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Tag: Brussels

Music, Running & Beer

The Three Leaves of my Saint Patrick’s Day Shamrock

I’ve been organising a Saint Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl for years now, in one form or another. At some point this endeavour became more craft beer focused, and the last couple of years, a run became part of the tradition as well. This year, live music was added to the mix, as a third part of the trinity.

Saint-Patrick’s Warm Up at Magasin4

The musical part actually started a week in advance already, with a concert of the French female Celtic rock band Toxic Frogs, and the Belgian Celtic punk rock band Black Tartans, and a happy reunion with a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time. Although Magasin4 announced it as a Saint-Patrick’s Warm Up event, I decided to wear my black kilt, which better fitted the not-quite-Irish groups and music.

Beer of the evening: Zinnebir!

The Celtic Seven at Brasserie de la Mule

On the eve of Saint Patrick’s Day Brasserie de la Mule invited The Celtic Seven to perform. Surprisingly, most of their songs were in French—how Irish even is Les lacs du Connemara?—but there were a lot more green clothes in the audience and amongst the staff! This time I actually did wear my saffron kilt!

As Brasserie de la Mule is specialised in German beers, that was what I drank that evening.

BMPH³ Trail 1924 – Saint Patrick’s Day Trail!

Only slightly hungover, a little after noon on Sunday—actual Saint Patrick’s Day— I headed over to Demey metro station a to run the BMPH³ Saint Patrick’s Day Trail. Plenty of green on this trail, since those who didn’t were any green risked getting a very unpleasant ‘down down’. Exceptionally, we had to provide our own beer for circle, so I brought some beers actually from Ireland, one by Kinnegar (from Letterkenny, County Donegal) and the other one by Brehon (from Inniskeen, County Monaghan)!

Saint Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl – Craft Beer Edition

After a shower and a change, it was time for the highlight of the celebrations: the pub crawl! Once again, no bars seemed to be actually importing any Irish beers this year, so we stuck to beers in Irish style—actually just Irish dry stout—and the bars serving those beers.

First up was BBP Bailli! Ever since they opened, they’ve been serving the MC Nitro Stout, in memory of the Michael Collins bar that used to be in that location. We had it last year on the pub crawl, and fully expected it to be available this Saint Patrick’s Day as well. However, as it turns out, the beer was discontinued last year… They did have Oatly Stout though, so that hd to do. Will this have been the last time BBP Bailli was included in the Saint Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl?

The next bar was Moeder Lambic Original, where I was hoping to find some Stouterik, or even some stouts by The Kernel! No such luck, so to stay on the black stuff, I went for Dupont’s Monk’s Stout, and when that keg was empty, the new San Francisco Porter by De Ranke.

The last planned stop was L’Ermitage Saint-Gilles, where they had their Ceallach, an Irish stout made in collaboration with the actually Irish brewery Land & Labour, from Galway. Unfortunately they closed a bit early, thereby unfortunately cutting our pub crawl short…

Next year Saint Patrick’s Day will be on a Monday, which will pose a challenge again!

CBFS24 & Frankfurt HHH

It has been a while since I have been on a trip worth blogging about, but last weekend I travelled more than 1000 km on trains, providing me with plenty of things to show and tell… My main destination was Stuttgart, for the CBFS24 – Craft Beer Festival Stuttgart. Since I would never be able to be back in time in Brussels for the BMPH3 hash on Sunday, and I had to change trains in Frankfurt am Main anyway, I decided to run with the Frankfurt Hash House Harriers instead.

Warszawa & Berlin – Day 0

On the European Sleeper!

European Sleeper logo

Just a day after European Sleeper announced it will soon continue to their originally announced destination Prague, I find myself on one of their trains to Berlin.

European Sleeper: route Brussels - Berlin

After a slightly confusing boarding experience—carriage 1 was not at the front where it should be—I settled in my room for the night.

Stewardess—yes, that is how they call themselves on the European Sleeper!—Caroline then explained to me how everything worked, prepared my bed already—since I don’t really need three seats for just myself anyway—and brought me my welcome drink, a European Sleeper Weizen.

Of course I brought some more beers and snacks for the rest of the journey myself! For entertainment, I had downloaded some films and series on my iPad, since the current sleeper service doesn’t offer any WiFi.

Arrival in Berlin tomorrow will be quite early—shortly after six —so Caroline will bring me my breakfast and tea around that time, as soon as I open my room door. I’ll add photos of that in the morning!

Breakfast!

Brussel Breweries Tattoo Tour 2023

When I just had my Brussels breweries tattoo in 2022, featuring my seven favourite local breweries, I celebrated the occasion by visiting them all in one epic taproom crawl
Because that first edition was such a success, on the first Saturday after the 15th of June—the date I got my tattoo in 2022—I did it again!

This time around I was a little bit better prepared, and had stamp cards printed in advance, as well as iron-on patches, and stickers.

Again, there was a great turnout, and four people made it all the way to the end with me, two of them for the second time!

Mark your calendars for next year: the Brussel Breweries Tattoo Tour 2024 will be on Saturday the 15th of June 2024!

Wien, Bayern & Berlin Reise – 10

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If you want to read about this trip from start to finish, instead of in reverse order, click here!

Back to Brussels

So the last day of my trip—the voyage home—went a little bit different than I originally planned. I actually knew that it would a couple of days ago, when Deutsche Bahn sent me an e-mail telling me the one of the trains I booked was cancelled, but I could use my ticket for other DB trains to get me home.

So I looked up another convenient combination of ICE trains, and booked seats on those, since my original seat reservations did no longer apply, of course. However, those were considerably later than my original trains, so I decided to add a late checkout to my easyHotel booking. That way I could sleep in a little, and leave my bags in the room while I went out for brunch.

For that, I went to Codos this time, where I had a very tasty breakfast burrito.
By then it was time to do a last bit of packing, and actually check out.

I did well reserving a seat on the train I planned taking, since it was absolutely packed, even in first class! Add to that the fact that about an hour before departure, they had to switch trains, so everyone with a reservation was assigned a new carriage and seat. As you can imagine, quite a few people didn’t see that e-mail before they boarded, so where clueless about where to sit…

I didn’t manage to book a solo seat, but since someone though you could reserve a seat for luggage as well, and used the seat next to me for that purpose, I kind of sat solo after all. I did have to suffer quite a few dirty looks from people who thought that those were my suitcases! Anyway, I was seated quite comfortably until at least Frankfurt Flughafen train station, and got started on watching Die Kaiserin, which seemed quite apt to finish this trip with.

In Frankfurt I had to change onto another ICE, and even had a seat in the compartment with the see-through wall behind the driver’s seat, but unfortunately it was set to opaque.. On this train I didn’t have a solo seat either, but the person that reserved the seat next to me between Köln and Aachen, never showed up.

By the time I arrived in Brussels—quite tired, after ten full days, and with a delay of over forty minutes—I had finished watching Die Kaiserin, and was ready to take the last few metros home, unpack, and organise my virtual and real souvenirs of this trip.

Done reading about this trip? Resume reading my blog in the usual order!