Weeks 28, 29, and 30 - Cycling around Lake Biel/Bienne, Beer Tour through French Belgium (Wallonia), and the Fête des Vendages

The last few weekends were rather busy. The weekend before last was another cycling trip with the J&J Neuchatel Informal Cycling Group. We biked around the Lake Biel/Bienne (the same lake that has Ile St. Pierre in the middle). It was mostly flat, and had good views of the lake. Two-thirds of the way through, we had lunch at a Swiss German restaurant on the north shore of the lake; it was rather expensive, but we enjoyed our fish and rösti.

Last weekend, we took advantage of the Monday holiday by driving to Belgium. Friday night, we drove to Nancy in the Lorraine region of France, about 4 hours from Neuchâtel and spent the night in an inexpensive motel. We had a low-key dinner at Quick, a European fast-food burger chain originally based in Belgium; their decorative motif looks remarkably similar to another well-known fast-food burger chain - McDonald's.

Saturday morning, we visited a little bit of the town of Nancy, which is known as a major center of Art Nouveau. We still had quite of bit of driving to do before we got to Belgium, but we decided to see the Place Stanislas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, proclaimed to be the "most beautiful place" in the world. Alright, now, that's hyping it up a bit, but it was pretty spectacular. The place is framed by gilded wrought iron gates, and gilded street lanterns dot the square. It has beautiful buildings on all sides and a fountain in two of the corners. After walking around the square, we walked to the Basilica of St. Epvre and found a patisserie and a small grocery at which we could buy breakfast.

With our croissants, baguette, cheese, cured meat, and orange juice, we headed back to the car for our drive to Chimay, the first Belgian beer stop. Chimay is actually named after the Prince of Chimay who gave the land for the monastery to the monks; the monks live and work at the Abbey of Scourmont. The actual sales are at a hostel near the abbey. We tried the Triple (Chimay white), Grand reserve (Chimay Blue) and a beer only available at the hostel made with malt but without hops - very interesting flavor profile for a hopless beer, K has no idea how they do it.

We left Chimay and were driving to our next destination at Hoegarden when we saw signs for Des Fagnes. As this trip is all about Belgian beer, who were we to pass up a perfectly good Brasserie. We stopped in, looked at their brew house and brewing museum, and sampled their blonde and bruin. It was also an opportunity to sit outside and enjoy some Belgian sunshine. It was more of a brewpub than a commercial brewery. The beer was fine, but we had other places to visit.

By now, it was later in the day than we had planned, so we did not continue on to Hoegarden, instead, we stopped at our 3rd planned brewery,

Caracole. This place was really interesting. The front part of the building is old and run-down, but in the back one can see modern, stainless-steel fermentation tanks. They regularly make 4 beers: Troublette, a wheat/whit/blonde (because blondes are trouble) with a great lemon nose; Saxo (named after the inventor of the saxophone) brewed with cardamom, very nice; the namesake, Caracole, an amber beer with a strong orange nose; and their bruin, Nostradamus (with a tulip glass, the aroma can be quite strong. Nostradamus is like a raisin punching you in the nose), the flavor was great but the nose was too strong for the glass.

We then headed to the farm near Namur where we were staying. After checking-in, we headed into town to find dinner. However, we had miscounted the weekends, and this was the big fete in Namur, so the town was packed with people. After spending far too long in traffic, we finally managed to get out of town, and simply headed back to the farm to eat car food and to sleep.

Sunday morning, after being awoken by the farm roosters, we met some of the other guests, who informed us of some local happenings, including a beer/cheese/bread festival in Durbuy (the tagline was "the greatest beers in the world in the smallest village in the world"), and the traditional stilt fighting in Namur.

But we had an appointment to keep at La Chouffe. It turned out to be a fabulous visit. The guide confirmed we were Americans, which earned us a free entry to the tour. The tour was narrated in Dutch, but we were handed papers with the English version so we could follow along. It turns out that La Chouffe is brewed with Coriander, so K is considering expanding his brew-spices. After seeing the brew-house, we drove 4km to the bottling plant. At the bottling plant, we were given La Chouffe glasses to keep. After the bottling plant, we drove 1km to a local tavern to taste the beer. 4 beers later, we were ready to head-out. Our next planned stop was Orval, but we couldn't pass-up the Durbuy festival, plus we needed some food.

The GPS-guided trip from La Chouffe to Durbuy was quite an event in itself. We got to see an old Belgian quarry and meet some mountain bikers, because the "road" was more of a bike trail. M commented that she didn't know we had purchased a 4wheel-drive VW Golf. We didn't get stuck, and I'm sure that we probably saved 0.2 km of driving distance. This is the 2nd, or 3rd, time the GPS has taken us down a path that isn't a real road; eventually we'll discover how to filter its directions but until then, it makes things interesting.

The Durbuy festival was great. More than 20 stands, with about half serving beer. And there was a marching band playing mostly old American pop songs. Several good beers tasted. It was a bit of beer blur for Ken who had 7 strong beers to try with the taster tickets he'd bought. We walked around the town a bit which is quite cute, and when it's not having beer festivals, is known for its topiary gardens. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant and concluded our meal with a real Belgian waffle.

Monday we got up, again aided by the farm roosters, and made our way to the abbey at Maredsous. As K felt that 10am was a little early to have the triple beer taster, we simply bought a mixed pack of beers and got on the road to home (Monday is our assigned laundry day in the apartment building). About 7 hours later, we were home. Great weekend of exploring Europe and drinking some fabulous beers.

This weekend, there was no rest because it was the famous Neuchâtel Fête des Vendages. During the 3 day festival, over 100,000 people pack into this town with population 30,000. Festivities are officially scheduled from the afternoon until 4 am Friday and Saturday night and a mild 12 am Sunday night. Despite the origins of the fête, which was started to celebrate bringing the wine grape harvest, most of the vendors sell beer, shots of liquor or mixed drinks; however, if you look hard enough you can still find wine.

Christina, with whom we went to Annecy, took the train down from Basel to participate in Saturday's festivities; unfortunately, her husband Mike was too sick to come down. We had a blast walking around town, sampling foods from all the different stalls, watching a parade, and listening to band music. One of the food highlights was the spiral cut potato on a stick. It's fried and then coated with salt and your choice of seasoning. We got Provencale and curry, both of which were good. This definitely is one of those ideas we should import to the US.

One of the defining features of the fête is the confetti. In our otherwise clean town, the streets were coated in confetti. And just about everyone walking around had confetti in their hair or on their clothes. Not only do people have bags of confetti that they throw on random passers-by, but also the parade floats have confetti canons which pelt the crowd with confetti. We have never seen so much confetti in our entire lives. And one of the amazing things about this fête and the confetti is that, by Monday afternoon, the streets will be spotless.

Lessons learned:

1. Stilt fighting is another of those awesome European traditions that we should have in the US cause they're so awesome. Essentially, boys/young men try to take each other out on stilts.

2. Frites are actually a Belgian creation. Rather than french or freedom fries, we should call them belgian fries.

3. Most Europeans will not dance to the YMCA.

4. Barbe à papa (Papa's beard) is the French name for cotton candy.