August finds me back in Belgium--the long-sought objective of my decade-plus European wanderings and ponderings. Yet, as I pause my commute for an ever-so-unctuous Grimbergen Double, thoughts turn to the old Chinese curse, "be careful of what you wish for..."
August is a strange time to land in Belgium. This is the time of year when those wacky"Flems" and "Loons" with their fully-vested 32 vacation days blow the bulk of them in sunnier climes, and the time when I found out I would not be so generously vested until 2010. The place has a post-neutron bomb air to it, even as it retains its considerable visual, imbibatory and gustatory charms.
Waking up daily to quintessentially Bruxellois scenes is surreal for me--hence the term "surreal for breakfast." And waking up as an actual Employee of an honest-to-Buddha US multinational (with a concomitant cut to my comparatively lordly consulting pay across the Dutch border) makes things weirder still.
But in Belgium, weirdness is normal. Indeed, the second to last stop on my commute is named for it. "Weerde."
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Minnesota, Hats Off to Thee
Much of my August was spent at the spanking new offices of my global programme team in Suburban Minneapolis. That too resulted in weirdness. I actually liked the place-a lot. I actually liked the people-a lot.
Having avoided extended tours in the Midwest since my days at the University of Wisconsin (How 'bout dem Badgers, eh?), two weeks in The Twin Cities were a revelation. Great food, great people, nice lakes and rivers and a relocated Danish London Business School buddy who has adopted baseball's Minnesota Twins with unseemly fervor.
I'll effectively be splitting my time between Belgium and Minnesota for a while. It will be interesting to see who wins in the end.
Having avoided extended tours in the Midwest since my days at the University of Wisconsin (How 'bout dem Badgers, eh?), two weeks in The Twin Cities were a revelation. Great food, great people, nice lakes and rivers and a relocated Danish London Business School buddy who has adopted baseball's Minnesota Twins with unseemly fervor.
I'll effectively be splitting my time between Belgium and Minnesota for a while. It will be interesting to see who wins in the end.
Two Sides of the Beer Spectrum
Two recent brews are front of mind at the moment. In the Minnesota corner is Grain Belt Premium. Grain Belt is a beer the likes of which have all but disappeared in North America--a clean, fresh, malty, locally produced lager/pilsner to serve as an accompaniment to life's bigger and smaller occasions.
Having had several at Nye's Polonaise Polka Bar and Retro Emporium in Mpls (the perfect vinyl-upholstered old school setting for the quintessential old school American brew) I had wistful thoughts about the other local lagers that guided my early beer developments: Huber, Augsburger, Regal Brau, Point (which has been reduced to knocking off Belgian style wheat beer), Leinenkugel (before it started coloring its beers red) and the all-time classic, Genesee Cream Ale (mockingly called Genocide by thirsty but broke and resentful grad students at SUNY-Albany, where I spent a watershed year majoring in Buffalo Wings and minoring in wanting to leave Albany).
Grain Belt is distinctly American in flavor, but could compete well with Europe's commodity lagers. In contrast, Trappieter, my Belgian Beer for this month, is a unique combination of the citrusy flavor seen in many Belgian brews with an assertive (but not overwhelming) hoppiness evocative of English ales and American Microbrews.
Trappieter, at the moment, is not in mass production or circulation. Indeed, after sampling some with the brewer himself in a small beer cafe on Ghent's fabled Graslei canal, it became clear that Trappieter is, for the moment, a labor of love. It is brewed at the Proefbrouwerij in nearby Lochristi, a contract producer of recipes generated by independent brewers and brewenthusiasts. But despite the limited production, this struck me as a brew with some legs. At a comparatively weak 6.5% alcohol, it could be sold in the US and UK without facing hefty tax. At any rate, it's the first (and best) beer I've had in Belgium with the actual brewer at hand.
Until September, that's FlightKL18!
Having had several at Nye's Polonaise Polka Bar and Retro Emporium in Mpls (the perfect vinyl-upholstered old school setting for the quintessential old school American brew) I had wistful thoughts about the other local lagers that guided my early beer developments: Huber, Augsburger, Regal Brau, Point (which has been reduced to knocking off Belgian style wheat beer), Leinenkugel (before it started coloring its beers red) and the all-time classic, Genesee Cream Ale (mockingly called Genocide by thirsty but broke and resentful grad students at SUNY-Albany, where I spent a watershed year majoring in Buffalo Wings and minoring in wanting to leave Albany).
Grain Belt is distinctly American in flavor, but could compete well with Europe's commodity lagers. In contrast, Trappieter, my Belgian Beer for this month, is a unique combination of the citrusy flavor seen in many Belgian brews with an assertive (but not overwhelming) hoppiness evocative of English ales and American Microbrews.
Trappieter, at the moment, is not in mass production or circulation. Indeed, after sampling some with the brewer himself in a small beer cafe on Ghent's fabled Graslei canal, it became clear that Trappieter is, for the moment, a labor of love. It is brewed at the Proefbrouwerij in nearby Lochristi, a contract producer of recipes generated by independent brewers and brewenthusiasts. But despite the limited production, this struck me as a brew with some legs. At a comparatively weak 6.5% alcohol, it could be sold in the US and UK without facing hefty tax. At any rate, it's the first (and best) beer I've had in Belgium with the actual brewer at hand.
Until September, that's FlightKL18!
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