Back Home

So I'm finally back home in Portland, still recovering a bit from the jet lag. Home is so crazy, I've missed so much while I was gone and it was only for three weeks! I can't imagine how much stuff people miss when they are gone for a semester or a year. So our last day in Europe we went to an art museum in Brussels, I did some shopping, and I updated my blog. After all of that, all of us met up at Cafe Delirium one last time for some beers. We had a dinner reservation at 6:30 at Chez Leon which was Belgian food. We had a pre-paid meal and had a few choices for dinner, and I was in the minority when I ordered chicken; everyone else got mussels-- something Brussels is famous for. The craziest thing was when people started finishing their plates of mussels and the waiter would come in and bring more! It was great talking about everything that had happened on our trip and talking about bottling our beers and graduation, which for most of the group will be in the spring and then for four of us it will be next fall. I then went back to the hotel to pack.

At 3am I woke up to get ready for the flight. We had a 50 minute flight from Brussels to Amsterdam and then a 10 ish hour flight from Amsterdam to Portland. In Amsterdam we met up with the Jan Term group who went to India and they were sharing their stories--way different than our trip. Plus they had already been on a flight for 8 hours before even getting to Amsterdam. This flight had four movies and I slept through parts of all of them. Once we landed in Portland, we got off the plane and there are two paramedics waiting at the gate-- one of them was my uncle! He works for the airport and found out when and where my flight got in and stopped by to see me. After a quick chat with him, I headed through passport check and customs, then we had a long bus ride to McMinnville where my parents were waiting for me. I grabbed my stuff and we drove back to Portland. The original plan was for them to just get me at the airport but I had left my wallet and keys and such in McMinnville. We caught up and I showed them all the stuff I brought back and we had dinner and caught up some more.

Last night I fell asleep around 8pm and woke up today at 4:30am. I wrote my reflective essay and had lunch with my parents and went grocery shopping. My brain still isn't fully functioning in English-- I mean I spoke in English mostly when I was in Europe but I'm still half expecting people to not be speaking English. My dad rented "In Bruges" from the library and we watched it tonight so I could point out where I had been-- it was actually a lot better movie than I had thought it would be. It was really cool pointing out where I had been and stuff and then it hit me: I was there about 4 days ago! Crazy! Anyway, I'm still not used to the time so I'm about to go to bed, I'm going to try to update this blog occasionally until I've adjusted back to American culture.

In Bruges

Today we went to Bruges. Our tour guide showed us a lot of historical spots there—especially centered on religious things. We saw a few areas that were started by beguines—women whose husbands were away at war but didn’t want to join a convent. Beguines were also the women who started what is now Het Anker Brewery in Mechelen. The beguines here started a hospitality house where foreigners could sleep in a bed for a night before they found their way. Many of the foreigners were sick and the beguines would pray for them to get better—and it started what we would now call a hospital.

Our tour guide also had a special surprise for us—a chocolate demonstration. She took us to a local chocolaterie, Sukerbuyc, and the chocolatier showed us the basic process for making chocolates. Although this particular chocolate shop doesn’t make their own chocolate from scratch, per se, he still told us how chocolate is made. Although the end product is very different, the process has some similarities to beer brewing. They start with cocoa beans and open them to get out the cocoa powder and oil—in beer brewing this would be the malting of barley to get the usable product. Dark chocolate is primarily cocoa powder and the cocoa butter that is made from the oil—the same cocoa butter that is used in many cosmetics. Milk chocolate is the same, but also with sugar and milk or milk powder. White chocolate is just the sugar, milk or milk powder, and the cocoa butter—there isn’t actually any of the cocoa powder in it (which is why it is still white) and really isn’t chocolate… The chocolate is then put into a mold, shaken to get out the air bubbles, and then dumped after about a minute so that way it creates a shell. Later, they add in the filling and another layer of the chocolate so it is completely covered. I’ve made chocolates before similarly: every year for Christmas we get candy melts which you melt down and then put it in Christmas shaped molds. After all these years I’ve gotten pretty good at painting white “chocolate” of different colors into the molds to make them even more decorative. After the chocolatier talked about how important the temperature is when you’re dealing with chocolate, like with beer, I’m thinking I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. We normally just heat up the chocolate melts in the microwave and then once they’re in the molds we throw them in the fridge. I’m thinking now that we might’ve gotten the chocolate too hot to start with and maybe if we did melted it a little cooler, than we could get our Christmas chocolates all shiny and super professional looking!

We then continued our tour of Bruges and had two hours—until 3pm—to explore on our own. Again, I really had no clue what there was to do, so I just wandered through whatever shops I found interesting. I kept pretty close to the meeting spot in the city center for a while, but after a bit I had been to pretty much all the stores that looked interesting. I wandered down a side street to some more shops, and when it was about 2:40, I decided I should head back. I went down a few streets in what I thought was the right direction, but ended up in a spot that was unfamiliar. I knew the city center had a giant bell tower so I just started walking towards the big tower that I saw. As I got closer I realized that it wasn’t the bell tower, it was a tower at the top of a church. I asked a group of business people how to get to the city center and they said it was pretty much on the other side of town, but gave me directions. I quickly walked down a few streets and finally recognized some of the shops. By this time it was already 3pm, but at least I was headed in the right direction. I finally got back to the group only about 5 minutes or so late, but I was bright red and sweaty, and we still had to walk back to the bus. I’m usually pretty solid with my sense of direction, but I had wandered a lot farther than I had thought. Plus the streets in Europe tend to curve so you can turn left and think you’re headed back in the right direction, but because the street you were on curved so much, you’re going the opposite way! Luckily I was able to find my way back without too many problems or being too late.

We then walked back to the bus, stopping at a little mini-town within Bruges that rich people had built for poor people to live in—in return that the poor people prayed for the rich people so they had better chances of getting into heaven. After a long drive back to Brussels, I’m now sitting on my bed resting my feet before we meet up for dinner at 7:30. We again don’t know where we will be going, but hopefully it is good. Then I’m guessing we will go out tonight since it’s really the last night we have to do something before we head back since Thursday night is out unless we want to stay up all night until we leave for the airport at 3:30am. Tomorrow we are going to a museum nearby then have most of the day free until our farewell dinner. I’m hoping to pick up some last minute souvenirs, maybe find a comic book in French for myself, and try to get some reasonably priced chocolates to take back. Also I’ll have to spend a good chunk of my day packing or deciding what to leave in Belgium so I have space to take stuff back.

Lovin' in Leuven

Today we took a train to Leuven. Leuven is the home of the Stella Artois Brewery which is part of the largest brewing company in the world but we had decided not to go there, and to go to Den Domas instead. Den Domas is a small brewery in a college town—they don’t bottle any of their beers, they only go to the tap in the bar. They also use a mechanism that uses carbon dioxide to pump the beer from where it is stored inside a giant plastic bag of sorts into the tap—sort of similar to wine in a box. The tour guide told us that they have two primary beers and a holiday beer. One of their primary beers is a student beer (since they are in a college town) called Con Domas. I really wished that they sold merchandise because I wanted something that said “practice safe drinking” on one side and “Con Domas” on the other.

After the tour and tasting, we had two hours to wander around Leuven. None of us really seemed to know what there was in Leuven to do, so we ate some food, and then just wandered. Jenna, Emma, and I just walked around until we found coffee in a place with a bathroom. The girl at the counter spoke really good English and when we asked her about it, she explained that tv and movies in English don’t get voiced-over into Flemish since it’s not a common language and instead they watch their English shows in English with Flemish subtitles! I never thought about that before but I bet if all of our tv shows were in a different language we would be multi-lingual as well! After our coffee (or my hot chocolate) and our new bit of information, we just wandered through shops until it was time to meet again. I had some fun wandering around an entertainment sort of shop—basically movies and cds and books—and seeing what was translated into Flemish and what was left in English. I thought about buying something but I figured I would wait until we were back in Brussels when I could get something in French—at least then I’d have a fighting chance of understanding. When we got back to Brussels, Michael and I worked on our beer recipe (for part of the class). We struggled a bit trying to come up with some inspiration, but originally decided on a different take on a wheat beer like the one we had brewed when we first started the class. We settled on using some light malt extract for the base, along with some caramel Munich malt and some Belgian wheat. We also switched it up a bit and went with Czech Saaz hops for bittering and Cascade hops for aroma. Our original wheat beer had coriander seed and orange peel which we used, but we also wanted to add a tiny bit of lemon peel since many wheat beers, like hefeweizen, come with a lemon slice! The final ingredient was, of course, Belgian Ale yeast. The hardest part of making our own beer style was coming up with a name. We kept playing around with different ingredients and styles as part of the name, and since it is a blond ale of sorts, we decided on the name “The Busty Blonde”. I’m sure if it was a real beer it would have a heck of a label.

After our beer recipe was complete, I settled in to finally finish the book that I had started on the plane, “One for the Money”. My mom has read through the eighteenth book in the series so I had finally decided to start on the first one and I’m so glad I did. What a great book! I’m so ready to read the next one. Anyway, back to Europe… we went out to dinner at the same Italian restaurant we were at the other night for pizza again and it was still as delicious as before. Now I’ve settled in for the night while others are taking advantage of the last few nights in Europe. Tomorrow we go to Bruges for the day which is our tour guide’s hometown so I’m sure we will get to see the best stuff that most tourists are unaware of! Á bientôt!

Jan 23

Today was another long day of back-to-back brewery tours. Luckily this time the bus arrived on time. We started with Brouweij Bosteels in Buggenhout (say that three times fast) who are the makers of Kwak and Tripel Karmeliet. They started the tour by showing us a bunch of different carriages—which seems odd for a brewery—but turns out Kwak was originally made for carriage drivers; they weren’t allowed to leave the carriage and so the tavern owners made a beer that would both quench their thirst and fit in a special holder on the side of the carriage. When we arrived, they were currently making a batch of Tripel Karmeliet and the whole brewery smelled wonderful. We also saw a farmer picking up spent grains for their cattle. After the tour, we got to taste three of their beers—the two that I already mentioned and something called “Deus” which was champagne-like but extremely odd to taste. I really enjoyed the Kwak—it was creamy and caramelly without being too sweet—plus it’s an adventure to drink because you have to spin it at a certain point or else it will splash in your face. After drinking, the brewer came up to see us and offered to show us around the brewer’s house—which is now just offices, but still exciting!

We then bussed it out to Ghent for a bit of site-seeing and lunch as well as some weird local fruit snack called “Cuberdons”. Ghent was a cute little city on the water, slightly similar to Venice with water running through it rather than it being a coastal town. We then bussed to Oudernaarde—deep in the heart of Flemish Belgium (Flanders)—for a tour of Liefmans Brewery. Most of it is out-dated and much of the process happens at a different location except for the fermentation because they use spontaneous fermentation and need the local cultures from the brewery. I enjoyed the tour guide because he switched up some English words—like he said at the end of the tour we would get to consummate the beer instead of consume it. I tasted four of their beers—Flanders Oud Bruin—but I wasn’t a fan because they had a sour twang from the fermentation style—similar to that of Cantillion. They also had some similar to the Oud Bruin but with fruit: sour cherries make Kriek and then fruit juices in another. Although they were a little sweeter to cut some of the sour, I still wasn’t a huge fan. Before leaving he gave us all a canister of sorts with a bottle of their Kriek in it. The canister is really cool but I don’t know if I can fit it into my luggage. We then headed back to the hotel and wandered around looking for a place for dinner. We settled on a Vietnamese restaurant and they asked if that was ok with everyone. A few of us, myself included, replied with it should be fine but we hadn’t tried Vietnamese food before. We waited for a long time before we got our food and some of us got to the point that everything was funny because of how over-hungry we were. It hit me partway through waiting that I have actually been to Vietnam before so it wasn’t my first time having Vietnamese food. Either way, when it finally came out, my food was really bland but I shoveled it in anyway because I was so hungry. Anyway, I best get to bed because it is about 10:30 pm here and we have to meet at about 7:30am tomorrow for our train to Leuven. Then Wednesday we go to Bruges, Thursday is mostly free, and Friday at 3:30am we leave for the airport! I can’t believe this experience is almost over.

Les Bandes Dessinees!

So last night was uneventful, and today was exhausting. Josie and I wanted to go to the market in the area that they have on the weekends, but the guy at the hotel sent us to one that was way farther than expected and not what we had in mind. It reminded me of a market I went to in Mexico—lots of random fruit and meat stands, and everything else was clothes and shoes and watches and household items that they probably get super cheap and sell for 10 Euros or less too—super sketch. Then we decided to walk to the Comic Strip Museum but ended up at the Comic Strip Café instead, which was quite a hike in the wrong direction. When we finally found the Comic Strip Museum, it was really interesting. They had original drafts of comics and history of certain popular strips like Tintin, Gaston Lagaffe, and The Smurfs. My favorite is Titeuf but turns out he is actually French and not Belgian. The book store was pretty interesting too and I probably would’ve bought a bunch of funny comics if I had the space in my suitcase, so I might see if I can find smaller ones at bookstores or something. We then walked back towards the hotel in search of food. We stopped and got frites and then I did some souvenir shopping before returning to the hotel. I finally caved in and bought a little mannekin pis with a bottle opener on his head and a corkscrew from you-know-where.

In the evening we met up with the group for the final two presentations—Caleb’s and mine. Caleb’s was about trappist breweries in Belgium—though I’m still not positive what the difference between a trappist brewery and a monastic brewery is… My presentation was about how Belgium culture influences its brewing. Most of my presentation focused on how Belgian beers have a lot of influence from the surrounding countries as well as the history of its overlords. Also Belgium, unlike Germany, never had a beer purity law to limit the ingredients in their beers. I’m glad to be done but it was super intimidating giving such a casual presentation in a conference room—normally we’ve done them in bars or in the lounge of the hotel, so the conference room was overwhelming.

After the presentations we went out to an Italian restaurant for pizza. It was really different from the pizza in the United States, and super delicious. I got a salami pizza and the salami was really spicy, so I had to order another shot of Sprite (they serve 0.2 L at a time). After dinner my roommates and I found “27 Dresses” on TV in English with Flemish subtitles and watched that until bedtime.

Brusselicious

January 21st

So last night a bunch of us went out, and stayed out later than we probably should have—but at least we had fun! It did, however, make this morning difficult. Let’s just say I got maybe 5 hours of sleep… Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower anyway, then upstairs to breakfast, then down to the lobby by 9am for our day of two brewery tours. We all walked down the block to the place where we were supposed to meet: 11 Rue de l’Écuyer (or Rider Street for those of you who don’t speak French). Our first tour was at 10:30 and would take a while to get there, so we wanted to be on the road by 9, so we were already running a little bit behind. Well, 9:05, 9:10, 9:15 rolls around and no sign of the bus. Our professor tries to call him, but the service is in French so Amanda attempts to talk to him and he says that he is here, at 11 Rider Street, and I guess we were at 6 Rider Street, maybe 10 meters from 11 Rider Street. So after lots of phone calls and attempted translations, turns out that he was at 11 Rider Street, but in a different suburb of Brussels! We went back to our hotel to wait for him and call the travel service who booked the bus to see if we could get a refund or what the deal was. All I know is that I fell asleep on the couch in the hotel lobby, and by 11am, we were on the bus. It was a long bus ride to DuBuisson Brewery and it was the lunch rush, so we were put in a back area to watch a film on how they brew, and given samples of their beer, and then we left. The video was entertaining considering one of their beers is called Cuvée des Trolls and there was a very charismatic troll that would interrupt bits of the presentation. After that it was a super long bus ride to Het Anker Brewery in Mechelen. Again, we were very late and arrived at about 3:20 and he said that he had another tour at 4, so that tour was also rushed. Even with how quick it went, it was very interesting and the guide made a lot of jokes to keep it entertaining. Het Anker Brewery was started by a group of beguines, nuns of sorts, who made strong beer to use as a painkiller to use at the hospital they ran. It was bought out by a brother and sister, and the fifth generation now runs the company—they still brew strong beer and now also make whisky. Turns out that they get their barrels for their whisky from Jack Daniels—in America there apparently is a law that forbids distilleries from using their barrels more than once in order to keep barrel makers employed, so they are exported and Het Anker gets once-used barrels for very cheap. It also turns out that whisky has very special laws that make it near impossible to make money off of it, so many companies do not follow these rules and instead call it whiskEy so they can’t get in trouble for it.

After way too much beer and way too little food (only breakfast at 8:30am), we were all starving. We came back to the hotel and everyone split off for a snack before dinner later. Pretty much everyone got fries, but I got a Belgian waffle—best decision I’ve ever made. I got one that had milk chocolate on half and white chocolate on half—I wish I had milk to cut it because it was super sweet, so next time I’m going to get something a little less rich—but even still, it was delicious. Or as they say here (or at least on signs for something): Brusselicious.

So in a bit we are off to dinner at the same restaurant we ate at the first night we were here (so 48 hours ago) which I don’t understand because there are TONS of restaurants right near our hotel and they all have more than 10 items on them (I might be exaggerating but the place we are going has a very limited menu). Then tomorrow is a free day so I think most of us will be out late experiencing all that Brussels has to offer tonight and then I’ll probably go to the Comic Strip Museum tomorrow—Brussels is the home of Tintin and The Smurfs, among others. LAST WEEKEND IN EUROPE!

Do I detect a hint of horse blanket?

So last night was our first night in Brussels, and a group of us went out to a local hot spot, Delirium Cafe-- a bar with supposedly over 2000 beers. It turns out that it is right around the corner from our hotel, so I'm betting we'll frequent here... Well not even betting--turns out they have free wi-fi so I'm here again already writing this blog! Anyway, today we started out with a city tour, as per usual, and Brussels is so different from both Munich and Berlin. Some I already mentioned last night, but even more was noticed today. I already mentioned the personal safety issue, but it seems like everything is a lot more cutthroat-- more vicious traffic, more aggressive people, pushier salesmen... so I'm not as confident here, even though I understand more of the language. Like I said before, we are located right in the heart of the city, so most of our tour was pretty centrally located. Something I found really interesting was that under a lot of the city is the remains of a monastery and the remains of a former castle. You can look in windows here and there and just see this entire set of ruins underground! We stopped at a museum with a cafe on the 10th floor, which allowed for some chocolat chaud with a nice view. We also got to see the infamous Manneken Pis, which was a lot smaller than I expected. He was also dressed in some sort of Italian uniform-- apparently he gets dressed up all the times. Our tour guide also pointed out some good places to eat, and so we stopped into Le Chat Noir for lunch, and she was right, it was tasty.

After lunch, we went to Cantillon Brewery-- a brewery that makes Lambic-style beers. At Cantillon, they brew using a lot older machinery, and open fermentation practices--this allows for their beer to be activated using all the yeasts and bacteria in the air. Also, because of their practices, they can only brew in limited months-- about November to March. These practices along with the fact that their beers are conditioned and constantly fermenting for years, gives their beers a unique taste. Most of their beers are pretty sour and acidic due to the spontaneous fermentation, some are a bit barn-yard-y due to the fact that they are brewed in a barn... but they also make some fruit beers that add a little bit of other flavors. Overall I wasn't a huge fan, but it was interesting to try something so different from what we've been drinking the past few weeks.

Anyway, since I'm using the wi-fi in a bar, I didn't think to grab my camera along with my computer, so I still haven't had a chance to upload photos. Hopefully I can do that in my room without the wi-fi and then add them to my posts later.