Belgian Beer Weekend

Last weekend we attended the Belgian Beer Weekend in Brussels with a good fun group of Ingrid’s work colleagues. It began immediately after school on Friday with a loud and beery 3 hour train trip to Brussels. On arrival at our hotel, we found that we could not have our rooms because they were “polluted”. We never found out exactly what this signified. Ingrid was delighted to find that our substitute hotel was right on the Grand Place where the event was held.

After a bucket of moules for dinner, we joined the rest of our troupe for a late night in the famous Delirium Café. It was jumping. The pink elephant is the café mascot. It was a bit of a tart.

On Saturday morning, we had a lovely late breakfast at a window table overlooking the hoi polloi queuing for entry to the festival area in the Grand Place. We wandered out a little later to find that the rest of the team was already out of the blocks and sprinting.  I figured that if I were to enjoy the whole day, I should start off rather slowly.

  

Ingrid and I took a break to look for some lunch. We both love Brussels and it is always fun just to wander around. Its apparent haphazard juxtaposition of architectural styles is fascinating and I love the abundance of Art Deco extravaganzas. We searched out the start of the procession of traditional beer carts with their magnificent draught horses. After, we had a delicious soup and chunky bread lunch in a local café and enjoyed being able to sit down for a while.

  

Not being a beer drinker, Ingrid was delighted to find a cassis flavoured lambic beer from Lindemans. I tried a sip. It was really girlie. At only 3.5% alcohol content, it was good for keeping Trixie away.

It was a long trip home on the train, longer for some than others. At least we had Sunday to recover before work on Monday

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Vitra Campus

For another rainy day activity, we had discovered that there was a design museum in Weil am Rhein, on the outskirts of Basel. Vitra, a Swiss furniture manufacturer, has a unique factory complex comprising buildings by various world renowned architects including Nicholas Grimshaw, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Alvaro Siza, Herzog & de Meuron and my favourite, Tadao Ando.

The Frank Gehry designed museum is the centrepiece of the Vitra Campus, but strangely, it was the most underwhelming of the buildings. It appeared to eschew the edict of form following function with its profligate use of “look at me“ twirls and random angles. Subsequently, this made it very easy to photograph.

I have been an admirer of the Japanese architect Tadao Ando ever since I recognised his 1981 Koshino House in Ashiya, Japan as “my” house. My taste for shuttered concrete has been ridiculed over the ensuing years, but it has stood the test of time. Just being in and around his conference pavilion here at Vitra has confirmed my fascination with Ando’s brutally beautiful simple style. This visit had the same spiritual quality as my pilgrimage to the house and studio of Alvar Aalto in Helsinki.

The VitraHaus, designed by Herzog and de Meuron in 2010, is the flagship store for the Vitra Home Collection. The exterior appears as a random stack of graphite black, pentagonal tubes. The interior quite cleverly guides the visitor down through five spectacular levels of the company’s products like a very up-market Ikea. The furniture on display was often intelligent, invariably ultra stylish and expensive. But, I am afraid that I was more taken by the building itself, especially the delightfully sculptural staircases.

The Zaha Hadid designed fire station displays none of the hallmark fluid shapes of some of her other famous projects, but its angularity is highlighted by zig-zag, shard-like shapes of shuttered concrete panels. I loved it.

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Black Forest

We spent a long weekend in the Black Forest. At this time of year especially, it should be called the Green Forest. We know why it is so green – it rained all the time we were there. We took the (in)famous B500 Hochstrasse from Baden-Baden south. This road always features in lists of the world’s best driving roads. It is 65 kms of fast smooth sweeping sections interposed with hairpins through dense forests and elevated sections with ridiculously panoramic views. Ideally, you don't want to be driving a puny Fiat Punto.

We stayed in the chocolate boxy village of Simonswald, about 20 kms out of Freibourg. It was well endowed with typical Gasthauses which reminded us of what we missed about living in Germany – cheap, hearty evening meals accompanied by cheap reasonable wine and really good beer.

  

We lodged at a very affordable, traditional local hotel, complete with the mandatory gargantuan breakfast. By necessity, we found that we had, in fact, learned some German in our three years in Munich.  There was a lovely little chapel situated on the side of the mountain just above our hotel. Because of the rain, we never did get to visit it.

  

Boris (our GPS) was being his usual berserk self, miffed when with we programmed in “no highways”, he would send us down some apparently remote but wonderfully picturesque goat tracks.

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Orval

A couple of weeks ago we experienced a rare beautiful sunny Sunday, as all Spring days should be. Hence we took off through the rolling pastures and forests of the Ardennes to the west of here, destination Orval. We were accompanied by any number of midlife-crisis Harleys and an almost operatic accompaniment of Ducatis and high revving Japanese bikes.

Orval Abbey is a Cistercian monastery founded in 1132 which has a rich history involving the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar, buried treasures, gold ring retrieving trout and Nostradamus.

It is an operating monastery which provides the monks, who chose this Cistercian vocation, a “life which is ordinary, obscure and laborious”. To laymen, their best known labours involve the production of its Trappist beer, the profits from which go to charity. This thought tends to augment the feeling of benevolence whilst consuming this lovely beer.

Although the monastery itself is closed to the public, the extensive ruins of the medieval abbey are open as is the museum in the undercroft of the church, the beer museum and the gardens. Another bonus - there is a seniors’ discount on the entry fee!

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