Waterloo

One month ago, I celebrated the 197th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo by waking up early on a Sunday morning and taking the commuter train about 15 kilometers south of Brussels and walking another 5 kilometers down road and muddy path to watch a reenactment of the battle. The Napoleonic Bivouac is a big production, although not quite real battle-sized - that would require 190,000 re-enactors. You can wander through the camp and eat period meals with the battle re-enactors. I went for the cheaper option, devoting just a couple hours to Waterloo and checking out the free battle at Plancenoit.

Thanks to my Belgium and Luxembourg Lonely Planet which I grabbed before heading out, I realized that the battle being staged that morning was in a town 6 km from the Braine-l'Alleud train station. Plancenoit was actually a side battle. Napoleon needed to defeat the Prussians before they met up with the British and outnumbered his French troops. He succeeded, except they regrouped and he had to send a detachment to fight them on during the main battle on June 18. Unfortunately the local bus to Plancenoit was only running every two hours on Sunday. We got on the bus back to Brussels with everyone else and got off at the Butte du Lion, a huge grass pyramid visible from the train and highway which marks the spot where the Prince of Orange, William II, was knocked off his horse by a musket ball during the battle (William was OK and took the Dutch throne in 1840 - but the Dutch had the prerogative to build the biggest monument as Waterloo was on Dutch territory during the battle and during the 1820s when they built the hill, before Belgium declared independence in 1830). At the Waterloo museum by the lion, we were told to take a right at the traffic light and walk 5 kilometers.

Our reward was a great view of the battle, standing on a hillside and watching the movements of infantry and cavalry on the other side of a ditch. It's all far more orderly than modern warfare, or even the wilder Yankee style that I saw on display at Saratoga, New York in a re-enactment of the 1777 key battle of the Revolutionary War. I didn't see many Prussians at Plancenoit either, re-enacting seems to be more popular with the British who weren't involved in the actual side battle. They showed off some of Wellington's tactics, including his patented hedgehog formations (soldiers bunched up with bayonets out to ward off attacks by cavalry).

Volunteer history buff soldiers don't particularly like to play dead, of course, and occasionally you see a supposed casualty get up and rejoin the fight (one guy seemed to have trouble getting up, however - and his comrades just checked in on him periodically). But all in all it was good fun, and we even got to experience the mud that changed the course of history on our walk. Plus I made it home for lunch. I figured the museums and restaurant weren't worth it with the crowds. 

The museums might be worth a visit sometime, except I'm back in the USA now. But seeing the battle adds some flavor. The trip to Waterloo should be particularly interesting for the 200th anniversary in 2015.

Cat Tossing and Witch Burning, or Sunday Evening in West Flanders

Belgium is home to some strange festivals. The one that really caught my eye, though, was the Kattenstoet of Ieper/Ypres, a city best known for the muddy slaughter that occurred in the surrounding fields in the Great War (I wrote about this last year). Ieper, like Brugge/Bruges, was a cloth town back in the Middle Ages; the huge, beautiful Lakenhalle (Cloth Hall) still dominates the Grote Markt, although it needed to be repaired after burning in the war. The Lakenhalle had a mouse problem, so cats were deployed, but eventually this resulted in "a plague of cats," as this year's program dramatically describes. The wise townspeople tried to solve this problem with an annual ritual hurling of living cats from the belfry of the Lakenhalle. In 1817, the last real cats were thrown - an early victory of the Dutch animal rights movement, perhaps, as Belgium was part of the Netherlands for 15 years after the fall of Napoleon.

Today, the town puts on a Cat Parade every three years - most recently Sunday, May 13. It's a stunning production of thousands of actors and elaborate floats and costumes, including giant cats from Ieper's "ambassadors" Mr. Cieper and Minneke Poes to Garfield, representations of cat worship from Egypt to Ireland, scenes from the town's history including a 16th Century Iconoclasm, and illustrations of Dutch sayings featuring felines, such as "the cat is in the clock" (domestic violence again) and "squeezing kittens in the dark" (seducing young girls at night). Hello Kitty through a cookie at me when I was trying to take his (her?its?) picture (on that note, the festival is apparently known in Japan - I saw more Asian tourists here than in a year in Brussels).

Then the jester scales the belfry and tosses stuffed cats to an energized mob below. The scrum gets fairly rough - as one poor American woman complained, a cat was falling into her arms and she was saying "kitty kitty kitty" and then it was "elbow elbow elbow." (The elaborate cat disposal might have worked historically by the way - I only saw one cat in the city, on the yard of an apartment block right before getting in the car to return to Brussels).

As a grand finale, the trial of a poor townswoman for witchcraft is reenacted, and she is burnt to death. Well, something in identical clothing is burnt atop a pile of branches, with the executioners anachronistically resorting to kerosene. It's a bit of a dark ending to the festivities, but just before the burning, cats made of balloons are released into the Flemish sky.

Germany's Charm Offensive

As it were, I've returned to Brussels after six weeks in the United States and its Caribbean possessions. I'm still a sort-of super intern, with some more responsibility, a slight raise, and a different living situation. I will be here until the end of June. It's good to be back in Europe, living here for the fifth time now if you count it as separate from last year. I'll get to see some new places like Switzerland and maybe Russia, and hope to make it to Ypres's cat-throwing festival and a reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo.

I return to a Europe still on the brink of calamity due to the euro crisis, though it feels calm and the EU decisions of last December make muddling through more likely than apocalypse. Belgium actually has a government, which is novel. Today the country has been shut down by a general strike, with a dusting of snow thrown in for good measure. And Germany is still making people mad.

Extra supervision of member state budgets is probably one of the inevitable measures for getting over the euro crisis. But Germany has been particularly tone-deaf in suggesting an EU budget commissioner take over Greek fiscal policy. I can't say I'm optimistic about Greece improving its finances - default seems inevitable, perhaps even in March when a 14.4 million euro bond comes due, and a new government in April could well lead Greece out of the eurozone and even the European Union. But with technocratic governments in place in both Greece and Italy due a combination of market and northern European political forces, and with Germany's history, a little more respect for Greek sovereignty and democracy is due. This crisis has seen Germany's emergence as the political leader as well as the economic leader of the European Union, and so far it is doing an even worse job diplomatically than it is in solving the crisis.

I write this as someone who loves Germany, speaks the language, and knows the history, hardly a Germanophobe. But Angela Merkel is not doing a very good job these days, nor any of the parties in her coalition. I'll object to the Bavarian conservatives simply on principle, they're far too conservative. The Free Democrats have been inept in government under the leadership of Guido Westerwelle, also an inept foreign minister, and haven't improved noticeably under Philipp Roesler. And Merkel's Christian Democratic Union has lost virtually all of its leaders capable of challenging Merkel to various scandals as she has dragged through a disappointing second term. Its parliamentary leader, Volker Kauder, proudly claimed that "now all of Europe is speaking German" a few months ago. Perhaps the Social Democrats would do better.

One prominent European who is now speaking German is none other than the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. In a TV interview last night he profusely praised Germany as a fiscal model for France. Merkel and Sarkozy have always had an awkward partnership, despite general ideological compatibility, so it was a bit surprising when Merkel announced that she'd not only tacitly endorse Sarkozy's reelection - which she would be expected to do as a fellow leader of the European People's Party - but actually campaign for him. She is obviously afraid that Socialist Francoise Hollande would demand the renegotiation of some of the deals stitching together the euro crisis response. But such blatant intervention in French internal affairs does not strike me as a good thing. The only time I can remember the leader of one country campaigning for his or her preferred candidate in the election of a close partner country, with joint appearances on the campaign trail, was when Vladimir Putin tried to assist Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2004. That resulted in the Orange Revolution. Which brings me to a second point - Merkel campaigning for Sarkozy is probably counterproductive. France and Germany have a strong partnership, but they also have a long history - and the French are as proud a nation as I can think of. If Germany says vote for Sarkozy, I can see more voters persuaded to vote for Hollande - or Marine Le Pen.

The Year of Magical Drinking

I have now returned to the United States following 11 months in Belgium, the lovely and peculiar country in between France and the Netherlands (and Germany and the United Kingdom). Brussels and Belgium do not sweep you off your feet, but they contain multitudes of treasures cultural and historical, located as they are in a major crossroads of Europe. It became home, and Belgium is in my thoughts today after the terrible grenade attack in Liege.

One of the more conspicuous treasures of Belgium is that this little country, the size of Maryland, has the best beer in the world. It's part of a common culture that unites Flanders and Wallonia. From frites to waffles to chocolates to beer, Belgium takes its food seriously and takes the time to deliver a well-crafted product.

For me, Belgian beers were already the best before I ever visited the country. Germany perhaps does "normal" beer best, with quality standards enforced by its early 16th century Reinheitsgebot, or purity law. But Belgian brews tend to be more interesting, more flavorful, and more to my taste. Third place among the nations is more up for grabs. (The Czechs deliver pretty consistent quality... Britain and Ireland have some classics... Mexican beers, at least the ones I've had, are consistently refreshing if a bit watery... the United States would probably be my winner though, as a growing and entrepreneurial microbrew scene makes up for the banality of the many of the major brands).

Wishing to make the most out of my opportunity of living in Belgium, I endeavored to sample as many different Belgian beers as possible. There are roughly 1,000, so it was simply a matter of time and effort, trying the readily available in Brussels and finding rarer ones in shops and bars. Before I left the county at the beginning of December, I managed to try 135 different ones.

A few introductory notes about the types of beer are worthwhile. Belgians actually drink crappy beer all the time - I would rate the ever-popular Jupiler as worse than Budweiser. The good stuff isn't much more expensive, but it tends to be heavier and have a higher alcohol content. Belgian beers can be divided into categories of quality and type. Trappist beers are made by monks, six abbeys within Belgium and one just outside are producing beer. The best known and easiest to find of these is Chimay. Westvleteren, made by the monks of Saint Sixtus Abbey, is not even distributed beyond the abbey's cafe, and its rarity has helped delicious Westvleteren Bruin 12 be hyped as the best beer in the world. Abbey beers (Bieres d'Abbay or Abdijbier) are based on the recipes of monks. Leffe, for example, is mass produced by Anheuser-Busch InBev from one of these old recipes. Many of the best Belgian beers fall into one of these two categories, which contain different styles. Dubbels (doubles) are dark beers of about 6% alcohol, tripels golden beers stronger than dubbels, quadrupels dark beers even stronger than the tripels.

Another specialty is lambic beer. Lambics are produced by spontaneous fermentation. They are known for fruity flavors - kriek, or cherry; framboise, or raspberry; pecheresse, or peach - but gueuze, a sour lambic, is quite popular within Belgium, and faro is made with brown sugar, sweet but not fruity. The Belgian white beer or witbier, exemplified by Hoegaarden, has entered the American microbrew lexicon as a style producing beers like Blue Moon. Flemish red ales are another popular local style. And Belgium also produces pilsners and other less extra-ordinary beers.

I kept a list for the year, but not notes. However, most of my favorites were beers I tried on multiple occasions, not rarities, so I am able to produce an annotated list of some of my top favorites without too much difficulty:

1. Westvleteren Bruin 12

2. St. Bernardus Abt 12

Honorable Mention - St. Bernardus Christmas

Westvleteren 12 is the holy grail of Belgian beer. I discovered it in a Brussels beer shop by April or so, but I still waited. The monks of Saint Sixtus Abbey do not distribute their highly sought-after beer, except on site on the western edge of Flanders, near Ypres. You can try to call and give a license plate number to reserve a time to pick up a case at the abbey, or you can get the beer at the abbey's cafe, In de Vrede. I had made up my mind to make the pilgrimage along with a trip to Ypres and its war memorials, and this finally happened at the end of November. A few weeks earlier, the monks actually did sell Westvleteren 12 in stores across Belgium - one supermarket chain that is, for one day until it sold out, and you needed a coupon to get the six-pack with two glasses for 25 euros. 93,000 of the packs were distributed. It was a one-off fundraiser for repairs for the abbey. My boss gave me a coupon, but I arrived at the store too late. Still, I made it to In de Vrede with my friends on a late Sunday afternoon, and enjoyed the deliciousness of Westvleteren 12, a highly complex, sweet, dark brew. Their other beers, a darker but less strong Bruin 8 and a blonde, are good but not essential.

I've only tried Westvleteren 12 this one time, but I feel like I can rate it the highest because I've been drinking its cousin all year. St. Bernardus Abt 12 is an abbey beer made in nearby Watou, based on the Westvleteren 12 recipe, and it is the only easy to find beer in Belgium that I would rate above the classic Chimay Blue. Westvleteren 12 was great, but not surprising - basically a slightly more interesting tasting St. Bernardus Abt 12.

As a side note, on my third night back in the US, I had dinner at Pizza Paradiso in Washington, and discovered St. Bernardus's Christmas brew on the drinks menu. It was lovely, just as good as either version of the 12, and I found a bottle of it in an Annapolis liquor store a few days later. So that's one of my Christmas gifts to myself.

3. Chimay Blue

Chimay produces more beer than the other Belgian Trappist brands (Westermalle, Rochefort, Orval, Achel, and Westvleteren). Its blue label is my favorite of its three, darker and sweeter, my favorite Belgium beer before I went to Belgium. You can find this one pretty much anywhere in Belgium and its not hard to find in the States either. And though I sampled plenty, I did not find much that was better.

4. Gouden Carolus Cuvee van de Keizer - Blauw

Mechelen brewery Het Anker's Gouden Carolus Classic is a very good beer which I wish I ran across more often, but this special version of it is even better. It is produced one day a year, February 24, in honor of the birthday of Charles V, the Ghent-born and Mechelen-raised Holy Roman Emperor who ruled most of Europe and South American in the 16th century and spoke Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to his horse. It only comes in large bottles and you can keep it in the cellar for years. Fruity, complex, dark, and very good (you get the picture of what kind of beer I prefer). I actually was given a bottle by a friend before my departure for Brussels, but drank it before I left and liked it so much that I had it a few more times in Belgium.

5. Tripel Karmeliet

One of Belgium's best rated, for very good reasons. This is the best tripel I've tried.

6. Papegaei

The name means parrot, and it has a cool bottle and glass. The beer is light, yeasty, and a little fruity, though strong at 8%. It was the hundredth beer I tried on the year, and one of the keepers.

7. Leffe Brune

8. Leffe Blonde

If gentlemen prefer blondes, then perhaps I'm not a gentlemen. Nevertheless, my relative estimation of Leffe Blonde grew in the year that both were readily available to me. I still give the edge to the Brune however. Both are excellent, reliable beers, although in one of Belgium's quirks, more reliable when served from the bottle than the tap.

9. Lindemans Pecheresse

The peach beer with the sexy bottle (the name pecheresse plays on the French words for peach and "sinner") is my winner in the lambic category.

10. Kasteel Rouge

My first taste of Kasteel Rouge in Belgium (I may have had it a few years ago in New York) was a shock. I had thought it to be a red ale, but it was a cherry beer twice as strong as most krieks. I also prefer the taste to most krieks - sweet but not light, darker and thicker, almost like a liquor. And delicious.

11. Barbar

Another sweet one. Barbar is a honey beer far tastier than any mead I've tried at renaissance fairs in the US. The James Joyce near Schuman always has it, otherwise I usually had to buy it in a beer store.

12. Kwak

The best thing about Kwak is its ridiculous serving glass, bulbous at the bottom and fitting into a wooden holder. It was the carriage drivers' beer, designed so they could drink it while driving. The reddish beer is pretty tasty, too.

13. Rochefort 6

The 6 is probably the least celebrated of the three Trappist Rochefort beers, and the weakest, at 7.5%. But I was disappointed by the others, and when I tried this one I thought it was delicious. We called the Rochefort glass "the chalice" in our household.

14. Lindemans Faro

Faro is the brown sugar lambic. This is the only one I ever tried, but it's quite good - and cheap, and available in my local Carrefour.

15. Pannepot

Pannepot is one of the more unique Belgian beers. It's thick and chocolaty with no carbonation at all. It's made by De Struise (the Ostrich) Brewery near De Panne, on the south end of Belgium's coast. In this case, my trivial beer knowledge enabled me to read the word "Struisevogel" on a menu and enjoy some ostrich medallions at one of my last meals in Brussels. The beer isn't too easy to find in bars, but I split one three ways with my sister and her boyfriend at the legendary Delirium, and picked up another at the Beer Temple soon after.

16. De Koninck

I feel like this amber beer is more easily found in New York or Washington than in Brussels. It's essentially the official beer of Antwerp, Belgium's second city (and coolest city). Thus the hand on the glass - the legend of Antwerp is that a hero cut off the hand of a mean giant who collected tolls at the river, then threw the hand in the river. Antwerp basically translates as "hand throw." And it's a great place to have a few drinks with friends and catch the last train back to Brussels, round midnight.