Christmas Markets Round 1 - Brussels v Nuremberg

The first of our immense Christmas market battles.

The Food

Brussels provides more variety and has a greater international influence whereas Nuremberg is still strictly traditional.

In Brussels we had pelmeni (the Russian equivalent of tortellini), seafood soup, escargot, a witlof bacon-ey stew thing and tartiflette.  All of which you couldn't fault.

A bit more time in Nuremberg meant a bit more food.

Savoury foods we had were raw pork mince with onion and paprika on rye, pork steak in a bun, some chestnuts, Nürnberger sausages in a bun (unlike the well known big fat bratwurst found elsewhere in Germany these are little finger sized ones) and kartoffelpuffer which are potato pancakes that come with a massive dollop of apple sauce.  Nice.

And sweets we had were traditional German lebkuchen (which sort of resembles gingerbread), a piece of stollen and the fruitiest fruit bread you've ever seen.  Would you like some bread with that fruit?

The Drinks

Brussels only really offered up mulled wine and no mulled beer interpretation, much to our disappointment.

However Nuremberg has Brussels covered here.  We had your standard mulled wine, heidelbeer (blueberry mulled wine) and feuerzangenbowle, where rum soaked sugar is set on fire and then drips into mulled wine.  It is fekking delicious.

The Germans also do an egg punch, which is similar to eggnog, and it turns out that after a few feuerzangenbowle, some beers and some of the egg punch Nicola goes off the deep and and quite mental.  This is her mid craze.

The Other Stuff 

Brussels' Grand Place is beautiful at the worst of times.  Lit up with Christmas lights and the most tasteful, gigantic Christmas tree you've ever seen and it's truly a sight to behold.

Nix also fell in love with this merry go round, if only she was 15 years younger...

Other stuff in Nuremberg?  Not too much.  We couldn't actually determine which was their Christmas tree and the markets were fairly textbook.

The Verdict

It's always hard to diss an original and you can see that the Brussels markets have spawned from German influences but Brussels wins this one fairly comfortably I believe.  It's more interesting and it's more unique.  Nuremberg certainly has its place and we're very happy that we checked it out but we'd return to the Brussels markets again and again before we'd go back to the Nuremberg markets.

The Barrie-ometer of "Feel" - "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"

A Last Hurrah in Belgium and Germany

So, back into Europe then...

We arrived in Brussels at about 830am after leaving northern England at 11am on the previous morning.  A bus trip that was made a couple of hours longer after we missed our ferry crossing between Dover and Calais as some bloke was travelling with two massive suitcases filled with phone batteries.  He was interrogated by border security and then the police for well over an hour which then caused us to miss our connection by literally a couple of minutes.  Cheers buddy.

Anyway, we made it to Brussels, dropped our bags and headed straight out for coffee to try and get us through the day after two hours cumulative sleep.

We chewed through a couple of hours at the coffee shop, then headed to the Christmas Markets for a bit of an initial peek before making our way back to Moeder Lambic Fontainas for a few beers.  And much to our extremely grateful surprise they had Jacobins on tap!  And Abbaye St Bon Chien, that's brewed by a Swiss brewer, actually stood up to the Jacobins and almost crosses that line from beer into something else entirely.

We also partook in two of our other favourite Brussels pastimes while we were there.

Spotting more invasions.

And consuming more fritey goodness.

Aside from the Christmas Markets, that was it for Brussels.

Nuremberg

A German city we didn't check out the first time around was Nuremberg so we thought we'd drop in on our way to Prague to get a taste of a traditional Germanic Christmas market.

So naturally, we made sure to get our German pork fix whilst there.

Firstly at Hutt'n, a traditional German pub/restaurant that's just far enough out of the tourist zone.

By the way, that is actually one meal that we split onto two plates.  We love you German portions.

And then at Schaufelewartschaft, which is way out of tourist zone and served us up possibly the most tender pork we've ever eaten.  The meat literally fell off the bone.

We joined a few tables of businessmen ordering that to themselves and downing a few beers on your average Monday lunch meeting.  How anyone can go back to work after finishing that is beyond me given that we shared it and both ended up in food comas.


Finally, dotted all around the city are little Brezen Kolb stands selling extremely tasty pretzels filled with an array of meats and cheeses.  It was hard to go past the impossibly creamy camembert!

Stay tuned for Christmas Markets Part 1 - Brussels v Nuremberg

Pug Sightings (!) - 15

The Beer

Cuvee des Jacobins Rouge
Zinnebir X-mas
BFM Abbaye St Bon Chien
La Rullés Estivale
Cazeau Tournay Triple
Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux
De Dolle Oerbier

Huppendorfer Winter Weizen
Unknown Brewery Winterfestbier, Dunkles Bock

Brussels Part 3 - Pissing Statues, Invasions and a Combination of Both

Brussels Part 2 - Insert Generic, Tongue-in-Cheek Title

MY F UPS - THE FINAL CHAPTER (Nicola's sanity hopes) 

I got us to the station with just enough time to spare to buy our tickets however broken ticket machines meant a breakneck run around the station to find a working ticket machine and then a quick dash back to our platform.  We made it back to the platform in time but as the train was arriving it was only then that I realised that we were about to board the wrong train, right time, wrong train. 

So 15 minutes later we boarded a different train however this one took twice as long and got us to De Heeren late, again... 

We did arrive though and soon had a round of lambics placed in front of us, my latest failure was old news.

De Heeren van Liedekerke is rated as the best beer restaurant in the world and the proceeding five hours certainly confirmed its reputation in our eyes.

For entrées, Matto and Nix each had chicory soup with smoked eel and I had plaice and mussels, both expertly matched with Kasteel Hoppy and Vicaris gueuze/tripel respectively.  Words don't really do any of our courses justice.

For mains, Nix went for the coq-a-la-bier that she said was "delightful", Matto the cod with bacon and mushrooms which was "fantastically fresh" and I went for the guinea fowl with crab risotto, also amazing.  So much meat and so hearty.  Our choices once again were beer matched to perfection.

For dessert, we shared a Westmalle dubbel sabayon (woah!) and various European cheeses.  To drink Matto went for the very exclusive, extremely tasty Rodenbach Vin de Cereal, Nix Cuvée Delphine (huge) and me a 2006 Stille Nacht, it certainly does not get any worse with time.

To finish off we thought we'd go for a cheeky 1994 3 Fonteinen Oude Gueuze, because we can.

We got back to Brussels after a phenomenal food experience and headed to the Hoppy Loft for a couple (note the phone book size beer maps - "it's a beer map because it takes you on a journey") and then Bécasse for a few, a traditional sour beer café hidden away down a tiny alley.  Very cool.

The next day we hit the food trail for some crispy fried kippling, decent Belgian chocolate, pretty good frites, very average hot dogs and very enjoyable, meaty gyros.

The Beers

Mort Subite Lambic
De Troch Lambic
Kasteel Hoppy
Vicaris Tripel/Gueuze
Pater Lieven Blond
Eurotropius First Angel
Brouwerij De Toeteler Amber Tripel
De Dolle Stille Nacht 2006
De Struise Cuvée Delphine
Rodenbach Vin de Cereale 2008
3 Fonteinen Oude Gueuze 1994
Black Bear IV IPA
Cazaue Saison
Delirium Tremens
Lindemans Witte, Bourgogne des Flandres
De Ranke Noir de Dottignes, Kriek
Tilquin Lambic Blend
Moeder Lambic/Brasserie de la Senne Band of Brothers
Contreras Valeir Blond
Kerkom Bink Bloesem
Adelardus Bruin
Duvel

Brussels Part 1 - In the Insurance Against Great Thirst

Staying only 750 metres from the world's best sour brewery (maybe?), there's only one place to begin your stay in Brussels.  Cantillon.

A quick tour of the brewery (quick because of what is promised at the end of the tour), it was time for a few bevs.  You can see how excited Matt was about the tour.

We started off with our freebies, the straight lambic, framboise, kriek and gueuze.  All great but not what we were here for.

We followed up with Zwanze 2012, a rhubarb lambic, Zwanze 2013, an abbey style beer blended with lambic, and finished off with 50°N-4°E, a cognac barrel aged gueuze.  Nix liked the increased tartness provided by the addition of rhubarb to Zwanze 2012, I thought 50°N-4°E was a beer highlight of our trip and Matt, well he's just there to "enjoy the ride", he just "rides the waves", as does Todd the Mental Beaver (that poor bastard).

MY F UPS - PART 2

In a little town on the outskirts of Brussels there's a pub called In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst, which is quite possibly the best sour beer pub in the world.  Its selection of cellared sour beers is unparallelled.  The only problem being that it's only open from 10am 'til 130pm every Sunday. 

So clearly you would want to be there before it opens at 10am.

However, when you're sat on the couch at 930am eating breakfast and buses only come on the 55 of the hour and it clicks that you've taken down bus times to get you there an hour later than you'd wanted to, you can tend to lose your shit.  Nicola, Matt and the couch felt my wrath.  Maybe I should stop working out directions, bus times and the opening times of establishments the night before, after a few too many. 

Anyway, we made it, albeit 40 minutes after Grote Dorst had opened.  We pretty much had to race a bus full of oldies from the main road to ensure we got decent seats.  I believe we managed drag the mean age of Grote Dorst down to about 60.

The rage, the rush and the tension between us all was worth it though, this place is bloody amazing.

We started off with a few "standard" sours from the vat and then got into the vintage list.

A 2005, 2003 and 2002 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze were good places to start.  The 2003 the first of the beers that was literally "liked nothing you've ever tasted".

2003 and 2005

2002

We then followed up with a 1988 Eylenbosch Lambic, which had gone beyond lambic and become an entirely new beer.  F*cking amazing and genuinely like nothing we'd ever tasted.  However, we agreed there's probably no need to try it again.

The good thing about drinking sours is the ability to jump between different types within the category, so it was time for a couple of old krieks.  We began with a 2004 3 Fonteinen Schaerbeekse Kriek.  Tasty, yet not amazing.

The 2004 De Cam Kriek though, f'ing amazing.  So much overriding sour cherry-ness still remains and it was a true treat to end on.  We walked down the road at 4ish (flexible opening hours clearly) feeling well and truly satisfied.

Grote Dorst is where you go to pay your dues to sour beer.  WOW.

A couple more at Moeder Lambic and it was home time.  A great day it was.

The Beers

Cantillon Lambic, Kriek, Rose de Gambrinus, Gueuze, Zwanze 2012 and 2013, 50°N-4°E, Fou' Foune, Mamouche, Lou Pepe Pure Kriek, Faro
3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze 2002, 2003 and 2005, Schaerbeekse Kriek 2004
Boon Vat 44
Eylenbosch Lambic 1988
De Cam Oude Kriek
Allagash Open Cask
Gouden Carolus Classic
Rulles La Grande 10
De Ranke Cuvée, Guldenberg
Brasserie de la Senne Tripel
Val Dieu Grand Cru, Tripel
Dupont Monk's Stout