30 years ago today: 1987 European summer's end.

Unaffordable food in Brussels.

Previously: 30 years ago today on THE BEER BEAT: Elephant, Mouse, wonderful friends and a Titanic Struggle.

--

Day 120 ... Thursday, August 13
Copenhagen. Barr home. Very quiet -- Tuborg

Day 121 ... Friday, August 14
Copenhagen (overnight train ↓ to Brussels)

Day 122 ... Saturday, August 15
Brussels

Day 123 ... Sunday, August 16
Brussels → Atlanta → Louisville

Given the exhaustion of Barrie's clash with his fellow titan on Wednesday evening, I'll never know how he was able to awaken on Thursday morning, calmly pull together his belongings and stuff them into his oversize, military-issue duffel bag, and start making bus connections to Copenhagen's airport for his flight home.

Hungover isn't the word, but the necessary tasks somehow were managed. I rode with my pal and saw him through the gates, ending an incredible summer's beering through the continent, then retraced my connections to Kim Wiesener's apartment to begin mimicking the Average White Band's immortal advice.

The remaining days abroad were an anti-climax of sorts, but in the final analysis, that's what detox is all about.

Kim and I had a Tuborg or two on Thursday evening, which seemed appropriate given my afternoon's exploration around the vicinity of the brewery, which sadly has long since ceased to exist.

I have no recollection at all of Friday, certain only that I booked an overnight couchette out of Copenhagen for Brussels, arriving on Saturday morning to a pre-booked hostel bunk. The remainder of the day was devoted to packing and walking. In later years, I'd have spent this time sampling ales and eating mussels, but finances were perilously low.

Apart from shrapnel, the remainder of my Belgian francs were depleted for budget-travel-grade food on Saturday evening. More worryingly, my one-month Eurailpass unceremoniously expired at midnight Saturday, and while I could easily walk to the train station on Sunday morning, I wouldn't have the fare for the trip to the airport without cashing my last $100 traveler's check.

I didn't want to do this, so ... I altered the handwritten date on the railpass, somewhat ineptly as it turned out, because on Day 123, halfway to the airport, I was controlled. The railway employee was having none of my forgery, but asked to see my plane ticket.

Convinced that I was leaving Belgium, he invalidated the railpass but didn't write a citation. Back home I flew, and was met at the airport -- by someone. Barrie? Bob?

And the rest, I suppose, is history.

Next: A summary.

30 years ago, April 16: The 1987 European crusade begins in Brussels and Brugge.

Previously: the introduction

Thirty years ago this summer, I was in Europe. It was Round Two in the chronicle of foreign adventures. The debut previously has been described in great detail, ending in August of 1985, when an idea began taking root.

AFTER THE FIRE: Euro ’85, Part 34 … The final chapter, in which lessons are learned and bridges burned.

 ... Once wasn’t enough. There’d have be another, and if so, how would I arrange my life for what might be two long years, until my funds enabled the next escape from our stifling Reaganite compound?

There was a conclusion.

Europe changed my life. What I didn’t notice at the time was my life changing in order to get to Europe. Finally, I cared about something, and finally, out of nowhere, emerged a work ethic.

Who’d have guessed it?

The preceding narrative was constructed with the help of souvenirs, receipts and a few stray notes, but significantly, it lacked visual reinforcement, as I'd not gotten around to digitizing vast stacks of old slides into a semblance of usefulness.

Regular readers will recall my purchase some months back of an Epson scanner capable of assisting in this effort. I'm not sure exactly how many slides are in my possession. They originally were taken during my trips abroad, circa 1985 - 1994, using old-school Pentax cameras, one manual and the other automatic. The slides have been in boxes, unseen, for more than 20 years.

Arbitrariness in collating at long last has yielded to a process approximating progress-by-design, and now I'm in a position to document my four-month-long 1987 trip to Europe. This time around, the images will take precedence.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going back to the trip's start in mid-April and playing it forward. Assuming sustained effort on my part, I'll soon return to a point where periodic updates roughly jibe with the "30 years ago today" organizational conceit. Until then, I'm playing catch-up.

I hope you're entertained, although in truth, it's something I'm doing primarily for me. I have no choice except to live in the current world, and I'm happy with that, but for a few minutes each day, I'm exploring my past ... before I forget it entirely.

---

My flight landed in Brussels on Thursday, April 16, 1987.

The rough itinerary began with a one-month Eurailpass in Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy until mid-May, then crossing into the allegedly forbidding East Bloc for two months, to emerge in mid-July.

By this time I'd be in the company of my friend Barrie Ottersbach, and a second one-month railpass would be activated. We'd explore Germany, France, Ireland, and wherever else the train tracks took us.

The first night of my second European vacation was spent in Sleep Well, a Brussels hostel. The next morning my railpass was initiated and I set out for Brugge (in Flemish; it's Bruges in French). The plan was to spend three nights there, April 17, 18 and 19.

In the thirty years following this maiden voyage to Brugge -- I prefer the Flemish -- I've been there on at least seven separate occasions. As with so many other cumulative experiences, it is difficult to eliminate what I've learned since, and to recall how it felt the very first time.

As with so many other European destinations, it mostly felt confusing. At the risk of over-simplifying, European culture was far more localized then. Crossing borders really seemed like passages into distinctly different places. Multinational infrastructure was present, just not pervasive.

In addition, no one was staring down at their smart phones.

Upon debarking in Brugge, I navigated a path with a paper map directly to the targeted youth hostel. At the time, it was known as the Snuffel Sleep-In, and a major selling point was daily Happy Hour, which lasted precisely one hour and offered small (10 ounces?) glasses of mass-market lager (Maes Pils?) for roughly 40 cents each.

That a hostel even had a bar was innovation enough for me. Happy Hour worked wonderfully to soothe my anxieties, even if it contributed nothing to expanding my appreciation of indigenous Belgian ales -- which as it turned out, took far longer. Snuffel still exists, although it doesn't look remotely the same.

The first photo of 1987 shows the spires of St. Salvator (left), and the Church of Our Lady (right). I remember being fascinated by the misty skyline and tree removal work-in-progress.

From the window of my room at Snuffel's, the local wholesaler is seen unloading kegs of beer for Happy Hour.

My memories of this first trip to Brugge center on a vague mishmash of cobblestones, bricks and canals. The Hotel Spinola (painted on the whitewashed wall) seems to have disappeared, although it might have been renamed.

Hundreds of years ago, Brugge's water connection to the sea became silted, and in effect, the city was rendered into ... yes, a backwater (literal pun intended). Commerce slowed, time passed and the city remained largely as it was.

During the late 19th-century, tourists from the United Kingdom began rediscovering the Old World charms of the continent, an interest facilitated by ferries and railroads. These visitors gradually transformed Brugge into a year-round vacation destination, which it remains today, and provided obvious incentives to restore rather than demolish.

Brugge also was lucky, being situated outside the war zones of the 20th century. Consequently, this canal and these medieval commercial buildings remained intact, as here.

Next is the small lake called the Minnewater, around which is a former beguinage and current convent. There's a difference in the two.

Begijnhof (Beguinage) Brugge

An architectural complex which was created to house beguines: lay religious women who lived in community without taking vows or retiring from the world.

These days, my inclination is to stay in one place and explore as much as possible in a more restricted area. In 1987, I was young and had a railpass;the more you used it, the cheaper travel became -- or so it seemed at the time.

Consequently, on Friday I took a brief train trip to Oostende to gaze upon the ocean, then on Saturday mounted an excursion to Antwerp. The view of stained glass is from Antwerp's cathedral.

Finally, one of the great old train stations of Europe, also in Antwerp. I'm reminded of the venerable rolling stock still in use during the 1980s.

How did I manage to take a photograph of an otherwise busy train station with almost no humans visible? It points to my deficiencies as a photographer, in that humans weren't always allowed to stray into the perfect postcard shots I envisioned.

Of course, I might have purchased the postcards and used my expensive film for the people living there. You live and you learn.

Next: Amsterdam

Sunday rumination: Independent local merchants can't shy away from the big picture.

On Tuesday, there was a "merchant meeting" (formerly referred to as the "Merchant Mixer"). These informal morning gatherings have taken place somewhat regularly since 2007.

Recently several NAC postings have been devoted to items of possible interest to local independent small business owners, though it might be conceded that I have few illusions as to their reach, and even more about their acceptance.

From 2011 and 2015: Regaining consciousness in a city “coming” to? Or, the infamous Come to City marketing fiasco of 2011.

ON THE AVENUES: DNA, National Main Street, the Four Points, and how it might yet be possible to get this thing right for once.

In NA, too? "Traffic Safety Advocates Taking Action Into Their Own Hands."

ON THE AVENUES: There has never been a better time for an Independent Business Alliance in New Albany.

Did you hear the one about New Albany's tolling preparedness plan?

BID/EID: " Maybe the merchants of New Albany should consider helping themselves through this device."

Bigger pictures are painfully elusive, for whatever reason, and to be perfectly honest, I think it's a mistake for merchants to ignore contemporary urban themes pertaining to streets, walkability, the built environment, placemaking and parking, among others.

There's a reason why I constantly advocate two-way street reversions. If the available (and steadily expanding) evidence is correct, and two-way streets favorably enhance prospects for independent local businesses, then this enhancement occurs and compounds daily. If it added 7.5% to sales on weekdays year round, what would this total during the course of a year?

If two-way reversions were accompanied by other mutually-reinforcing initiatives in nearby neighborhoods (walkability, rental property regulation, etc,), then the result might well be an uptick in locals patronizing locals -- again, throughout the year. Downtown probably won't be the place we go to buy toilet paper, but at least it might become feasible for there to be a shop selling TP and other daily items.

However ... if merchants focus on special events as a spur to patronage by non-residents, there is a collective skewing effect, because if one has concluded that downtown New Albany is best deployed as a destination, as served by periodic special events and as a place tourists from elsewhere visit, there's a tendency to become overly conservative with regard to necessary street grid changes.

Or, the decades-old Bob Caesar error writ large: People will only come downtown from somewhere else if it's easy for their autos, and so downtown must be as suburban as possible in its organization and access.

Not only does this attitude embody an implicit civic inferiority complex (we're not good enough and must trade real content for perceived convenience), but it disenfranchises the existing population by removing their interests from the equation.

The property values of residents on a one-way arterial streets must be kept artificially low so Bob Caesar can sell a diamond, because no one would consider coming to buy a diamond from Bob Caesar unless they might do so very quickly -- and leave just as speedily.

It is my belief that by ignoring integrated factors like these, which require big picture thinking, merchants are missing the very factors weighing in favor of their long-term interests.

We welcome visitors, but we don't need to be Franklin, Tennessee. We need to be New Albany, Indiana, considering downtown economic development strategies based on who and where we are, as embracing 37,000 residents already living here. We're better off doing this ourselves, not begging for scraps from this or any other City Hall with its own political imperatives in mind.

Thus, the instructive example of tourism troubles in Brussels.

Terrorism is a huge factor in diminished downtown crowds, and yet it isn't the only one. Read on.

Tourism Troubles in Brussels, by Feargus O'Sullivan (City Lab)

Terror attacks have led to a drop-off in the Belgian capital’s visitor numbers. But that isn’t the only issue.

... According to the latest figures, Brussels hotel occupancy is at just 62 percent, a drop of 18 percent for the month of July compared to last year. Bar and restaurant takings are down between 25 and 30 percent. Even visits to the city’s most popular attraction, the iron crystal Atomium built for the 1958 World’s Fair, has seen visits fall by 40 percent.

The main reason for the fall is clear enough: people are afraid of terrorism. After the men behind the Paris attacks of last November were traced back to the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, a huge manhunt ensued that left the city under lockdown for four days. Long-standing fears of an imminent attack were then confirmed in March, when bomb attacks at the city’s airport and the Maalbeek Metro Station killed 35, including three perpetrators.

Maybe ...

Still, there may be yet other factors contributing to the tourism downturn in Brussels. The city’s hospitality industry is overwhelmingly centered on the knot of streets around the Grand Place, to the extent that tourists have largely taken over this part of town, and locals tend to stay away. The result is that Brussels residents are by and large not interested in spending time around the square to make up the current shortfall. According to local media reports, the area is lately dead during the mornings and after nightfall. As one local waitress told the newspaper La Libre:

"The Grand Place represents Belgium, but the [people of the] city have abandoned the UNESCO perimeter – it's a stampede! There are bums, people sit in the middle of the square drinking alcohol while listening to music. And from 9 pm onwards, there's nobody around.”

And the answer?

Elsewhere in and around Brussels, visitor attractions are fighting back with a basic but sensible plan of price cuts and promotions aimed primarily not at international visitors but Belgians.

In the meantime, the current state of the Grand Place and its environs is beginning to look like a cautionary tale to any city with areas where catering to tourists overrules the needs of locals. When tourism is allowed to dominate and then suddenly disappears, you run the risk of ending up with a gorgeous but relatively empty shell.

1. Belgian Beercycling 2000: From Brussels to the Tournai base camp in less than 15 drinks.

Here’s to us.
May we never quarrel or fuss.
But if by chance we should disagree,
#%@* you, and here’s to me.
-- A toast to cycling togetherness, as masterfully articulated by Bob Reed.

I was in the process of stuffing bags into a coin-operated storage locker at the disconcertingly subterranean Centrale (rail) Station in Brussels when suddenly Buddy Sandbach popped around the corner, having spotted Kevin Richards strolling out on the concourse. Buddy was freshly arrived in Brussels from Amsterdam, where he had spent several days fulfilling his longtime dream of viewing Holland’s many and varied species of, er, tulips.

Kevin and I had flown together from Louisville, via Atlanta. Buddy’s unexpectedly early debut in Brussels put us squarely ahead of schedule, which loomed large, for it might easily translate at some point down the road into free time for an extra beer.

And besides looming large, free time for an extra beer almost always is a good omen.

After a pitfall or three in pursuit of a place to store Buddy’s various bags and prized bulbs -- these obstacles being overcome in spite of the best efforts of an obstructionist baggage room bureaucrat named Eric – the transaction finally was arranged, stairs were mounted, and we met the bustling streets outside the station. Signage and a handy public map determined the course that would take us to the famed Grand Place, the ornate central square pictured on boxes of Belgian chocolate shipped worldwide.

The giddy enthusiasm one feels when returning to a great city, as in my case, or visiting it for the very first time like Kevin and Buddy, always makes it easy to ignore trifles like kamikaze taxi drivers and intermittent drizzly rain, and so we dodged these impediments and rushed into a bustling, vibrant urban environment filled with touristy restaurants and their multi-lingual menu offerings, the delivery vans of florists and family butcher firms, tacky souvenir stands, suavely attired Euro-businessmen and even the occasional tattoo parlor.

Would they really etch a genuine facsimile of the famed Mannekin-Pis-Boy into your virgin rump while you wait? I wasn’t eager to know, but too cynical to rule it out.

The Grand Place remains the place for aficionados of gilded guild halls, and the ambience was duly photographed even if it cannot be adequately captured on film. When the clicking of shutters had subsided, I broke the news to my friends as gently as I could: From the beer traveler’s rarified point of view, truly noteworthy cafes from which to view the splendid architectural setting weren’t likely to be found around the square itself, where rents are sky high and cautious sightseers demand predictable pilsners.

However, there was time to kill before Bob Reed’s arrival at the pre-arranged meeting point of the front door at Maison des Brasseurs (a brewing museum), and the steadily escalating rain suggested to us that any nearby café would do in a pinch. Accordingly, we entered the café known as the White Rose, which had an above average list and provided the perfect vantage point to watch for Bob.

The uniformed waiter brought the first of three rounds to our low wooden table by the open window. Through it wafted the echoes of scattered throngs in the square and the steady drumbeat of rain on cobblestones, and while the White Rose isn’t the best beer café in Brussels, it is by no means the worst. My first three beers of the trip were Palm (Belgian pale ale), Rodenbach (sour red ale from West Flanders) and Rochfort 8º (heavenly Trappist ale) -- three choices you’d love to have anywhere while mulling the meaning of life.

Many soggy tourists crossed the expanse beyond our window, and among them we soon spotted an angular Bob loping across the pavement wrapped in a brilliant reddish-orange rain poncho. We motioned him inside and had another round. Soon the rain dissipated, and we were back on the streets in search of food and drink.

Historically, Brussels and environs are lambic country, and on previous trips to Belgium I’d begun to develop a taste for the funky nectar. The next two cafes we patronized both were located in the warren of streets beyond the Grand Place, and they yielded good examples of Belgium’s indigenous, spontaneously fermented specialty.

At Notredame, there was Timmerman’s Faro; although by definition sweetened, the characteristically tangy lambic character still was present. At Toone, a textbook example of sharp, sour and rigorously authentic lambic, Cantillon Gueuze, was chased afterward with a smooth glass of Antwerp’s signature De Koninck ale. Three hours, six beers, and a veritable cross section of Belgian brewing … and all before dinner.

Our quartet’s quintessentially Belgian evening meal was composed of four pots of mussels, just as many baskets of crusty bread for soaking up the broth, and mounds of fries. After all, one must always eat vegetables for a balanced meal. My delicacies were washed down with famously balanced, deceptively drinkable Duvel, Belgium’s signature golden ale. It followed a draft portion of forgettable Jupiler mass-market lager, allegedly “bought” for us by the restaurant’s street hawker as an enticement to eat there, and which served as a valuable calibration beer in the sense that everything else I drank the entire day represented an improvement on the Jupiler.

Soon the mussels were gone, as was our afternoon in Brussels. It was time to return to the train station to reclaim luggage and embark for the hour-long ride to Tournai, a city located in French-speaking Hainaut province that we had chosen as our base for three days of cycling in the Wallonian countryside. Blessedly, we were early getting back, so there was the chance to have that extra, cherished, final beer -- and free time for an extra beer always is a good omen -- at a café across the street. Mine was Brugs Tarwebier, a citrusy, representative Belgian-style wheat ale. Blessedly, there was no orange slice to throw angrily at the server.

Rumbling through the suburbs aboard a nearly deserted train, our bountiful harvest of opening day libations suddenly became even more fruitful as Kevin magically produced a bottle of 40-year-old Noval port wine, technically a tawny port with indication of average age as pertains to the blending stocks, and not a vintage port as such, but no matter. Kevin Richards had cleverly procured the bottle from our fifth wheel, Kevin Lowber, who would be meeting us in Poperinge later in the trip. Having done so, he resolved to drink it early and often, and dissenting voices could not be found.

With little choice except to thumb our noses at propriety and universally accepted decanting protocol, we happily took turns imbibing the sinuous, concentrated nectar from two of Buddy’s souvenir Parisian shot glasses, watching tidy fields and shuttered small villages fly past as dusk approached. A taxi waited in front of the queue at the Tournai station, and two hundred Belgian francs later, we were deposited at the gate of the hotel.

This momentous first day in Belgium ended without bicycling, but with Chimay Trappist “blue” ales on the pleasant, landscaped terrace of the Hotel d’Alcantara, our base in Tournai. As we drank, toasting ourselves and the surroundings, which included bright hotel flower boxes and the lovely vista of a floodlit church spire, four ancient bicycles were spotted chained together in the corner of the walled courtyard. In a few hours, these would be our introduction to European biking … and my travel world would begin to change.

In the next installment: Tournai, couscous, a beer “cave” and steam-powered beer.