The Virtual Reinhard
Created | Updated Mar 7, 2002
A Drinking Weekend in Brussels, Belgium, August 2001
The plan was to meet at a hotel near Gare du Nord in Brussels. It should have been an eight-hour ride from Munich, but I lost some time after a wrong turn on the autobahn cloverleaf near Mannheim, and some more fighting my way through the Brussels rush-hour trying to find a signpost to the Gare du Nord (or indeed to anywhere closer than Antwerp).
I really needed to talk to someone, so I stopped the traffic by the simple expedient of stopping in front of it, and the friendly chap in the car behind not only gave me directions but afterward drove most of the way there himelf, gesticulating wildly all the while from his window. At least, I think he was being friendly.
The hotel was certainly interesting. Jez had chosen it on the basis that it was the cheapest hotel in town. The front consisted mainly of a window display of African beads and shells, while the reception was decorated mainly with maps of Zanzibar. I explained who I was, and asked if my motorbike would be OK outside. The receptionist looked uncertain, but indicated that it would probably be OK if it was locked. I then pointed out that since I'd parked it on the pavement outside the hotel door, perhaps it would be possible for the night receptionist to keep an eye on it for me?
He squinted down the length of the corridor and out of the doors, to where the XJR was ticking quietly to itself in the evening sun.
'That motorcycle, messieur?'
he asked.
'No, that motorcycle will most definitely not be there in the morning.'
I can be quite persuasive at times, and shortly afterward he opened up a disused office and I wheeled the machine in for the weekend, thanking him profusely.
The hotel seemed to be populated mainly by pairs of gentlemen who never seemed to need their rooms for more than a couple of hours, but nevertheless the water was hot and the beds were clean, so I washed off the road grime and waited for the others to turn up which, later that evening, they did.
Over the weekend, we checked out the town centre, visited some bars, wandered around the cathedral, visited some bars, and took a rather dreadfully roundabout route to the palace (sorry guys). A visit to Brussels would not have been complete without a visit to the famous and yet very small Mannekin Pis, which we found to be conveniently situated next to not one but two bars.
Downtown Brussels is a pleasant place. La Grand Place is superb, apparently built all in one go in around 1728 as a sort of gilded finger in the direction of the French, who had bombed the old one.
The bars around the centre didn't seem too friendly, but eventually we discovered some places that made us feel more welcome.
One was called Loplop which boasted a fine array of bottled Belgian beers, three of which were actually new to me, and indeed to the AtoZ Club.
The other was a small bar in the middle of nowhere that we discovered while sheltering from a sudden rainstorm. After a shaky start when I ordered something in Dutch - whereupon it was pointed out to me politely but firmly that they loved foreigners, ALL foreigners... as long as they weren't from Holland... we got chatting to the other drinkers. They were a friendly bunch and, after a while, one of them got up and started piling all the furniture up at one end, whereupon the music got a bit louder and everybody just got up and danced. I made some fans when I managed to remove a gentleman who was being drunkenly obstreporous by waltzing with him until we were close enough to the door, whereupon we danced right out into the street and to the waiting car.
Next to the hotel was a table-dancing club, and on the first night several members of our party were bounced for refusing to buy champagne for the girls. Not learning their lesson, the same crew (who shall remain nameless) decided to returned on the following night, and left several hundred pounds poorer than when they arrived. They presumed afterward that they had a good time...
