staff at Cantillon was very friendly and sent us off on our self-guided tour through the brewery, where we saw all the equipment involved in making the beer, from start to finish. It's all done right there in the tiny brewery.

Mmmm. Think of all the beer fermenting in those barrels!

Copper mash tun

At the end of our tour, we sampled their offerings. I loved the lambic and the gueuze, but the rosé de gambrinus was an unexpected favorite. I'm not one for fruity beer, but the raspberries were a perfect complement to the sour lambic base. I preferred it to their kriek (which had a pretty straightforward sour cherry taste), and their faro beer (just something you have to try once when you're in Belgium—a syrupy-sweet beer that's blended with caramel and candy sugar).

We walked off our beer coma by wandering around the city some more, popping into the many comic book stores around Brussels so Cliff could search for hard-to-find Tintin books. We wound up at my new favorite coffee shop again, where I had a terrific espresso and a to-die-for chocolate torte. I really think it might have been the best chocolate torte I've ever had. Oh, and the staff there were great! Some of the friendliest we encountered.

Espresso and chocolate torte at Aksum coffee

Later, we met up with Cliff's buddy, Stelios, at a bar for...you guessed it—more beer! Despite all appearances of being a tourist trap (it's right next to Little Man Piss), and despite being QUITE a mouthful of a name, Poechenellekelder is a great spot for beer and people-watching. Their selection is large and respectable.

We ended the night with a delicious homemade Greek meal at Stelios' apartment, where we were staying the rest of our time in Belgium. He insisted that the egg noodles were NOT, in fact, noodles, but Greek...things. I'm sure there's a name for it in Greek, which I've forgotten. Noodles or no noodles, the meal was scrumptious. A great way to retroactively absorb all that beer, right?