Quick links: NewsBiscuit Home • Chat Room • Writers' Room • Top Ten
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
I'm off to Belgium for Uni in about, ooooh, 5hrs and sleep is elusive.
I probably won't have much of a chance to pop in this week, so do try to behave.
I expect to see this place just as tidy as I've left it, and I will not be happy if there's a sink full of dishes when I get back.
Try not to kill each other, and don't miss me too much.
Toodles!
X
FlashArry
offlineMember
Belgium ? The best field trip I ever got at Uni was a week in an abandoned Lead mine in t'Yorkshire moors. All the galena and pyrite you could eat, though.
Be careful out there - I'm wary of any nation that believes beer and fruit are natural bedfellows.
Putting on brave face now, and moving all the breakables on to the top shelves.
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
Oi!!!
I told you to keep the place tidy! I'm barely out the door, and there's used teabags, and drinks rings everywhere!!
Shitsu, chocolate? Waffles? Tintin? Errrr... a relaxed drugs culture? Maniac bus drivers?
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
I've noticed.
Haven't indulged, because we've been way too busy, but am loving the Stella for 1.50 euro, and the fags at 4 euro for 20 B&H!!
Ironduke
offlineMember
I got the wild shites in Belgium.
Little tip: yes, mayonaise with frites is fantastic. Yes, little chip vans by the side of the road and in car parks do wonderful frites.
BUT...if you are visiting the battlefield of Waterloo in March, if you have to wake the man in the car park chip van up (and it's clearly the first time he's opened up since the previous autumn), and the massive vat of mayonnaise was clearly opened a long, long time ago from all the dried slime around the outside...DO NOT insist to your fiance that she 'really must have mayo with your frites' unless you want her puking violently and sufferring rampant diarrhoea for the remainder of your holiday...and then you catch her up 24hours later.
I still remember the terrible, urgent quandry of wondering which imminently projectile end to point at the lavatory first. Sometimes I got it right.
FlashArry
offlineMember
Jen - easy on the Stella ! I spent several months working in Bremen with Becks at the same sort of price - I put on about a stone and lost a fortnight. Still don't have much of a recollection of what I was doing there, but was rather taken with the licensed tram that used to run through the city - public bar transport !
Sinnick
offlineMember
I've been through Belgium just twice. Bizarrely, I found it smelled - I'm not saying this for a quick laugh, it really did smell.
But the beer was great.
And, Ironduke, I too had food poisoning, after eating some dodgy fish in Paris (perhaps I should say "poissoning" - oh, never mind). Neither of us felt like doing much, so we went to see a film. Watching "Alien" with subtitles probably wasn't the best idea - remember the scene with the alien-snake climbing out of the chap's stomach ? Not good if you've got violent stomach cramps already.
Midfield Diamond
offlineMember
Well I quite liked Belgium when I used to have to go there for work. The beer is great (you can do much better than Stella, Jeni), the mussels are fantastic and the Flemish Belgians hate the French with an intensity that we can only dream of emulating.
Runestone Cowboy
offlineMember
We have a local pub with 70 different Belgian beers in the cellar. It's the perfect alternative to actually going to Belgium.
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
Update...Spent the last two days in Brussels, which was, erm, interesting...very warm, very rude, very, very strange. Mannequin Pis. Really?! Is it culturally acceptable to make tourist tat corkscrews of a naked infant?
Leuven smells, really, really, really badly. Like they just shit in the street.
Tomorrow, we're ice-skating, then the formal night.
And Friday we're in Bruges. I'll keep you posted.
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Scroat, I think 'lambic' beers are brewed via the 'wild yeast' method.
Bruges is splendid, although it does have two rancid canals running through it that make it smell like a rotting horse. Good natural source of yeast, though.
The All New Jeni B
onlineMember
Had Duvel, Stella, Framboise, Keirk, and something else that had too bizarre a combination of letters to be pronouncable.
Currently finished writing our proposal on employment, and it appears that I'm also to be providing a translation service for French to English and back again, while proof reading and re-typing the rest of the groups Directive.
Ever had the feeling that while you do all the work, someone else is taking all the glory?
Midfield Diamond
offlineMember
Never went to Bruges but enjoyed a good night out in Ghent which I was told is much better than Bruges cos it's less French (yes, our host was Flemish).
There was a pub where you had to hand your right shoe over the bar to get a beer. The shoe would then be thrown into a basket which was suspended from the ceiling. The reason? Well the Belgians are very particular about drinking beer from the proper glasses - it would be sacrilege to drink Leffe from a Hoegaarden glass for example - so to discourage customers from nicking the branded glasses, you only get your shoe back when you take your empty glass back to the bar.
I went to a bar in Antwerp that claimed to have the largest selection of Belgium beers. The beer 'menu' was like a laminated yellow pages and the cellar (which you could view) seemed to have as much space dedicated to glasses as it did to beer. As Midfield Diamond says, you must have the right glass for the beer.
Ironduke
offlineMember
A bar in Brussels off the main square served snacks of either chunks of cheese with celery salt, or slices of hard sausage. Wonderful. Also, little turkist enclave kebab shops just outside, roasted chicken, garlic mayonnaise and pickled vegetables and chilli in a wrap. Ate it, walked straight back in for another. Superb.
You must log in to post.
