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.
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