la grande place

at the heart of brussels lies the grand place, an incredibly beautiful and majestic little square (or even better, think of a university quadrangle) surrounded on all sides by buildings of breathtakingly ornate embellishment.the grand place is one of the major tourist destinations in brussels. normally i think i'd find that a bit unbecoming, but not in this case -- it really was spectacular! i think it earns every single tourist passing through.the buildings surrounding the grand place consist mostly of the town hall (the top picture above) and a number of guild halls.the town hall (the most prominent building) was constructed in the first half of the 1400's, and the rest of the grand place was laid out thereafter.
in 1695, the french army bombarded brussels, destroying essentially everything in the grand place except the town hall (which, ironically, had been the main target of the attack). in the next four years, the various guilds rebuilt their halls -- the exteriors of which are basically what you see today. the phoenix atop one of the guild halls in the picture below represents the grand place's rebirth.
check out this cool link to see the grand place in all 360 degrees of its glory!

cantillon

ok, time to make another push to get this brussels blogging finished off! it's only been, what, a little over three weeks.... anyway, the highlight of our whole trip was quite possibly our visit to cantillon on the thursday we were there (our only full day in brussels).
apart from a couple recently opened brewpubs, cantillon is the only brewery remaining in the city. they brew lambic: spontaneously fermented, fantastically tart, moderately crazy, tastes-like-nothing-you've-had-before beer -- and they're possibly the best at it in the world. in principle, you can brew lambic anywhere, but there's something magic about the senne river valley (the river running through, or actually under, brussels) that seems to make it the only place on earth where things come out tasting good.
strictly speaking, the cantillon brewery is a "museum" -- probably for weird tax reasons, i'd guess -- but it's really just that they give you a booklet at the start and send you off poking around on a little self-guided tour. and i gotta say, it worked really well -- they did a great job with the booklet, and it was so nice to be able to putter along at our own pace and soak everything in.
the picture below is of a giant copper vat that plays a crucial role in the brewing process -- this is where the beer is inoculated with wild yeasts. check out the holes in the ceiling and the vents on the side to allow the air from outside to get in!
here's a picture of some barrels filled with lambic. the beer continues to ferment in the barrel, which causes a lot of foam to appear on the top where the barrel is plugged closed.
and finally, the bar at the end of the tour, where we got to sample some of their beers. so beautiful, and so delicious!

friday catblogging: under the covers edition

i promise it's really oscar under there!
one of his favorite things to do in the morning is to come under the covers with p, usually after i've already gotten up. he doesn't like it when the covers touch his ears, so p always holds her forearm up to make him a nice little tent! and p is such a champion sleeper that this doesn't stop her one bit from falling back asleep with him (well, she claims that he always steals the oxygen under the covers, which makes it really hard not to fall asleep, but i frankly don't think she needs any help).

to toronto

looks like our plans for the coming year have really started to take shape: i've accepted the job in toronto and max planck has said no dice on extending our time here, so i guess we'll be moving to toronto around the first of august. guh!

snowing here

apart from about five minutes right when i woke up one morning, we didn't see any snow at all in bonn before march rolled around. but then there was a good bit of accumulation one day when my sister was visiting, and now check out the scene at lunch today. um, it is springtime, right?

friday catblogging: bonzai kitten edition

we're away visiting our old pals samantha and teru in oxford at the moment, so here's something we've had sitting in the catblogging can for the past few weeks: the disgusting aftermath of a recent batch of oscar food we whipped up. guten appetit!

delirium

after a journey that, thanks to a late connecting train and some additional stupidity on our part, took two hours more than it was supposed to, we arrived in brussels in the late afternoon two wednesdays ago. after grabbing an early-ish dinner at a nice veggie-friendly cafe, we headed to delirium, one of the premier bars in the city. (the name derives from the well-known belgian beer delirium tremens, but i don't know if there's an official relationship between the two -- though there was an awful lot of delirium tremens paraphernalia on hand at the bar.)

delirium holds the guiness world record for the most beers available for sale: a whopping 2,004 were counted on january 4, 2004! i doubt there were quite that many when we visited, but the selection was still staggering, if not overwhelming. check out the beer menu!

delirium is split into (at least) two levels: a cafe on the street level and a bar in the basement. we headed downstairs, grabbed a table (which i gather can be quite hard on the weekends, but was pretty easy on an early wednesday evening), and soon were sipping some delicious beers.

we really liked the vibe -- for such a beer-geeky place, it felt really unpretentious, even a bit like a college bar. most of the tables were occupied when we arrived, and then things thinned out some, but then by 10 it had filled up nicely again with many people standing. the decor was really cool -- just about every square inch of available wall and ceiling space was covered with great beer paraphernalia. check out the beer trays on the ceiling.

it was a great way to kick off our trip!

beverages in belgium omnibus

here's a little montage of the fabulous things kate, p, and i had to drink in brussels. going there was really like a pilgrimage for p and me -- ever since we got interested in good beer, or at least in belgian beer, brussels has been a bit of a mecca to us, calling out from the distance. so it's safe to say we arrived with some pretty high expectations. and now that it's over, if anything, i gotta say that our trip surpassed anything i could have hoped for! belgium is a country of about 10 and a half million people, and the variety and quality of beers produced there is just staggering. and throw a strong food culture and cafe scene on top of that, and you get a city that's just about to die for. here's crossing our fingers that we get to go back before our little euro-adventure comes to an end....

so blume the mullets

today's the first day that spring really feels like it's rocking -- it's 61 out right now, by far the warmest day we've had this year, and the trees are leafing out and there are tons of people out -- and that means tons of mullets too! yep, good god, i can't believe i'm actually doing two consecutive mullet posts, but p and i just got back from our usual saturday outing in the altstadt and the action was HOT! i'd conservatively estimate that we saw at least 15 mullets during the three hours we were out, but it may well have been more. sadly, it was impossible to photograph most of them, but here's what we got.

first is a group of young lads we spotted in the marktplatz; p did the camera work while i was visiting an atm. not sure if the blond one in the baseball cap is a true mullet or not -- though he obviously has a lot of good stuff coming out the back -- but the one on the right is really solid.we've noticed that typically in groups of young guys here, whoever has the mullet (or the most elaborate mullet, if there's more than one) tends to be the leader -- sort of like being able to identify the chief by the most impressive headdress -- and this was no exception.

and second, the coup de grâce!i snapped this in our favorite convenience store in the altstadt -- i swear, mullets are drawn to this place like flies to honey. i must have seen five in there this afternoon alone! but sadly, it looks like we're going to be cut off from now on: right after i took this, a stern looking clerk came up to me and told me in no uncertain terms that photos aren't allowed in the store. boo! maybe we should do a stakeout just outside the entrance....

mullets abroad

ok, time to finally start blogging again about all our excitement from a week ago. and really, what better way to kick it off than with the mullet report? here's a fine skullet we sighted two wednesdays ago on the platform in aachen while waiting to change trains on our way to brussels. here's a mullet p spotted across the room in the bar (which was fabulous, by the way) we went to that night in brussels.here's another shot -- p and i went up to the bar and did a little self-portrait there to try to capture him at close range.and finally, here's a young proto-mullet we saw at the grand place the following day.

friday catblogging: sawing lumber edition

this is what our cat does when he sleeps. (he's on p's lap -- sorry for the bad lighting!)

i cannot prove there is chocolate in belgium

although the focus of our trip to belgium was squarely on the beer, we did manage to squeeze in a couple chocolate shops right at the end -- you may have heard that priya has a wee bit of a chocolate fancy, no? the best and most famous chocolatier in brussels is pierre marcolini, so that was the top destination on our agenda. i think he's best known for his truffles -- and the ones we've tasted so far have been really good -- but we (especially p) tend to be more interested in straight-up, single origin chocolate, and we haven't sampled any of that to report on yet. but the really crazy part was his shop! i guess it's supposed to be as high-end as you can get, so what would you expect? it felt like walking into an art gallery, or maybe a really sophisticated exclusive restaurant. we had to take an obscure back staircase to get up to the floor where the chocolate bars were -- kinda like going to the vip room. and they wouldn't let me take pictures inside! so all i can show you is the snazzy bag we got.

glug glug glug

phew! after spending wednesday-friday in brussels -- the finest city for beer in the world? -- and yesterday tasting rieslings on the moselle, p and i had to bid kate a fond farewell this morning. thanks for a great week, sis! here's the take-home damage.
more detailed trip reports are (hopefully) to follow.

509 steps

kate, p, and i just got back from brussels today, so we're a bit behind on blogging. but before we get to that fantastic little trip, here's a shot from one of the spires of the cologne cathedral that kate and i climbed on tuesday, looking out over the rhine.it was a decent little hike to get to the top -- the sign at the bottom said to estimate a half hour going up and a half hour going down, but i don't think it actually took anywhere near that long. when the cathedral was completed in 1880, it was the tallest building in the world! (the washington monument surpassed it in 1884.)

friday catblogging: bobblehead edition

such dedication to snuggle!

Mulletblogging

We staked this one out today in the Altstadt. (While waiting for this fine specimen to emerge from Citibank, we also spotted a child mullet but were slow on the trigger.)
Needless to say, nice pants.