Wasbar café in Ghent, Belgium
A man in his 20s squeezes past our chairs, places a bag on the floor and delves his hand deep into Mariette. I’ve never seen anything quite like this in a café.
Posts Tagged with Flanders
Rediscovering Seef beer, a lost Belgian beer
Seef bier (pronounced ‘safe’) was a popular style of beer in and around the Belgian city of Antwerp prior to the outbreak of World War One. It was known as ‘the Champagne of the poor people’ yet its production died out and for many years the recipe was lost.
Toer de Geuze in Flanders, Belgium
A lambic beer undergoes spontaneous fermentation in a vast open tanks known as a coelship. To an untrained eye a coelship looks much like a shallow swimming pool filled with wort prepared by the brewers of the Pajottenland.Translated from Flemish into English, Toer de Geuze means 'Tour of Gueuze'. Typically held over one weekend every two years, the event is a celebration of gueuze beer presenting aficionados with opportunities to visit lambic breweries and gueuze blenderies.
Bruegel’s Eye art exhibition in Belgium
This project, for me, was a discovery of all the other things that Breugel is — the intelligence of his compositions and the landscapes in his paintings. People like Breugel’s work a lot and identify with it as typically Flemish or Belgian culture and its joie de vivre. At the same time he really is a very interesting painter who invented the snow landscape as a genre and played an important role in developing the landscape as a genre of painting,” added the curator of Breugel’s Eye.
Charming man Jean Til in Antwerp
I travelled to Antwerp for a day out with two friends. We were all within arm’s reach of Jean Til as he began speaking. They confirmed they’d also heard the line. It was genius. Sheer brilliance. We all commented to that effect in the immediate aftermath of our two-minute encounter.
Touring the ruien in Antwerp, Belgium
I’ve pulled on a disposable overall, I’m holding a torch and have a camera slung around my neck. If it wasn’t for my floppy black wellies you might take me for a crime scene investigator. The kit is compulsory for tours of Antwerp’s underground canals, the ruien as they are known here.