Estelle - CS #4 | Bieres

Today in a word: Beer.

Pretty much don't even need to read the rest of this post, all you need to know is: Beer.

Warning: I am really tired. I almost always use Laura's computer to blog, but that makes me always second in line. So she stays up pretty late doing all of her stuff, then she gets to go to bed at a normal time while I stay up into the wee hours writing for you all. That's what I get for not bringing a cute little netbook. But also, if you want an uber detailed account of everything we do, Laura's blog link is here.

So amazingly, after yesterday, our 5 AM party day, we were up and moving at 10 AM. Very impressive. And by We I mean Laura, Sophie, and me. We got street waffles at this fantastic little shop. It was half as much as the waffles in a restaurant from yesterday! And obviously super fresh, and with only strawberries and whipped cream on mine I could actually taste the delicious, fresh waffle dough that causes me to gravitate towards waffle stands in the first place. Waffle stands here are like pizza stands in Chicago - everywhere, and SO GOOD.

Then we went to Catillon, which is the last traditional lambic brewery in Brussels, maybe in Belgium. It was a museum/brewery, so we toured eight different rooms and learned about the process of making lambic beers. Lambic beers are special to Brussels and the traditional lambics use spontaneous fermentation for one to three years. You can also add fruit to them, or you can combine one year old lambic with three year old lambic to produce geueze. We weren't allowed to touch anything because it is all still in use today. At the end we got to sample traditional framboise (raspberry) lambic and traditional geueze. If lambics aren't traditional, they are called modern; modern lambics often add artificial sugar and speed up the fermentation process.

From Catillon, we went to a pub called the Old Oak where we met up with a ton of people. Most importantly, we met up with Estelle, our fourth CouchSurfer host and our first female host! We also met up with Kevin (still hosting Sophie) and his two new American surfers, Hannah and Lila. There were some other people too but this is the main cast of the next 48 hours. We stayed for the entire duration of the Manchester United vs. Chelsea football (soccer) game. It was one of Estelle's favorite pubs where she is a regular so she recommended some great beers. First I had a framboise lambic (they are so good! They just taste like candy!) and then a darker Belgian beer.

Estelle is awesome! She loves beer on par with how much Laura and I love it. She is very laid back and friendly, and she loves to host CouchSurfers and show them around town. She humors us by answering all of our questions about which building is what, where the best whatevers are, and which things we should see and do. It is awesome! I have learned a lot about Belgium by talking to her. It is so much more interesting that reading a guidebook...

It was awesome having all of us at the bar together because we were with a huge group of people! It was like we had friends! :) Seriously without CouchSurfing that never would have happened! It was so wonderful to be with a group of people just hanging out like normal.

Another CS plug - CS takes a lot of the stress out of traveling. You meet with your host, who if you're smart you have carefully selected to stay with them based on their profiles. Then, you have a bed for the next two or three nights. You have a hot shower. You typically get the gracious benefit of free wireless internet. And every once in a while you get to wash your clothes in a real washer! And honestly, not worrying about leaving your stuff in a hostel with 10 dorm beds, coordinating 10 showers, and finding laundromats or doing sink-washing makes the trip much less exhausting. All that, and the fact that you get kind of an automatic friend and a local's perspective of the city just continues to prove my point that CS is pure awesome.

Anyway, after the soccer game we were standing outside and met an American guy who was a little drunk for that early in the afternoon and his Norwegian friend. We (all 8+ of us) ended up chatting with them for like 20 minutes before finally parting ways. We all meandered back to Kevin's to pick up our stuff and then Laura, Sophie and I went with Estelle to drop our bags off at her place (so we really never carry them for very long....it's awesome).

Since we were about to head out for more beer, Laura and I ate some of our leftover baguettes with meat and cheese and then we embarked on our continuous beer mission. Belgium is a 5 day beer mission. I'm not sure what kind of beer I had at this next bar but it was delicious. And the bar served us malted barley to snack on, like instead of peanuts! Strangely addicting! Very fun to chew on, and you can really taste different beer flavors and undertones in the malt. Super cool.

From there we went to a place called Friteland where we got frites. Frites are fries, and according to Estelle Belgium is actually the true creator of what we know as French Fries, but she says since nobody really knew about Belgium and it was close to France, France basically gets all the credit. But the originals are from Belgium, and they're called Frites, and we went to her favorite Frite shop! Delicious! Naturally. We got her two favorite sauces too, one was a curry ketchup and the other was called allendouse I think? It was mayonnaise with ... something... basic? Spices? Herbs? Not quite sure but both sauces were great!! So we cleaned up those plates.

Next stop: a Tapas restaurant, where we just got some chicken, and some bread and cheese. And beer of course. The weirdest part was when Sophie ordered sardines. Her plate was quite literally a pile of like 15 sardine fishes. Head, eyes, scales, everything, just piled up on a plate. SO GROSS. She ate about one and a half and then called it quits. They looked so gross Laura put a napkin on them so they would stop staring at us. Also, Hannah and Lila met up with us here, which was great! They are both so fun, very good company to have.

And that was the end of our beer/waffle/frite day of crazy indulgence!!

Quotes:
American guy outside of the Old Oak: "I work for the government. For the D.H...?....S! Dude, am I drunk?"

Kevin: "Hey man, sorry about the game, I was for Man U as well." (Chelsea won!)
Norwegian outside of the Old Oak: "Yeah I know,until they play again on Wednesday it really fucks up my whole week."

Hannah, trying Sophie's sardines: (1st bite): "Tastes like fish..." (2nd bite): "Real fishy..." (3rd bite): "OK I can't eat this anymore."

Lila: "Dude I think I smoked so much in Amsterdam I almost got sick...my throat needs a break."
Hannah: (takes a drag) "Yeah dude, me too."

Accomplishments:
I think I tried 6 different, unique, genuine Belgian beers today.
Made MORE friends!
Laughed all day.

Nice People Alert:
Directions Guy - we were trying to find the Old Oak and I asked this older guy for directions in French. Then I took a right one street too early. He came running after us down the street to tell us that we were on the wrong street. So cute!

Travel Tip:
Street food wins. Always.


We heard there's not much to do or see in Brussels, but when you're with awesome people it hardly matters. It has been crazy fun here!