A beer-loving city of politicians and outlaws

Belgium's capital city Brussels is more than just an administrative centre for the EU. It boasts of comics, history—and thousands of beer styles

- Rishad Saam Mehta

Assuming it is the capital of bureaucracy as the HQ of the EU, I had long dismissed Brussels as a place to visit.

The only reason I stopped there earlier this year was to break my motorcycle ride from London in the UK to Bastogne in Belgium. To get to Bastogne, I had to ride 184km from London to the ferry terminal in Dover, cross the English Channel to Dunkirk in northern France on a two-hour ferry, then ride 174km to Brussels in Belgium. Bastogne was a further 160km away.

But as I rode into the capital of Belgium after the monotony of the motorway and the flatness of Northern France, Brussels came as a surprise. The Art Nouveau facades of the city’s architecture looked like they were drawn with a fountain pen, and as I rode through the city centre, I could swear I caught the occasional whiff of waffles and yeast.

I ended the day’s ride at the Marriott Grand Place Hotel, located opposite La Bourse de Bruxelles, the erstwhile neo-Palladian Brussels Stock exchange that now houses the Belgian Beer World Experience. In Belgium, beer is so ingrained into the social fabric of the country that it’s been anointed an Intangible Cultural Heritage by Unesco. The country boasts more beer styles than it does politicians. The happy beer aficionado has a choice of Trappist ales, lambics, wit biers, and brews with names that Captain Haddock might mouth in a fit of rage.

The Belgian Beer World Experience offers storytelling sessions where enthusiasts and novices alike are regaled with brewing secrets and anecdotes, as though monks had nothing better to do than to indulge in fruity fermentation experiments. There are guided tastings to help discover one’s personal beer style.

But I wanted to give Brussels a fair chance to show me its other charms, so I legged it to the Comics Art Museum. It wasn’t easy, because it was a hot day and in Brussels, beer cafes are like tea tapris in Mumbai.