Every third year, Poperinge celebrates its hop-growing heritage with a weekend hop festival. As we learned this year, the fest continues to grow and evolve. Local hop cultivation continues, albeit at a lower volume than during peak times. Currently there is a campaign to promote those beers brewed using Belgian-grown hops.
We'd rented an apartment to house the six of us, and checked into it at midday on Friday. Ensuing explorations on foot revealed the existence of a beautiful town park, dedicated in 2002 and named after Dirk Frimout, Belgium's first astronaut. He was born in Poperinge. I was unaware this park existed, perhaps owing to my proclivity during previous visits to bicycle during the day and hunker down at cafes in the evening.
Public art at the park.
Later in the afternoon, regionally-brewed beers on the Paix terrace facing the Grote Markt were accented by a rainbow. On saturday and Sunday, the tents were devoted to food and beer pairings, emphasizing local restaurants and beers using Belgian hops.
In the evening, we checked into Poperinge's temporary fest version of a Bavarian beer hall, capable of holding hundreds of people, and with oom-pah bands going full tilt and half-liters of lager. It has quite little to do with Belgium's ale-making heritage, but it's great fun nonetheless, and somewhat of a tradition every three years.
Among the innovations witnessed at this pop-up beer hall was the notion of charging a one-time fee for using temporary loos (Euro 1.20), and open-air pissoirs for the gents. The one pictured below has been festooned with a campaign poster for one of three competing hop queen triads. They're reclined amid hops -- tastefully, of course.
Verily, seeing slyly positioned teenage hop queen candidates advertising with posters on outdoor urinating stations is precisely the sort of thing to remind one that he's no longer in New Albany.
No comments:
Post a Comment