The godshuizen of Brugge "offer a vision of a person-centered environment for elderly living today."

A short time back I posted about ways to help the elderly live without nursing homes and institutional settings.  

Grow Old with Me

Consider this one a corollary.

From Our House to “Godshuis”, by Thomas Dougherty and Dr. Randall Smith (original source: The Catholic World Report)

If the recent coronavirus pandemic has revealed anything to us, it should be how badly we house many of our elderly. But “house” is perhaps not the right term. Instead of “housing” them, we too often warehouse them.

Today, the elderly leave society when they enter an elderly facility, too often to be forgotten by the community. It is this separation perhaps more than any other single factor that contributes to the suffering of the elderly today ...

The conclusion:

The godshuizen of Bruges, as well as many others around Belgium and the Netherlands, offer a vision of a person-centered environment for elderly living today. God’s-houses could be simply constructed and built on small parcels of urban land as they were centuries ago. Small individual homes for elderly living are already being offered as an alternative to institutional nursing home care.

An exhibition themed around public urinals -- in Brussels, not New Albania.

Among the innovations witnessed at Poperinge's triennial pop-up Beer and Hop Festival beer hall in 2014 was the notion of charging a one-time "piss pass" fee for using temporary loos (Euro 1.20), with heavy-duty plastic, open-air pissoirs helpfully available for the gents.

The installation pictured here was festooned with a campaign poster for one of three competing hop queen triads. They're humorously reclined amid hops, and it should be pointed out that their team placed it there for a reason -- to reach the "swing" voter.

Verily, it was all in good fun. Seeing creative teenage hop queen candidates advertising with professionally printed posters on outdoor urinating stations was precisely the sort of thing to remind us that we no longer were experiencing a New Albany state of mind.

And, as this timely article reminds us, the development of the public urinal not only goes back almost 200 years, but references social developments ranging quite far removed from the simple need to relieve oneself while following the path to the next whiskey bar.

Standing room only: Brussels exhibition tells story of public urinals, by Richard Harris (The Bulletin)

In further proof that Brussels’ cultural scene is nothing but varied, an exhibition themed around public urinals is coming to the city later this month.

After runs in Berlin and Paris, LaVallée in Molenbeek presents the exhibition Cottages: Public Toilets, Private Affairs by French photographer/videographer Marc Martin, who describes himself as “one who explores the visibility of sexual minorities and claims a freedom to express – explicit or not – a diversity of practices”.

“By confronting the notions of beauty and repulsion, of good and bad taste, I readjust the level of tolerance, including of the LGBTQI community,” he says.

Go All the Way.

Today's ride was for a short distance only, downtown to Pints&union, then walking the bikes up the city side of the rail embankment to reach the amphitheater. We rode down to Loop Island and returned on city streets.

They're baby steps, but it's been eight years, after all. The instincts remain, pleasingly so. The self-obsessed idiocy of most drivers bothers me when I'm sitting at home in a chair thinking about it; once outside and on the street, far less than I imagined.

It isn't that they're any better. It's about my game plan, feeling I have a measure of control in spite of it all, along with fairly sound fundamentals. I also never go for a ride without a mirror, something I wouldn't do in a car, either.

Seeing posts like this one sets me to salivating. It's 77 miles in all, easily broken into a leisurely three-day ride, with ample time for sightseeing along the way. Troisvierges is only 50-odd km from Luxembourg City -- but even more enticingly, a mere 15 miles from Achouffe (near Houffalize), home of the Chouffe gnomes.

I might be daydreaming quite a lot in the months to come.

Vennbahn: How a historic German train line became a popular cycling path, by Tamsin Paternoster (The Local DE)

Today the Vennbahn bike path is one of the longest cycle trails of its kind, running along disused railway tracks in Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium.

The path offers more than 125km of landscapes that stretch through Europe and encompasses three countries, as well as a distinctive history. The Local unpicks the story of the Vennbahn.

The Vennbahn wove through three countries, starting in the western German city of Aachen before making its way through Belgian territory and ending in Troisvierges, a small town in northern Luxembourg.

Along the way, the path winds itself in and out of Germany and Belgium, in territory which once wholly belonged to Germany before the borders were redefined ...

Ambiance Eyenga.

This piece from mid-June explains one reason why Black Lives Matter reaches all the way to Belgium -- a very solid reason, in fact:

"A renewed global focus on racism is highlighting a violent colonial history that generated riches for Belgians but death and misery for Congolese."

Later that month:

King Philippe of Belgium on Tuesday expressed his “deepest regrets” for his country’s brutal past in a letter to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first public acknowledgment from a member of the Belgian royal family of the devastating human and financial toll during eight decades of colonization.

The king’s letter, issued on the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence, acknowledged the historical legacy and pointed out continuing issues of racism and discrimination, though it stopped short of the apology that some, including the United Nations, had asked for.

Among the legacies of Belgium's colonial experience called rightly into question is the "official" museum in Brussels, which has struggled to rebrand in recent years.

"Belgium’s revamped Africa Museum is a magnificently bizarre hybrid."

In Congo itself, it's perhaps surprising that there'd be a city with 100 surviving Art Deco structures. We harbor so many misconceptions about Africa. One is size; Congo is 3.5 times larger than Texas, and that's huge. It is striking, and also slightly puzzling, that some people in Bukavu view the legacy of these buildings as something worthy of protection. Maybe they view it in the context of cultural education. In spite of what I've been told the past few days, history is important.

The Art Deco Capital of Central Africa, by Carly Lunden (Atlas Obscura)

In Bukavu, beautiful buildings have an ugly colonial history. But locals want to save them.

... Bukavu has more than 100 Art Deco buildings. Walking through its streets, you see geometric lines, chevron motifs, stepped rectangles, curved walls with cylindrical roofs. But most of these structures, with the notable exception of the Cathedral, are now dusty and beginning to crumble. “People used to call this city the ‘Switzerland of Congo,’” says Pierre Mpemba, 55, a local historian. “We were known for all these beautiful buildings. But that’s disappearing.”

Too often, this architectural history is forgotten in a city that outsiders associate with endangered gorillas, Africa’s First World War, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, and the ongoing presence of humanitarian agencies and UN peacekeepers.

Beginning in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, Art Deco symbolized modernism, the technological future, the “machine age.” All clean and curved lines, geometric shapes, bright colors and glamour, the style was meant to signal wealth and sophistication. As it spread from Europe to places that Europeans colonized, it also symbolized and beautified imperial domination, according to scholars such as Swati Chattopadyay in the Routeledge Companion to Art Deco ...

CULTURAL BITS: Frans Masereel and Hugo Claus.

Back in 2004 or thereabouts, NABC's founding brewer Michael Borchers produced a damn fine Belgian ale.

Silent Oath

The joy in Belgium

Drawn from an episode in Hugo Claus’s novel, “The Sorrow of Belgium,” it was Belgian-style Brown, perhaps with a hint of intentional sourness. A portion was aged in oak chips.

"Perhaps" used in reference to sourness aptly summarizes the improvisational nature of our early brewing experiments. Much fun, little pressure and financially sustainable. Those were the days.

As an aside, the novel by Claus (1929 - 2008) is wonderfully insightful, dealing with society and politics in Flanders (the Flemish-speaking half of Belgium) before and during WWII; specifically, Claus tackles the thorny issue of collaboration with the occupying Germans.

Having read the novel, and this being a period when I visited Belgium often, eventually I stumbled across Frans Masereel.

Frans Masereel: The First Woodcut Novelist, by Tamara Fultz (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

What defines our attraction to a particular artist? Education and experience can offer us opportunities to see an artist's work, but whether we like or truly appreciate it is dependent on individuality and personal taste. In my own work, I get to see a wide variety of art in books—from ancient to contemporary—and there are always some artists that I prefer over others. This post is a reflection on one of my favorites: Frans Masereel (1889–1972).

Masereel, a Belgian graphic artist, is considered by some to be the creator of the woodcut novel. There is a certain warmth and linear clarity to woodcuts that I find appealing: everything from the woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) to the woodblock prints of Japanese artists in the ukiyo-e style. Masereel's woodcut novels fascinate me because in each one he creates a narrative using strictly images, no text—although there may be an introduction by Thomas Mann or some other great contemporary. For a modern-day equivalent to this kind of work, you might be familiar with the graphic novelist Eric Drooker, whose artwork in Flood! was heavily influenced by the novels of Masereel.

Thomas J. Watson Library has a number of Masereel's woodcut novels. Below are some images that I will let speak for themselves, just as Masereel would have done.

Somewhere online I found a Masereel woodcut of a tree, which may or may not have been an oak. Michael's beer was aged on oak chips, after all. The tree became the label for the ale, which wasn't brewed a second time. The label has eluded me, hidden in a banker's box. Eventually I'll find it.

For whatever reason, I still take much comfort in all this -- Masereel, Claus, Belgian ale, and their confluence in our embryonic brewery. My advice is to do some browsing and explore Masereel's world.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: It’s still better dancing with the table beer than sleeping on the floor.

A long time ago when I first visited Belgium harboring the crazy idea that I'd drink the country dry of traditional ale, there'd be these bottles on the market shelf with replaceable plastic caps and a budget traveler's dream price tag.

Closer examination revealed why; they were "table beers" of very low alcohol content, suitable for thirst-quenching by those (I'm one) who find little value in sticky sweet soft drinks -- or, as was explained to me at the time, intended to take the place of those awful little cartons of milk at American school cafeterias, because Belgian schoolchildren drank table beer, not liquid bovine snot.

Verily, the stork dropped me on the wrong continent.

Like most other beer styles and traditions embraced by Americans during the years of the craft beer explosion, table beer has undergone a metamorphosis into something different than it ever was, explained here.

What Is Table Beer, the Beer We've Been Seeing Everywhere?, by Alex Delany (Bon Appetit)

No, table beer isn't just when you put a beer on your table.

 ... Historically, a table beer was a beer for everyone at the table, most prominent in Belgium and France. Your mom. Her friend Carol. Your great uncle Victor. And the kids. All of the kids. Like, six year-old kids, drinking beer with their 16th century meatloaf. In medieval Europe, table beers usually contained less than one percent ABV.

But, yeah, kids used to drink beer. At the table. Not behind the shed in their friend Chad’s backyard. Table beer (or biere de table) varied widely in color, but probably tasted something like soaking Wheaties in water and then squeezing out all of that absorbed liquid. Kinda bready. Kinda sweet. Gently carbonated (or maybe totally still).

These days, table beer is a bit different ... in Indianapolis, Central State Brewing is canning an easily crushable, pleasantly tart, 4% table beer that tastes something like lemon curd spread over a baguette. It’s the ideal “I am currently sitting in a chair on a porch/deck/balcony/patio and have no intention of moving,” beer.

We're carrying 16-ounce cans of Central State Table at Pints&union.

Table Beer

Rustic Blonde Ale

Table is a rustic blonde ale fermented with our unique yeast strains and brewed in the style of French and Belgian style table beers.

Malt Bill: Indiana-Grown 2-Row and Rye

Hops: Noble varieties, varies from batch to batch

Yeast: CSB House Yeast Blend

ABV: 4%

Got to Pints&union, get a burger and drink Central State Table with it. You won't be disappointed. In closing, allow me to point out that my personal interest in table beer didn't begin yesterday. During my former career at NABC, we formulated a session-strength table beer somewhere around the year 2009, and it was a great favorite of mine for volume consumption.

NABC Tafel Bier

Belgian-style “Table” Beer

ABV: 4%

IBU: 15

OG: 1.040, or 10 degrees Plato

It’s better dancing on the table than sleeping on the floor. Tafel Bier is the Flemish language term for “table beer,” denoting a flavorful session strength accompaniment to the wonders of Belgian cuisine … or burgers and wings, too. What do you think filled those earthenware jugs in the Brueghel painting? It wasn’t Bud Light Lime, was it?

Malts: Belgian Pale, Aromatic, Biscuit, CaraPils

Hops: German Tettnanger, Select

Yeast: House Ardennes

"Belgium’s revamped Africa Museum is a magnificently bizarre hybrid."

“Colonialism as a system of governance is now considered immoral, authoritarian, racist, based on military occupation and exploitation.”
-- Guido Gryseels

I'm an unrepentant fan of most things Belgian, including beer, food, beercycling and the invention of the saxophone; in a pinch, you can even throw in Jean Claude Van Damme, who was born in Brussels in 1960, 70-odd days after me (in New Albany).

However, the story of Belgium's colonial experience is sad and instructive. It cannot be repeated often enough. King Leopold is one of those nasty historical figures best forgotten, except doing so would risk burying the complete story of his genocidal reign in the Congo.

King Leopold and "The Horrors of Belgium's Congo."

I was unaware that the Royal Museum for Central Africa had undergone an ideological refit. During two or three of my visits to Belgium, I was within range, but wasn't able to seek it out.

Next time, maybe it will be possible.

The struggle to tell the story of colonialism: Belgium’s revamped Africa Museum is a magnificently bizarre hybrid (The Economist)

It is a magnificently bizarre hybrid. Still officially called the Royal Museum for Central Africa, but better known as the Africa Museum, it cannot help but ooze colonial triumphalism, despite recent protestations of egalitarian diversity. Housed in a majestic purpose-built palace 20 minutes’ drive east of Brussels, it stands above a lake amid parkland. Immaculate gravel paths sweep around the site. However radically the interior may have been refashioned to reflect new attitudes to Africa, the grandeur of King Leopold II’s design and the fervour of his desire to promote his imperial venture into the continent’s heart still overwhelm the visitor. The monarch ruled Congo as a private estate nearly 80 times bigger than his European homeland from 1885 until a year before his death in 1909; his double-l motif is embossed on almost every wall and above many an alcove.

Short of knocking the entire edifice flat, the museum’s current regime, run since 2001 by Guido Gryseels, a 66-year-old agricultural expert, has spent the past five years behind closed doors seeking to put a modern imprint on an irredeemably archaic structure. It reopens on December 9th. “We’ll be criticised on both sides,” predicts Mr Gryseels, who, like many modern museum bosses, is perforce a canny diplomat. “For not going far enough and for being too politically correct” ...

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Orval exemplifies true religion, Trappist (ale)-style.

One of my goals for the bottle list at Pints&union is to have a hefty core of Belgian ales, and whenever possible, glassware to match.

This owes to several factors, among them the incredible and persistent vibrancy of Belgian ale brewing, as well as the patriotic need to spotlight these ales at a time when the multinational criminal organization calling itself AB InBev spends billions to persuade the easily duped that insipid Stella Artois golden lager represents Belgian beer at its finest.

Um, no.

Narrowing the focus, a particularly wonderful sub-culture within Belgian brewing is that occupied by the Trappists, or those ales brewed at Trappist monasteries. In recent years, this practice has spread outside the original six Belgium (and the seventh in the Netherlands) to Austria, Italy, the UK and even Massachusetts.

These thoughts are occasioned by a chance meeting with this article about Orval.

ORVAL: BORN OF A LEGEND, by Heather Vandenengel (All About Beer Magazine)

 ... Orval’s masterful complexity and drinkability have cemented it as a classic, particularly among brewing industry professionals like Allagash’s Rob Tod, Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo and New Belgium’s Kim Jordan, all of whom have cited Orval as a favorite beer.

“It is really the beacon of a particular style,” says Jordan, who praises its rocky, voluminous head, subtle Brettanomyces character and sturdiness of the malt combined with light peppery notes and a dry finish.

Like any enduring classic, Orval is also born of a legend. So the story goes: The widowed countess Matilda of Tuscany mistakenly dropped her wedding ring into a spring. Distraught, she prayed to God for its return and shortly thereafter a trout surfaced with the ring in its mouth. Matilda exclaimed, “Truly this place is a Val d’Or!” or “golden valley” and, overjoyed, she gave the land to the church, which built a monastery there, founded in 1070.

The brewery was established at the site of the Abbaye Notre Dame D’Orval in southern Belgium in 1930 and has produced just one packaged beer since then: Orval in its distinctive 11.2-ounce bottles with a trout, ring in mouth, on the label. (It also brews a lower-alcohol version of Orval, available on draft at the brewery and occasionally bottled.)

The lower-alcohol version of Orval is available at the A l'Ange Gardien cafe, a short walk from monastery's entrance, and I know this because in 2004, a half-dozen metropolitan Louisvillians rode our bicycles to all the Trappist monasteries in Belgium that brew beer -- stopping occasionally along the way to drink one or two of them.

Here's the Florenville-Orval-Florenville-Revin-Chimay segment, and yes, those are some challenging hills.

I've never written a truly comprehensive account of our personal Tour de Trappiste; however, it was mentioned in column I wrote for the defunct New Albany Tribune, written prior to the advent of the newer Trappist brewers outside Benelux.

Suffice to say, it was one amazing ride, alternately hellacious and holy, and we weren't once struck by lightning, righteous or otherwise. ABVs are another story.

Orval was an undisputed high point, owing both to its gorgeous physical location and the entirely unexpected tour of the brewing facility that we were afforded, which provided the opportunity to taste Orval at each stage of its creation.

Some day there'll be time to collate the photos, haul the banker's box out of the basement and give this ride the documentation it deserves. Until then, here is the lightly edited column from 2009.

---

True religion, Trappist-style.

Give me that old-time religion,
Give me that old-time religion,
Give me that old-time religion,
It's good enough for me.

The merits of old-time religion seldom are displayed to better and tastier effect than by the delicious ales brewed on the premises of six Trappist monasteries in Belgium and a seventh in the Netherlands. The beer world knows these holy places by the names of their beers: Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, Westvleteren and Koningshoeven.

There is an eighth member of the International Trappist Association (founded in 1997): Mariawald, in Germany, which to my knowledge is not a beer producer, although it is rumored to sell a proprietary liqueur. Since the Trappist appellation extends to all products emanating from member monasteries, perhaps Mariawald makes cheese or some other food suitable for accompaniment with beer.

There are many such pairings, as we learned in 2004, when our merry band of intrepid local beercyclists embarked on a quest for the grail at each of the six Belgian brewing monasteries. After tuning our bicycles in Amsterdam, we rode the train to Roosendal, peddled across the frontier and fought through mud and rain to Westmalle for lunch.

During the twelve days that followed, a veritable circumnavigation occurred. Second was Achel, followed by Rochefort and a dawning realization that the Ardennes indeed are to be considered mountains, not mere hills. Orval, then Chimay, and finally we broke away from French-speaking Hainaut province and arrived in West Flanders for Westvleteren and a meeting with a Belgian television film crew, which was assigned to chronicle strange things that foreign visitors do in Belgium.

It was our own Tour de Trappiste, and I’ll never forget it.

----

It sometimes surprises pious Americans that a religious order would undertake the production of alcoholic beverages. It shouldn’t. In days of yore, which in practical terms signifies the Dark Ages through Napoleon, European monasteries owned vast, self-sufficient agricultural estates. These testified to the pervasive power of the Roman Catholic Church, and from the time of the Reformation, events conspired to steadily erode the economic clout of these monastic entities.

From the start, monasteries in southern climes grew grapes and made wine. Further north, barley and other cereal grains were fermented into beer. In both cases, considerations of “sin” did not enter into this purely practical equation. Wine and beer preserved the value of perishable foodstuffs, provided a finished product that could be sold or bartered, and offered daily nourishment to the monks. So it goes today, albeit on a vastly reduced scale.

For certification as a Trappist brewery, the brewing operation must be located on the grounds of the monastery, although as in the case of Chimay, later stages of the process can be finished elsewhere. Monks must retain involvement and overall control of the brewing operation, but can hire secular brewers. Finally, a portion of the profits accrued from the brewing must go to specified charitable purposes.

The remaining brewing monasteries in Benelux have combined to develop a badge that signifies compliance with these requirements. Beyond denoting origin, neither the badges nor the word “Trappist” implies precise characteristics. All are top-fermented ales, with some dark and others pale. A few are hoppy, and others sweet. “Trappist" is an accredited appellation of origin -- nothing more, nothing less. The rest is up to the individual monastery brewing tradition, and results vary.

Arguably, Chimay Blue and Westmalle Tripel are the best known Trappist ales among casual beer lovers. The first is dark and belongs with red meat, while the second is pale and magical with seafood. Achel’s signature Kluis is relatively new, just like the revived brewery that brews it, and Westvleteren 12 remains reverential, if seldom seen outside Belgium.

Orval comes from a rural monastery with a physical setting that is the most stunning of all, with a jumble of newer buildings and older ruins nestled in a forested valley where time seems to stop. The utterly unique hop and yeast character of Orval is rewarding, but to me, the highest achievement of Belgian Trappist brewing remains Rochefort 10, which issues from the reclusive Abbaye Notre-Dame de St. Remy near the isolated Ardennes town of Rochefort.

My cherished Rochefort 10 weighs in at 11.3% abv (alcohol by volume), and safe, light lawnmower beer it isn’t, pouring creamy brownish-black, with mellow, deeply fruity esters and subtle hints of nuts. The flavor is pure silk, full-bodied, tasting perhaps of semi-sweet chocolate, with an alcohol note or two suggesting licorice liqueur. It is contemplative and refined, and should be sipped slowly for dessert.

In the traditional world of beer, imitation, flattery and profit are interwoven. Numerous breweries in Belgium, Netherlands and elsewhere release a cornucopia of “Abbey” ales, and these range from the inspired to the simplistic. Only ales marked with the approved seal can be called Trappist, but there is considerable overlap between these and the many Abbey imitations. The only way to chart the similarities and differences is to drink as many different varieties of both as possible, and that’s why it’s fun being a professional.

The monks may devote their entire lives exploring the relationship between man and God, and while doing so, they follow the time-honored Rule of St. Benedict and the guidelines of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance. We can be thankful that in seven locations, the same brothers augment their cosmic search with the science of fermentation, keeping venerable brewing traditions alive.

THE BEER BEAT: "Belgian bars put the boot into tourists who steal beer glasses."

I'll keep this short.

Indeed, one of the central glories of Belgian cafe culture is the presence of appropriate glassware in just about any drinking establishment, from dive to grandiose, shaped and sized, with logos. To experience this phenomenon is to understand the notion of integrity in a drinking culture.

Many years ago at the Public House, seeking to emulate this loveliness, I'd pull every string to obtain these Belgian glasses for daily use. At times they were free of charge from the wholesaler, and at other times, we paid. My rule was to refrain from selling these glasses as souvenirs if they hadn't cost us anything. If we paid for them, maybe.

This didn't stop customers from pilfering glasses, as described below. The specialty glasses also were far more prone to being broken than imperial pints or shaker pints (apart from ubiquity, one reason the latter became so popular during the "craft" revolution is their thick impermeability to shattering).

At the Public House, we eventually learned two relevant truths.

First, non-specialty glasses aren't special enough to steal without logos. They'll be broken, but they won't walk out the door under a coat or in a purse.

Second, a range of generic Belgian-style (or Bavarian Hefe-Weizen) glasses can be purchased for daily use. They fill the bill for serving within general boundaries of appropriateness.

At out forthcoming pub Pints & Union, the bottle and can selection will include beers that should be served in specialty glasses. I'll try my best to find generic examples of these, and it will work out. After all, it's about the beer, first and foremost.

Meanwhile, get over to Belgium. Once there, enjoy the excellence of the country's many beer-friendly drinking venues -- and get your shoes back when you leave.

Belgian bars put the boot into tourists who steal beer glasses, by Daniel Boffey (The Guardian)

Pubs are finding novel ways to combat illicit glass collectors, with one demanding a shoe as a deposit.

While the beer is famously good in Belgium, for some tourists it would seem the drink itself is not enough. Bars and cafes in the country’s most picturesque cities complain that tens of thousands of their stylish glasses are being lost to souvenir hunters every year. But the purveyors of Belgium’s most famous cultural artefact are fighting back, in some unorthodox ways.

It's Street Art Belgium, though perhaps the concept is untranslatable into New Albanian.

The project is called Street Art Belgium: Making Belgium Beautiful One Piece at a Time, but if you speak neither Flemish nor French, I'm here to translate the concept into New Albanian.

Of course, we'll never see it in New Albany, where the Dear Leader view are somewhat more conventionally:

Anyone priced spray paint lately?

King Leopold and "The Horrors of Belgium's Congo."

My affection for Belgium and the Belgians precludes overt flippancy, but it does not prevent an honest examination of King Leopold's legacy.

It's not a pretty sight, and it's hard not to be scathing about it. It helps to know that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was derived from the Belgian colonial subjugation of the Congo.

European royalty boasts its fair share of rogues and scoundrels, but as a dismal human being, Leopold truthfully was in another league. His personal Congolese wealth-extraction mechanism cost the lives of 10 million persons, and in many respects the Congo hasn't ever recovered from it.

Last week I watched a documentary, described here.

The Horrors of Belgium's Congo, by Manohla Dargis (New York Times)

A latecomer to colonialism, King Leopold II of Belgium searched the world for a satellite to call his very own, finally finding his prey in the Congo region of Africa. Hiding his greed behind the twinned fictions of charity and philanthropy, the king entered the Congo with the help of the explorer Henry Morton Stanley and quickly strong-armed tribal chiefs into signing away their future. Soon after, representatives from Europe and the United States delivered the region -- renamed the Congo Free State, later Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of Congo -- into Leopold's rapacious care.

The ghastly story of Leopold's reign of terror in Africa during the late 19th- and early-20th centuries forms the subject of the documentary "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death," from the British filmmaker Peter Bate.

It's not for the squeamish.

Many Americans first became aware of this through a book.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) is a best-selling popular history book by Adam Hochschild that explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the atrocities that were committed during that period.[1] In doing so, the book aimed to increase public awareness of these Belgian colonial crimes,[citation needed] successfully as it turned out.

It was refused by nine of the 10 U.S. publishing houses to which an outline was submitted, but became an unexpected bestseller and won the prestigious Mark Lynton History Prize for literary style. It also won the 1999 Duff Cooper Prize. By 2013 more than 600,000 copies were in print in a dozen languages.

The book is the basis of a 2006 documentary film of the same name, directed by Pippa Scott and narrated by Don Cheadle.

I may or may not watch this second documentary. To be sure, there are heroes in this story; primarily journalists and missionaries, who adopted the simple expedient of telling the truth.

History. It really does matter.

Campaign Diary, Chapter 10: Greenway news leads to bicycling flashbacks.

I'm the obsessive sort when I allow myself to be, and the past two years have been all about walking. However, today I got out the elderly bicycle and tooled around Midtown a bit.

When I say elderly ...

 ... that's the very same bike supporting my girth in 2004, along with my friends Bob and Tim, as well as a local horse trolling for apples. We're somewhere in the Ardennes hills of southeastern Belgium, in the process of visiting all the brewing monasteries in Belgium.

We called it the Tour de Trappist, and it was a blast.

The Ohio River Greenway has been back in the news the past couple of days, with work slated to begin on the third of four sections running through New Albany territory (from 8th Street to 18th Street). There is talk of the bridge across Silver Creek finally being started early next year.

It made me think of the forum Valla Ann Bolovschak hosted at The Grand in November of 2005. She'd been appointed New Albany’s recently representative to the Greenway Commission, and was soliciting opinions, suggestions and recommendations as to the future orientation of the project. Since then, we've finished the part from Silver Creek to 18th, and 8th to the Amphitheater.

Ten years ago, I prefaced my blog coverage of the forum with an anecdote about one of my own bicycling experiences in Europe.

Bob (pictured above) and I were bicycling in 2001 through the lovely wooded hillsides of the Franconia region of Germany, near Bamberg, and we stopped to soak up the countryside and look at a map. While doing so, we were overtaken by a group of five elderly men who we’d passed earlier in the day, before we had lost ground to them while pausing for a brief, restorative beer at one of the area’s many brewpubs.

All spoke English and were eager to exchange information about the immaculately signposted, maintained and dedicated bike route. In addition, as the precursor to a pattern we’ve observed so many times since, they were openly amazed to see Americans of any age riding bicycles in Germany.

It turns out that these well-heeled, multilingual and retired gentlemen were engaged in their 45th annual, several-hundred-kilometers-long bike jaunt in celebration of their university graduating class, and in this instance were making the trip from Frankfurt to Kulmbach – carrying light rear panniers loaded with the basics, traveling 25 to 30 mildly strenuous miles a day, then stopping for hearty meals, local beers and a good night’s sleep at an inn or bed and breakfast.

I looked at them, calculated their approximate ages, and thought, “that’s what I want to do when I get to be that old – but why wait until then.”

Even now, fourteen years later, I’m transfixed by the scene of these gracious, nonchalant, ruddy men enjoying a road trip’s worth of bicycling reunion time – and the five of them as utterly flabbergasted to see Americans riding bicycles for recreation as I was by the thought of my parents marking such an occasion by exercising in such a manner.

During the Greenway forum in 2005, it was revealed that in spite of the route's original stated intent as a roadway for automotive traffic, which in the 1990s took the form of a projected multi-million dollar vehicular bridge straight through the Loop Island Wetlands, common sense had at last prevailed, and the likely future form of the Greenway would be strictly limited insofar as motorized vehicles were concerned.

A senior citizen promptly interjected, somewhat indignantly, that to restrict the Greenway in such a fashion as not building it for automobiles would be to shortchange elderly residents (and their grandchildren) by denying them easy access to view from their car windows.

Dan Coffey, then as now the Wizard of Westside, later spoke about the critical need of making it easier for people to get across the levee from downtown to the river, noting that Scribner Place’s original design included a long ramp that would have eliminated the stairs currently required to gain a access to the river. He lamented the difficulty of climbing those stairs.

I kept thinking about the five elderly Germans on their bicycles.

There is no glib conclusion to these ruminations. As they say, it's a free country, and you can do as you please, but I'd rather keep exercising -- whether on foot or with a bike. I'm closer in age to those Germans than I was then, and I want to be like them when I'm 60-something, and beyond.

There's always mobile signboarding, too.

8. Belgian Beercycling 2000: Belgian beercycling 2000: The final beercycle ride, and postscripts.

It was the year 2000, the anticipated Euro currency conversion was around the corner but had yet to occur, and for a final day of rental beercycling on a sunny Friday in Brugge, we chose to spend a few spare guilders in the Netherlands.

At first glance, it may seem that the Netherlands is too far away from Belgium to make for a comfortable day trip, and in fact much of it is, but a non-contiguous slice of Dutch territory lies on the south side of the waterway known as the Westerschelde, or the mouth of the Schelde River as it leaves Antwerp for the ocean. This bit of the Netherlands is easily accessible by bicycle paths aimed east and north from Brugge, passing through the popular tourist village of Damme, along idyllic tree lined canals and through manure-caked working farms reminiscent of Breughel paintings.

Certainly it was the easiest of the trip’s rides, both because we’d developed legs (and posteriors) strong enough to navigate for longer periods of time, and owing to the perfectly flat nature of the terrain in the northernmost extent of Flanders. Hills and grades are almost non-existent, and the route is strewn with signs and so impeccably marked that we briefly became lost, anyway, perhaps stemming from the biggest impediment to progress during the ride: Too much DT on the Huyghe brewery tour the previous day, and too many post-tour restoratives at the famed t’Brugs Beertje specialty beer café upon our Thursday evening return to Brugge.

At a particularly confusing crossroads, a tractor-borne native pointed straight, and within minutes we were standing outside a café in the Dutch town of Sluis, and I was extracting a handful of colorful leftover guilders from a previous visit to the Netherlands in 1998 in preparation for the best we could do under the circumstances, a round of Heinekens and nibbles for all.

Since the food included herring, my day was complete.

After lunch, the ride continued to the northwest. For all of us, it was a first opportunity to experience the fabled infrastructure available to cyclists in the Netherlands. Paved paths follow alongside all roads, and clearly delineated lanes guide cyclists through urban areas. Sometimes there are intersections for cyclists that shadow the automotive ones yards away, and complete with their own sets of stop lights.

Soon we were back in Belgium, skirting just south of Knokke-Heist on the coast, and coming to the second objective: The sea and a convenient beach at Zeebrugge for a few minutes of sand and sea spray before turning due south along an industrialized canal for the ride back into Brugge and a second consecutive evening at the Beertje.

There would be a third, at the end of the full Saturday remaining to us, but the shared consensus was that the first-time visitors in the group were intent on sightseeing and shopping in the lovely if tourist-laden city of Brugge, so the rental bikes were returned and the cycling segment of the 2000 beercycling fact-finding mission concluded.

Except for Kevin Lowber, who had met us in Poperinge, the group had put in roughly 125 miles altogether, with perhaps half of that coming in two rides (Cassel and Sluis) near the end. In the touring years to come, there would be times when several of us approached 100 miles in a day, fully laden, but given our neophyte status in 2000, the inconsistent architecture of the rental bikes and the demands of food and drink, there was much to celebrate.

The journey was winding down. On Sunday morning, Kevin Richards, Buddy Sandbach and I boarded a train in Brugge and set out for Leuven, an old university city on the eastern side of Brussels that lies near the national airport where Kevin and Buddy would be departing Belgium for America on Monday morning. We’d booked a room in Leuven with the prospect of arriving and hopefully having enough time to attend a performance by the rock band Pearl Jam at the Werchter pop/rock festival taking place nearby, but Eddie Vedder’s group had canceled owing to tragic occurrences at another fest in Roskilde, Denmark a few days previous. Instead of concert-going, it looked instead to be a relaxed, “free” last day.

The commute from Brugge to Leuven hardly would have been noteworthy had not Buddy’s eyes (and wallet) been somewhat bigger than his luggage. He spent the afternoon and evening in Brugge frantically scrounging rare Belgian ales from various sales outlets, and broke away resolutely early from the closing ceremonies at Beertje to return to the hotel and find some way of packing them all.

There we revelers found him well after midnight, with bottles, toiletries and underwear heaped down the side of corridor, agonizing over the proper way to insure the safety of his souvenirs while flying home. Luckily, he managed to succeed in this aim, removing only a handful of bottles for ballast-lightening consumption in the process. Less fortunately, there were too few hours for sleeping, and as he realized come morning, a stupendous weight gain in baggage. It should suffice to say that splurging on a cab ride to the train station was much appreciated.

Still, even spared the burden of a cross-town walk, Buddy had three separate pieces of quite heavy luggage, and upon exiting the train in Leuven, he was not happy to discover that the station there is of archaic design, requiring the ascent of numerous steps to reach a passageway crossing over the tracks, not beneath them as is the case most of the time. With the assistance of two passers-by who evidently took pity at Buddy’s plight (or were eager to move him out of the way so they’d reach their train on time), he made it up, down, and over, collapsing into a waiting taxi for the ride to the hotel.

Kevin and I explored Leuven, visited its brewpub, noted the presence of the industrial Stella Artois beer factory, mounted a hill for a look at the chateau originally belonging to Leuven’s local aristocrats, and eventually settled into handy café chairs to recap the first beercycling trip with a few final rounds of Belgian ale.

Verily, the beercycling cat had been let out of the bag, the touring genie released from the bottle, and a suitable tone set for future adventures. We’d hatched our Belgian scheme while seated at Polly’s Freeze, a local ice cream institution back in Indiana, and now, after achieving the goal, we were able to offer benedictions over Chimay and beefsteak in Leuven.

It only seemed natural to echo Bob Reed’s tip-off toast:

“Here’s to us … may we never quarrel or fuss … but if by chance we should disagree … &*^%$ you, and here’s to me!

7. Belgian Beercycling 2000: Brugge and the DTs.

Thursday was a rail transfer day, and the objective to be pursued after a tasty Hotel Palace buffet breakfast of bread, butter, jam, selected cheeses and meats, and an egg was to convey the expanded group of five beercyclists by rail from Poperinge to the junction at Kortrijk, then north to Brugge. Departing the historic Belgian hop-growing town of Poperinge wasn’t easy. We took with us a full complement of ideas for future trips, many of which have come quite delightfully to fruition in the years since.

After debarking in Brugge, we executed a forced march to set up headquarters at the Hotel Europ, and then immediately doubled back to the train station for a short train trip to Ghent, specifically to the suburb of Melle, home of the Huyghe brewery. Along the way, there was a reconnoitering of the bicycle rental shop near the main square.

The excursion to Melle meant that biking would have to wait until Friday, as the genial Joe Waizmann, then of the Merchant du Vin importing company, had helpfully arranged for a Thursday afternoon tour of Huyghe, a family-owned brewer of more than a few brands of ale, including Merchant du Vin’s Duinen abbey ales and the more widely known Delirium Tremens family of strong elixirs.

As customary, I’d taken Joe’s information and initiated a dialogue with the target brewery, exchanging a couple of faxes with the Huyghe company’s contact, Alain, and fixing a tour time for 2:00 p.m. on Thursday.

At least that’s what we thought as the train departed Brugge. Unbeknownst to the group, a very long afternoon was only just beginning.

Our train ride from Brugge was brief and uneventful. There was a switch in the Ghent main station, and soon we were stepping off the small commuter platform at Melle, where precious little was observed to be occurring in the immediate vicinity. The town bore the unmistakable appearance of a one-time countryside village that had undergone industrialization in the 19th-century thanks to the proximity of waterways and railroads.

The fax I had received from Alain while still stateside clearly indicated that someone from Huyghe would meet us at the station to provide escort, but no one arrived, and after a half-hour’s wait filled with escalating fears that we’d miss the appointment, we resolved to take control and find the brewery on our own.

This wasn’t very difficult. Older breweries anywhere almost always lie next to the train tracks, and this is the case with Huyghe. Furthermore, the brewery’s street address is Brusselsesteenweg, or the main road in the general direction of Belgium’s capital. This central road could be seen a short block away, and after lining up street numbers, we followed it.

The address being sought was affixed to an older building with no obvious entryway. Newer additions extended around a corner, so we followed the trail and eventually looked up to see a huge pink elephant emblazoned on a wall, and yet still no entrance beckoned. After knocking on several doors, one opened and a young man smilingly pointed us to the rear of the building, where activity was humming. Pallets of kegs and bottles were being shifted by forklifts into waiting trucks and workers were going about their tasks, all alongside the freight rail track that now could be glimpsed running alongside the passenger track and leading directly toward the platform where we’d started.

We wandered into the area and were quickly intercepted by a man in a suit, who directed us through the warehouse to a second-floor office. Ominously, the receptionist was visibly confused at our presence. Phone calls of escalating intensity were made as we stood in a cramped foyer, killing time and ducking passers-by.

It was far past lunch, and I ate a final apple for strength as more time passed. We were given several reassurances that Alain had been paged and was expected at any moment. Finally a young man appeared, introduced himself as Alain, and noted that we had come on the wrong day. I asked him to look at the fax a bit more closely, and he went into his office seemingly unconvinced. When he returned, his face was beet red, and apologizing profusely (and unnecessarily; after all, mistakes happen), he led us into the brewery for the belated tour.

Given the misunderstandings and delays, we expected very little beyond a cursory look at the brewery and perhaps a couple of beers, but in fact a veritable tour de force already was picking up steam. It proved yet again that when beer lovers of like mind get together, anything can happen, and the passion generated by such meetings is unlike anything experienced by the dire corporate bean-counters of the world of swill.

Alain began by explaining that like many Belgian breweries of like size, family-owned Huyghe was stagnating in the 1970’s, producing ordinary pilsners for local consumption, seeing its traditional market for these beers shrink along with the demand for low-gravity table beers, and suffering from increased competition from larger, better heeled breweries. In short, Huyghe faced a questionable future when Alain’s father concluded that something had to be done. His answer to the problem was to specialize, creating ales more in keeping with Belgium’s diverse brewing heritage.

This strategy was bold and somewhat risky given the realities of the day. Belgium’s subsequent rise to international fame for the quality of its beers was foreseen by few, and Alain’s father faced resistance from other family members afraid of change. He responded by shrugging and buying them out, proceeding with the development of the flagship ale that would redeem the brewery’s fortunes: Delirium Tremens, which was given its name after a visitor remarked that he couldn’t drink more than two without risking the “D.T.’s” next morning.

Having perfected the recipe, the next step toward sales success involved coming up with a symbol, and the now-familiar pink elephant logo was drawn by a summer brewery intern for a couple cases of liquid remuneration. A quarter century later, it is one of Belgium’s most immediately recognizable beer labels.

While comparisons with Duvel are inevitable, and other strong golden ales from Belgium (Lucifer, Satan) vie for attention with the consumer, Delirium Tremens remains its own beer. It is decidedly sleek and clean, boasting a deceptive, medium body that allows hints of alcohol to peek through and remind the drinker of its strength. While Delirium Tremens may look like Budweiser, it certainly doesn’t taste like it.

The Delirium Tremens line has been extended to include Nocturnum, a dark version of the flagship brand, and for the very first time in the year 2000, Noel. Huyghe’s yuletide interpretation lies somewhere between the other two. There are no spices. The result is a firm, tawny and accomplished strong ale for winter sipping. As we walked through the brewery, and Alain animatedly explained the family business, he asked if we’d like to try the Noel – as it turned out, straight from the bright tank, as served by Alain himself into fresh DT logo glasses while he tottered on a ladder to reach the valve.

In one of the oldest parts of the original brewhouse, which has been replaced by a more modern facility in the newer wing, Huyghe has installed an excellent beer and brewing exhibit. The mini-museum includes a replica of a traditional Belgian café, complete with archaic cash register and bar games. Nearby are cases displaying glassware and historical advertising placards. After examining these, we gratefully adjourned to the contemporary, half-circle bar for our obligatory post-tour tasting.

At this juncture, with biking far from our minds and beers about to be poured, it’s worth noting that Huyghe is criticized in some quarters for releasing so many beers, which some doubters suspect are the same basic recipe with a different label attached. Alain bristles at this charge, particularly as offered by CAMRA correspondent Tim Webb, author of the massively influential “Good Beer Guide to Belgium,” and forcefully argues that with the exception of a couple of beers bound for export sales bearing export labels, all beers made at Huyghe have distinct recipes.

Perhaps for this reason, and to give us the chance to judge for ourselves, we were given the opportunity to taste seemingly every single brand brewed at Huyghe: St. Idelsbald Blonde, Bruin and Tripel, Campus, Golden Kenia (the pilsner mentioned previously), Vielle Villers Dubbel and Tripel, a few new fruit-flavored ales, and eventually a bottle of Artvelde Grand Cru that had been cellared since 1988.

Only a few of the latter remained, but Alain excitedly opened one for us, and the vintage ale was so delicious that soon Alain was on the phone calling the brewers to come up to the bar and taste it for themselves.

A dense thicket of glasses and empty bottles grew atop the bar, and then Alain proposed a toast, which I must paraphrase owing to my own bibulous role in the proceedings: To all the beer-loving Americans who have done so much to support the Belgian brewing industry, the ones who know quality, who appreciate the best, and who share in the universal love of beer.

It was a classy gesture and a memorable moment. Equally moving was Bob Reed’s impromptu assessment of the Huyghe brewery visit: “A guy can get fucked up in a place like this.”

Indeed, he can. We did. Our visit finally winding down after almost three hours inside the brewery, Alain proposed to drive us to the rail station, which was no more than a quarter-mile away, and seeing as he’d had just as many beers as us, it simply didn’t seem necessary or prudent. We thanked him and gathered our generous gifts -- t-shirts, pink elephant suspenders and DT glasses -- and stumbled into the late Melle afternoon, the sky now clear after rain and mist earlier. Heading down the narrow alley next to the rail line, I imagined food above all else; the weight of the ale was heavy on an empty stomach, and I recalled there being an eatery or two opposite the station.

Suddenly, somewhere to the rear, the approaching hum of a car was heard. I heard Alain’s voice. Screeching to a halt, he emerged with stacks of coasters, which Bob had requested earlier, and in the process, cementing his reputation as the perfect host for one of the best brewery tours I’ve experienced.

Beer was momentarily forgotten as the neighborhood “friterie” came into view. “Friterie” translates into fast food, Belgian style, and you must forget everything you’ve heard about carbonade, mussels and other gems of indigenous beer cuisine. As in so many other locales, Belgian fast food is the domain of the deep fryer, and not just for preparing the country’s famed french fries (parboiled before deep frying, and served with mayonnaise or one of several sauces).

In fact, most anything else that will fit into a Euro-standard fry basket, presumably including salad, tofu or whatever healthy food that might benefit from a high-temperature lard bath, can be found at the Friterie. Famished and intoxicated, behaving not unlike the early morning crowd at White Castle, we crowded into the mom ‘n’ pop operation. The former took the order after our language-challenged group took turns pointing to the object behind the counter, and the latter expertly deep-frying the choice while Mama made change.

Thus we cornered the market on saturated fat, our containers dripping with grease from wonderful artery-busting food, and climbed the steps to the platform to await the train, all the while shoveling with our fingers.

Delirium tremens … I’ll say.

Tomorrow: A final ride.

6. Belgian Beercycling 2000: A pause for perspective before the tour concludes.

Readers will have noticed by now that the serialized account of Belgian beercycling in the year 2000 is rather longer on beer than it is on bicycling. Admittedly, the hop vs. derailleur balance sheet is skewed in favor of the liquid, but because it remains a valid reflection of our priorities at the time, I’m letting it go and recording events as they occurred.

Or, as I recall them occurring.

With time has come the realization that the 2000 beercycling jaunt truly was a significant turning point. I had commenced traveling in Europe back in 1985 at the age of 24, often alone, always by train or bus, and even on foot at times, with the bare minimum of luggage – first a gym bag, and then a convertible interior frame backpack.

In 1998 and 1999 came the first quantum leaps, as dabbling in group beer tourism by motorcoach started up in earnest. Groups held the prospect of continued personal growth by combining a steadily increasing level of expertise on European beer and travel affairs with a concurrent opportunity to use economies of scale to my benefit, i.e., by having the group’s fees help subsidize the organizer for his labors. After all, you’re not off the clock when watching over a group of thirty people drinking beer, even if the work time is occurring in Europe and not New Albany.

Obviously these were more complicated adventures; nonetheless, they could be organized even by the likes of someone like me who really hadn’t been paying all that close attention to the logistics of groups. It portended well, but having succeeded at more lush travel orchestration, my attention was immediately diverted toward the basics. That’s because I had resumed bicycling stateside in 1999 after a two-decade hiatus.

On the 1999 group trip, it was the first time that I’d bothered to notice what so many Europeans had been trying to tell me all those years as they flew past on two wheels: A bicycle provides an unparalleled way to get around, especially in places like the Netherlands and Germany that are custom designed to facilitate non-motorized transport.

Not only that, but it is plain fun.

Accordingly, this notion rapidly grew into an obsession, and under the theory that a trial run would be a good thing, Kevin Richards and I plotted the inaugural 2000 foray around the notion of using towns as bases and renting bicycles for countryside excursions.

There would be no packing and unpacking of bikes from the hard-shell travel cases, no navigating treacherous airline policy inconsistencies, no major mechanical difficulties necessitating spur-of-the-moment repairs without a hub to return to easily, no panniers (i.e., saddlebags) to be loaded and unloaded, and almost none of the hundreds of other aspects of bicycle touring that have been experienced during subsequent rips, when we have moved from place to place entirely on our own bicycles brought from home, and self-sufficient in many ways.

The trial run was another great success, and so if logically follows that the story you’ve been reading, originally written for the FOSSILS homebrewing club newsletter in 2001 and punched up for publication here, was intended as encouragement for our fledgling beercycling cadre to persevere and further broaden the scope of its recreational beer hunting so as to work toward real touring.

In the years that followed the 2000 ceremonial dipping of toes into the water, there was a second rental beercycling excursion in 2001 to Belgium and Germany (with a long train ride in between), followed by the first touring beercycling event with our own bicycles in 2003, when I biked from Frankfurt to Vienna, and was joined by some of the lads at pre-arranged meeting points along the way.

We immediately regrouped for a summertime “Tour de Trappist” cross-country jaunt in 2004, which took the beercyclists to all of Belgium’s brewing monasteries. After an off year in 2005, the gang we came together again in 2006 and rode much of the Prague to Vienna Greenway following a brief introductory respite spent beercycling around Bamberg. 2008 brought a beercycling journey to the triennial Poperinge hop festival, then all the way up the coast to Haarlem in Netherlands.

Meanwhile, group trips were not abandoned. Two took place in 2002, and the most recent, the now legendary 2004 German-Czech beer blast, was so incredibly perfect that I’ve taken a few years off from organizing for fear that it might never be matched.

Then, something else happened. With the advent of Bank Street Brewhouse in 2009 came a forced three-year curtailment of all foreign travel, one borne of the demands of tending the newborn. At present, toes are being dipped tepidly into the water. BSB is in a state of reinvention, and I've become more of a walker than a cyclist. I remain committed to any and all forms of beer travel, whether on bikes, in buses or on foot. At this point, I'll take what I can get, when I can get it.

Thanks to all of those who have accompanied me during these marvelous times. I can only wish that they’ve been as good for you as they have for me.

Next: Beercycling 2000 comes to a "delirious" close in Brugge

5. Belgian Beercycling 2000: Poperinge and Cassel.

The biking beer hunters had managed to survive the onslaught of the Danish invaders on the final evening in Tournai. Poperinge was next in line as host for three days of biking in Flanders, and with it the belated presence of the Fifth Musketeer, Kevin Lowber.

“The (German) attack had not penetrated to the decisive heights of Cassel and the Mont des Cats, the possession of which would have compelled the (British) evacuation of the Ypres salient and the Yser position. No great strategic movement had become possible, and the Channel ports had not been reached. The second great offensive had not brought about the hoped-for decision.”

--From the official German account of the offensives on the Western Front in 1918, as quoted by John Keegan in his book, “The First World War.”

When the fatigued quartet arrived by train on Sunday at lunchtime in the Belgian “hop town” of Poperinge, a place that had the good fortune to remain somewhat safely behind British lines throughout the Great War and was spared the wholesale devastation suffered only ten kilometers away in Ieper (Ypres), the street called Ieperstraat that leads from the tiny train station to the center of town was packed with shoppers, strollers and snackers.

The festive atmosphere was a complete surprise, as most stores and shops aren’t open on Sunday, but we later learned that it was a special annual shopping day, precisely the sort of phenomenon to make a beercyclist thirsty as he waits for the next spoked fix.

Checking into the legendary Hotel/Restaurant Palace, we found our newly arrived comrade Kevin Lowber carving a massive slab of beef, anxiously awaiting us in the shadow of an equally oversized bottle of red wine. He’d just come in to Poperinge from Brussels. Biking in and around the town was slated to begin on Monday, and this seemed to merit a map study and strategy and tactics session. Adjourning across the hall to the hotel’s cozy world-class beer bar, we discussed the riding itinerary for the coming days.

A plan of attack quickly fell into place. Monday would take us to Ieper for a ride through the battlefield sites south and east of town. On Tuesday, we would meet Luc Dequidt, chief of Poperinge’s amazingly comprehensive tourist bureau, for a two-wheeled tour of local attractions: The St. Sixtus abbey (home of the scrumptious Westvletern Trappist ales), the brewing town of Watou, the Helleketel forest, and row after row of the hop trellises that take on a life of their own each three years during the town’s hop festival.

Wednesday was chosen as the day for us to attempt what German military might had failed to achieve more than eight decades before: Seize the heights of Mont des Cats and Cassel. From our Poperinge base, this projected foray into France wouldn’t be very difficult, totaling less than 30 miles roundtrip; more importantly, it would provide a glimpse of northern French beer culture, which naturally was my ulterior motive all along.

Riding east towards Ieper on Monday, the French hills almost always could be seen rising on the horizon to the south, and although they aren’t particularly big, the flatness of Flanders magnifies their significance and one can readily understand their strategic importance in wartime. There were constant reminders of combat on Monday, as our journey took us past numerous Great War monuments and cemeteries of the British Commonwealth forces, whose final resting places attested to the global scale of the First World War: Irish, Australian, Canadian and Indian soldiers, buried alongside lads from Manchester and Newcastle. The resting places of Belgian, French and German soldiers also were seen.

Monday’s midday break brought us to the center of Ieper, a town utterly devastated from 1914-1918, then painstakingly rebuilt in the years preceding the next world conflagration. When the second war swept through Belgium, one young Ieper native resolved to escape. He made it somehow to then-colony of Belgian Congo, and later to South Africa, where he enlisted in the British armed forces and fought against the German occupiers until war’s end in 1945. Later he founded a restaurant and pub, sold it, then opened another, called Ter Posterie for its location opposite Ieper’s post office.

I can’t remember this man’s name, and certainly he would have no reason to remember mine, but nonetheless I met him on three different occasions and have always enjoyed the beer, food and hospitality at Ter Posterie. By 2000, active control of the business had long since passed to his daughter, but the old man still frequented the establishment, and when glimpsing an English speaker, would spin his life story for the visitor in a narrative honed over thousands of ale-side retellings. Ter Posterie is another Belgian classic, with many dozens of bottled ales, a few more on draft, savory food and an outdoor terrace, where we sat and discussed our first half-day’s ride.*

Tuesday’s riding schedule was light, but rich in intangibles owing to the presence of Luc and his wife. We kept a leisurely pace on the country lanes radiating from Poperinge, never very far from the smell of manure and the sight of hops. It was a pub crawl on human-powered wheels: Westvleteren 12-degree Trappist at the terrace of the newly built tasting café opposite the abbey, then through the woods and fields to the fabled “brewing village” of Watou and refreshing Witbier from the small town’s Van Eecke brewery, then south and east via wooded lanes back to Poperinge.

At the edge of the Helleketel forest there is a small brewery and tasting café known as the Bie**; unfortunately, it wasn’t open on Tuesday. Amazingly, yet another brewery is located near Watou, which is really no more than a collection of houses: St. Bernardus, which used to produce beer by contract for the monks of St. Sixtus under the Sixtus name. The contract was terminated, and the brewery began to brew its own line of abbey-style ales that arguably is the finest of all secular recreations.

Wednesday proved to be the highlight of the Poperinge interlude, with the group primed for climbing the two French hills and having lunch in Cassell. Arriving winded at the summit of the Mont des Cats, we saw a conveniently situated Trappist monastery, which might have provided liquid incentive had it been situated a few miles north in Belgium. Unfortunately, there are no Trappist breweries in France, so instead the monastery makes acclaimed cheeses and butter, some of which were destined for sampling later at our midday feast.

For beer, one must descend the Mont des Cats and proceed to the small town of St. Sylvestre Cappell, home to the brewery that produces Trois Monts, or “three mountains.” Wherever the third one is located, we did not climb it. Trois Monts is exemplary proof that good beer and France are not mutually exclusive, although this view continues to be held by many otherwise intelligent and discerning beer aficionados, whose Francophobia is permitted to hold sway at the expense of their taste buds.

They’re missing good things. Bieres de garde perhaps are best understood as a sort of appellation of origin, describing beers from northern France, but beyond that there are few hard and fast rules. Often they are made with top-fermenting yeast, but not always. Usually they are aged in a process akin to lagering. Colors and strengths range across the spectrum. Many, but not all, are bottled in 750 ml corked bottles. If there is any one characteristic that seems common among the better French bieres de garde, it is a richly complex malt character. These are beers that taste fine alone, but better when they accompany food.

Thus, having scaled the heights of the Mont des Cats and scrambled down the other side in pursuit of a restorative glass of Trois Monts, we found it in a tiny roadside café where the proprietor spoke no English but was happy to learn that we weren’t “English”, and who seemed amused by our interest in the local brew. Temporarily sated, our final and more formidable objective lay before us: Cassel, the town straddling the top of the hill of the same name.

A half-hour’s ride along the highway brought us to the foot of the hill, and we began the winding ascent that culminated in the town’s main square. A narrow lane took us further toward the top, ending in a wooded park with a large windmill situated to our left. I knew from previous research that this was the Grail, for located just beneath the windmill was our real reason for coming: T' Kasteel Hof.

The windmill is the highest point in Flanders, with unobstructed views far and wide even on a hazy day, and the café just below it, one that clings to the side of the steep hill, is considered the finest beer café in France. I’ve been to few others, but it would be difficult to imagine any better.

T’ Kasteel Hof specializes in all things local. The food is from French Flanders, as are the beers. We found seats on the patio after walking through the crowded main room, where spontaneous applause greeted our entrance; bowing in appreciation of this unexpected acknowledgement of our collective biking prowess, we were disappointed to learn that the group of senior citizens actually was applauding a speech of some sort by one of its own.

Instructed that the kitchen was being overloaded by the tour group and only cold food was available, each of us opted for a mixed cheese and pate plate. Three would have sufficed for all five beercyclists, such was the size of the portions. Three 750 ml bottles of French Bieres de Garde were shared: Hommelpap (four hop varieties, earthy and a moderate 7% abv), Kasteel (the house ale) and Pot Flamand, the latter two falling on the sweetly malty side of the flavor spectrum, as I expected.

As if a convivial atmosphere, bountiful food and delicious beer weren’t reason enough to seek out t’ Kasteel Hoff, the pub also boasts a shop for carry-out sales: Bieres de garde, local honey and jam, liqueurs, post cards and souvenirs -- more of each than any of us were able to carry, and Kevin Lowber drew the short straw in this regard: He had made the mistake of bringing his backpack, which was filled with booty gathered by the others, our rental bikes being unequipped with panniers or hauling apparatus.

With ground to cover back to Poperinge and expressing ample regrets over having to leave so soon, we lugged our booty to the bikes and debarked in a meandering northerly direction, enjoying the countryside and melting away the lunchtime caloric intake. The group seemed hale and hearty, except perhaps Buddy, and therein is yet another story.

On the night preceding our Cassell reconnoitering, after benedictory drinks with Luc, we’d dined as a group in the Hotel Palace’s restaurant and enjoyed several bottles of French red wine with the uniformly excellent meats, breads and pastas. After dinner, adjourning once again to the nearby bar and seeking the inimitable service provided by Guy, the owner, Kevin Richards elected to continue drinking wine. For reasons that remain obscure to this very day, Buddy felt emboldened to undertake a suicide mission, attempting to match Kevin bottle for bottle.

Knowing better from previous experiences, the remainder of the contingent nursed Belgian ales and retired to bed early in preparation for the big day. For those readers who have witnessed such ill-conceived ventures in the past, it should come as no surprise that during our ascent of the two French hills, Buddy began to perceive the error of his ways, particularly during lunch, when he was overheard to remark that a nap would feel good. On the ride back to Poperinge, he was flagging. For a while, it seemed that Bob might have to offer last rites, but he rallied and finished the course. Back at the Hotel Palace, bikes safely returned to the shop, and with appetites stoked by the day’s activities, Buddy went straight to bed.

For the rest of us, a meal on the main square at Café Paix and a few ales during the evening’s televised Euro Cup soccer match capped off a long and fruitful day. Not for the first time, I asked myself why it had taken me so long to discover the joys of biking in Europe.

As a reminder, once every three years (2014 is happening now), Poperinge celebrates its heritage of hops with a festival that captures the attention of beer lovers throughout the world, but remains consummately local in orientation, with much of the town actively participating in the fun. The town welcomes visitors at all times, not only during the festival, and it is hard to overstate the many charms of the area, especially for those infatuated with Belgian beer. Poperinge is eternally friendly, relaxed, tidy and efficient. As has happened so many times since, it was with grudging reluctance that my friends and I group departed on Thursday morning, walking back up Ieperstraat to board the train to Brugge and travel to the final phase of a remarkable trip.

Tomorrow, a pause for perspective before the train leaves for Brugge. 

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* During the course of several visits subsequent to the 2000 trip recounted here, Ter Posterie’s colorful founder was observed to be sadly descending into advanced Alzheimer’s disease, and I believe he has now passed away. He will be remembered.

** In 2007, the Bie’s rural tasting room remains intact, and the company has a few other outposts in the region, but the brewing now is done a few miles away in Loker.

4. Belgian Beercycling 2000: An evening at Cave a Biere, Danes included.

As we rode our bikes down narrow Wallonian country lanes not far removed from the outskirts of Tournai and our base camp at the Hotel d’Alcantara, a clear and warm Saturday afternoon suddenly turned blustery and overcast. The Cochonette-laced warm fuzzies from a lengthy session at Brasserie A Vapeur on its monthly brewing day dissipated rapidly in the face of a brisk headwind, made more formidable by legs still tired from the previous day’s mountain biking excursion in the woods and fields of the Pays du Collines.

However, the sobering return workout was all for the best, because a celebratory and surely taxing evening lay ahead.

Awaiting our return at the hotel were three Danes of the apocalypse: Kim Wiesener, Kim Andersen and Allan Gamborg. Coincidentally, they had gathered in Wallonia for the European soccer championships being held in the summer of 2000 at various venues throughout Belgium and the Netherlands, and after being made aware of the beercycling visit, conspired to include us in their itineraries.

These three cosmopolitan natives of Denmark are bosom friends of long standing, each of them multilingual, well-traveled and professionally accomplished in his chosen field. When a soccer match is taking place, each of them also is prone to reverting with dazzling speed to a childlike state, one understood internationally and intuitively by all sporting males.

Their life stories would fill a volume, and such a biographical rendering lies beyond my immediate task of describing the 2000 beercycling trip, but according to tradition, I’m permitted one digression. Here it is, in one of several versions.

Back in the day …

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My friendship with the Danes goes back to 1987, and is inexorably intertwined with that of my illustrious longtime partner in crime, Barrie Ottersbach, who was unable to join us in Tournai in 2000.

That fateful summer of ‘87, an unsuspecting Kim Wiesener was the tour leader for a “youth” travel group visiting the Soviet Union and Poland, and Barrie and I were enthusiastic and only marginally youthful participants (we were 27).

Legend has it that Kim fell under Barrie’s spell (or was it the other way around?) on a hair-raising Aeroflot flight from Copenhagen to Moscow, where I joyously met the group, having arrived in the capital of the evil empire by way of a 36-hour train trip from Hungary during which I was kept company by a bag of fresh cherries, two loaves of bread, a salami from Szeged and two bottles of Bull’s Blood wine.

On the morning following the boozy evening of the group’s belated arrival, all of us were supposed to meet in the hotel lobby before setting out for a bus tour of Moscow. Kim was mildly concerned when Barrie failed to appear for roll call; I reassured him that all was well, and that Barrie was in safe hands, having ventured into the Soviet underworld with “Bill,” the friendly neighborhood black market sales representative who I’d met earlier under similar circumstances.

At that point, and not even a full day into the excursion, Kim understood that it would be a long journey, but he was reassured when Barrie appeared later that afternoon brandishing a softball-sized wad of colorful rubles. For the remainder of our stay in the USSR, Barrie gleefully depleted the ridiculously huge bankroll on lavish restaurant meals, caviar, vodka and champagne; beer was difficult to find, and the rubles worthless elsewhere in the world. For a brief time, Barrie himself occupied a sales representative position on the fringe of the black market, profitably reselling rubles back into hard currency for those members of our group who were too frightened or squeamish to trade on the streets.

This introductory lesson in entrepreneurial initiative duly completed, we moved on to Leningrad by overnight express train just in time for an impromptu Fourth of July celebration. Kim, Barrie and I gathered on the grassy, mosquito-infested bank of an urban canal, a scene made complete when a bottle of the finest Russian vodka materialized from Kim’s backpack. Illuminated by the White Night, we were introduced for the first time to Allan, who was passing through the city with a tour group of his own.

Ominously, as the bottle was passed around, its contents ingested and people slowly got to know each other, Kim and Allan began speaking in hushed tones about Denmark’s answer to Barrie: Kim Andersen, hereafter to be known as Big Kim. Their descriptions of Big Kim were offered to us in impeccable English, although occasionally they would lapse into Danish or even Russian in search of the proper words to explain this larger-than-life phenomenon.

Brief stays in the oppressed Baltic lands of Latvia and Lithuania followed Leningrad, and then Warsaw and Krakow, with too many anecdotal tales to remember, much less relate: Hoisting Nick’s American flag above the hotel in Leningrad, and then watching him trading it to a railway employee for a huge tub of caviar … an elderly fellow tourist mistaking the liquid in our vodka bottle for mineral water and gulping it down on a scorching hot day at the Polish-Soviet border as we waited for the train’s wheel carriages to be changed … building the “Leaning Tower of Pivo” from empty export Carlsberg cans in a Riga hard currency bar … the well-endowed Danish lass Metta’s provocative push-ups at a meet-and-greet with Lithuanian students … wild going-away parties in Warsaw, where Barrie and I drank wine with our leggy blonde Polish tour guide and a few of the group’s stragglers before departing for the city’s cavernous train station and commencing desperate and futile foraging for food and drink prior to the long ride to Prague and our first taste of draft Pilsner Urquell.

Our amazing, hyperkinetic tour leader Kim W. was right in the thick of most of these anecdotes, and at the conclusion of the trip we exchanged addresses with him, promising to keep in touch. In fact, Barrie and Kim agreed to meet later that summer, when Barrie would return to Copenhagen for his flight back to the United States. You can bet that even then, Kim’s wheels were spinning: What could be done to bring Barrie and Bik Kim together in Copenhagen?

In the meantime, Barrie and I embarked upon the beer-based itinerary that we had plotted in advance for the remainder of our time in Europe, first traveling from Prague to Munich, where we met Don Barry and Bob Gunn for three epochal days of Bavarian beer hall carousing, then in the company of Bob to Paris and the D-Day beaches. Barrie and I crossed to Ireland aboard the “Guinness ferry”, meeting Tommy, a newspaperman and good friend of Don’s, and later watching U2 perform at the Cork soccer stadium, then experiencing the wonders of Brian and his “High-B” Hibernian Pub, and marveling at the classic pleasures of the Irish countryside.

As the revelry continued, I didn’t think there would be enough time for me to accompany Barrie to Denmark and then double back to Brussels and my own return flight, but at a pub somewhere in Ireland, after my tenth pint of Guinness, I changed my mind.

Barrie and I concocted a plan to surprise Kim Wiesener with my delightfully unexpected presence, and we refined the insidious plot over smoked salmon and Bailey’s Irish Cream (both charged to ever groaning credit cards) while aboard the ship back to France. In Paris, we caught an overnight train to Copenhagen, and contrary to so many plans that Barrie and I have made over the years, this one came perfectly to fruition.

Soon after debarking in Copenhagen we were reunited, burrowed safely in Kim’s tiny apartment with chilled Tuborgs in hand and songs in our hearts. Following opening toasts, our devious host divulged his own surprise: An evening with Big Kim had already been arranged. Finally, Ottersbach would meet Andersen, and the world was advised to forget the “Thrilla in Manila”; instead, onlookers were to get ready for the “Battle of the Titans,” to be held in the beer venue called the Elephant & Mouse, or Mouse and Elephant, where we were informed there would be copious quantities of draft Elephant beer, Carlsberg’s fine, sturdy and strong lager.

It was to be our first visit to the M & E, a small and dignified pub near the main square, where the only sign of identification above the front door is a small plaque depicting – what else? – a mouse and an elephant. On the second floor of the pub, a handmade elephant head adorns the wall behind the wall. Draft Elephant Beer pours from the snout; the tusk is the tap handle.*

Big Kim arrived along with Graham, a British friend who, like Kim Wiesener and I, chose to nurse just a couple of half-liter glasses (at $7 a pop, somewhat financially burdensome at the time) while watching the spectacle unfold. As predicted, Big Kim and Barrie proved to be perfectly matched human beings, both with a fondness for alcohol of any sort, hot and spicy food in large quantities, impossibly tall tales and jokes, and endless, infectious tsunamis of irresistible laughter.

Big Kim and Barrie approached the high-gravity Elephant Beer at full throttle, and much merriment ensued. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth one, Barrie stumbled; accounts vary, but we’ll gently infer that some of the Elephant Beer didn’t stay down.

Advantage, Andersen.

After several hours, and with monetary reserves reaching dangerously low levels, we decided to continue drinking at an establishment where Metta (of Lithuanian push-up fame) worked as a bartender. As we stood on the street corner contemplating taxi strategies, Big Kim suddenly broke free of the group and wildly staggered into the middle of the street in an effort to hail a cab to take him home. We quickly subdued him, dodging cars and loading him into our own taxi to proceed to the next planned stop.

With this unforced error of Big Kim’s, Ottersbach had again pulled even.

Now it was a brutal battle of attrition, with the clock ticking and everyone involved drunk and fatigued. Both Barrie and Big Kim made it through big export bottles of Pilsner Urquell at the second bar, after which we returned to Kim Wiesener’s apartment for obligatory nightcaps, the outcome still very much in doubt. Barrie and Big Kim both opened their bottled beers. Barrie finished his, but Big Kim stole away, ostensibly to use the toilet, and was found a short time later sleeping on the host’s bed.

Seemingly, it was a victory for Ottersbach, but as all concerned were physically unable to tally points in their besotted condition, the Battle of the Titans was fittingly declared a draw.

Many years have passed since that epic summer and our first meeting with Kim, Allan and Big Kim. Certainly all of us have changed, but the friendship lives on. We five have met many times, in many places, and too many for me to remember (Allan would love for me to relate the story of the “Danish lunch” at his apartment in 1989, the orange couch and the real meaning of P-F-L, but it will have to wait for another session), but they’ve all been special – as I knew the meeting in Tournai would be, even if Barrie couldn’t be a part of it.

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So it was that the cyclists returning from the Renaissance brewer’s regularly scheduled seminar met the football-loving Danes at the hotel as scheduled, and we began haggling over the details of the evening’s festivities. The non-negotiable idea, as conveyed to me with much wagging of fingers, was to partake of the scheduled feast of lobster tail and ale at the Cave a Biere at the precise time of the hour-long break between matches, both of which were far too important for the aficionados to miss.

Barrie’s absence was widely lamented, and each of us resolved to drink one or more beers for him, although we recognized that it would have taken far more than that to keep him going had he actually been present.

We set off on foot to search for a suitable place to watch sports, and a big screen television was duly located in a café just off the main square. There we settled into the Turkey-Portugal match with the help of draft Hoegaarden Wit, which served as a gentle restorative following the biking and imbibing rigors of the day. I stole away and walked down to the riverfront to tell the matron at the Cave a Biere that we’d be a bit late for dinner owing to the imperative of sports. She rolled her eyes and smiled indulgently: Let boys be boys, and there’d still be enough food and beer left whenever we made it back.

Soon it became apparent that the critical match-up wasn’t taking place on the television screen. Much in the same way that Big Kim’s initial meeting with Barrie resembled a gladiatorial marathon, the merry Dane’s previous experience with Kevin Richards – an all-day beer-drinking session during one of Big Kim’s visits to New Albany – had been both effusive and expansive. Now there was renewal.

Appropriately, upon our arrival at the Cave for what was intended as a brief respite between matches, Kevin began urging Big Kim to join him at the high-gravity end of the Belgian brewing spectrum, and together they began despoiling the café’s excellent selection of Trappist ales: Rochefort, Chimay, Westmalle and Orval. The rest of us gamely followed suit, and to my surprise, as the stock of Trappists began to deplete to the accompaniment of a happily ringing cash register, the second soccer match was largely forgotten.

In short, yet another memorable evening had begun, and in the fashion of such gatherings, all betting ceased, and an internal logic took over. It would have to be respected.

Lobster tails and side orders of potatoes and vegetables soon appeared on the table and were quickly devoured, and the steady stream of Belgian ale, divided among the usual suspects, produced the expected tomfoolery and an escalating series of tales that purported to depict exploits of past drinking bouts. I recall a cell phone appearing, and an attempt to call Barrie. In the general cacophony, it isn’t clear whether the call ever went through, although our absent Musketeer later swore that not only was the call duly received, but that the phone was never properly shut off and he was left with twenty minutes of jocularity recorded on his answering machine for perpetual enjoyment.

The otherwise stern matron of the Cave seemed much amused at our antics and presided over the international gathering with grace, going so far as to pose willingly for a photo with Buddy. I made no attempt to take notes on the beers or to record what I’d sampled, seeing as all were old favorites that had treated me well before, and could be expected to be as forgiving again.

Bob blessed the raucous group numerous times: “Here’s to us … ” Kim, Allan and I recalled our previous 1999 meeting in Moscow, reliving the evening of the metal detector at the brewpub, the private table dancer who wasn’t minding the mint, and shoes filled with Volga mud. Big Kim and Kevin continued knocking them back at a prodigious pace.

At some point much later in the evening, through the haze of three too many Trappists, but after there had been a monetary settlement, I watched as Kevin, Big Kim, Allan and Bob Reed suddenly rose from their seats and filed out with the solemnity of a funeral procession – except it was they who were embalmed. Their destination was unclear. Apparently it was time to go, so Kim Wiesener and I pulled Buddy from the arms of our hostess and the three of us began weaving back to the hotel through darkened, damp streets, kicking at the litter left behind by revelers on a festive summer’s evening.

It was a stone cold sleep. I was curious next morning, so I asked Kevin: When you left the Cave, was it because Allan had called a taxi to take all of you back to the hotel? Kevin scratched his head and confessed to not remembering whether they had been driven or walked. Moments later, I asked Bob the same question, and he couldn’t recall, either. Suspecting it would be useless to ask Big Kim, I received confirmation of the taxi order from a shrugging Allan.

We went our separate ways on Sunday morning after breakfast, the Danes moving out by rental car to attend the next Eurocup match-up, and the bikers heading west by train to Poperinge and the second phase of the journey.

In the next installment, we commence a love affair with the good people of Poperinge.

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* Sadly, the pub is no more.