Baltic Adventure!!!

The plan:

April 01, 2007
Depart Brussels: 9.10 AM
Arrive Riga: 12.35

Check-in: Franks Backpackers Hostel

Things to do:

AK - 47 Shooting In a Genuine Soviet Bunker
Riga Castle
Old Town
Dome Cathedral

April 02, 2007
Depart Riga: 17:00
Arrive Tallinn: 21:50

Check-in: chez Tatevik ;)
Things to do: Tatevik's surprise guided tour!

April 05, 2007
Depart Tallinn: 9.30
Arrive Helsinki: 11.30
Depart Helsinki: 19:00

Check-in: Night ferry!

Things to do: See city centre, Uspenski Cathedral, Suomenlinna Fortress

April 06, 2007
Arrive Stockholm: 9.30 AM

Check-in: 2 nights in a "cell" at the converted Langholmens Vandrarhem prison!!, last night at the Sheraton

Things to do: Well I actually still have to figure some of that out, but April 8 is my birthday!!

Depart April 09 back to Brussels

A “spring” party?

One neat thing about working at NATO is that it is the home to dozens of diplomatic missions, almost all of which have an Ambassador which is the highest rank in diplomacy. These missions are like mini-embassies inside of NATO, the office space belongs to that country and if you step inside you are greeted with the usual national adornments of flags, crests, posters, portraits of leaders, etc. The Americans invested the most in their mission having marble slabs installed in the floors and walls, with portraits of George Bush proudly hanging on the wall next to the Stars and Stripes. The Canadian mission basically took the office space as-is but added some posters, and furniture... A few of the missions even have national post-offices, for example there’s a British Post Office not far from me where you can buy Cadbury chocolate, rowntree fruit gums, and see a very large portrait of the Queen. The advantage to these military post offices is that you can send and receive mail from that country and pay domestic prices (so if any Canadian friends are interested in sending me some Kraft dinner, peanut butter, and jolly ranchers, the address is:

Christopher Yung
NATO Staff Brussels
PO BOX 5048 STN FORCES
BELLEVILLE, ONTARIO
CANADA K8N 5W6

The best of all though, are the parties. A diplomat is there to represent his country, and what better way to show off your country than to invite people to try some of your national food, wine, beer, and music. At NATO there are 26 member states, and 22 more partner countries with missions, which means that in theory you could have a party by each country each week for 48/52 weeks in a year. In practice though most parties are joint affairs and not all the missions throw them (I’m still waiting for the party by Kazakhstan). Before Christmas was the real exciting time when many missions ran holiday parties, in particular I remember the Americans throwing a Hawaiian Christmas Party, complete with an open bar (I’m not a fan of American beer, but the whiskey was good ;) and delicacies that I haven’t had in ages like triscuits and corndogs.

Advertising for the parties is usually pretty subtle, so it came as a total shock when yesterday I found out that the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian missions were throwing a party to celebrate the spring equinox. The idea seemed amusing considering the hail storm only a few hours earlier, but I hurried down to see the huge crowd. I quickly grab a plate and load up on Polish Sausage, Cabbage rolls, and my favourite Czech dish of roast pork and dumplings. To wash it down I had Żywiec beer and a Polish drink consisting of Zubrowka Vodka and apple juice. All of that made me a little light headed and I was sure that heading to the NATO bowling alley with the interns wasn’t a great idea, but I ended up beating my own record!

So many beers so little time

One charming quality about Belgian beer culture is that a beer must always be poured in the right glass. Instead of generic pint glasses, every brewery also produces glasses of distinct shape with the brewery’s trademark on it. For example Hoegaarden glasses are very wide and have 6 flat sides, Leffe is served in something resembling a wine glass, my favourite Grimbergen comes in a stubby short goblet.

The tradition becomes difficult to maintain when Anglo-Saxons are involved. Thanks to the European Parliament, and Irish Pubs, Brussels now has establishments that offer “Happy Hour”, something not typically Belgian. These places are distinctive because they usually have a bar name in English, have only English speakers inside, have shorter beer menus, and drink deals. After work on Fridays you can often find a sea of interns in front of the Pullman where the 2-for-1 deal makes a massive ½ litre of Hoegaarden cost only 3 euros. At my “local”, the happy hour goes until 10pm on weekdays, midnight on weekends, and beer ranges from 1 to 2 euros.

This all makes a place like the Delirium Café, all the more mind boggling. As the Guinness World Record holder for most varieties of beer available, they promise to stock at least 2004 beers, with as many as 2500 available on a given night. The beer menu is a book kept under the bar that could easily take an hour to flip through. So it seemed like the best place to end Lauren’s night-tour of Brussels.

I met Lauren at the Eurostar station just after work and we vainly tried to find a cash machine. In a train station that has almost everything it strikes me as typically Belgian to not have easy access to an ATM. We haul straight to my place to drop off bags and get Mads and head off to a Flemish restaurant for some grub. The menu is written on a tall chalkboard at the end of the bar and we grab a hot meal while having a few drinks. Lauren then gets the quick tour of the major “sites”, the bourse, the grand place, and finally the manneken pis. Lauren didn’t quite buy that a small statue of a boy peeing in a fountain can be a tourist attraction, but accepts that we aren’t “taking the piss” when other tourists start to photo it, and we show her a souvenir shop with hundreds of little naked manneken pis boys on the shelves.

Delirium isn’t the nicest bar in the world, in actuality its sort of a tourist trap. But it does have over 2000 beers available, most with their own glasses. Lauren and I get a Kwak which comes in a narrow neck glass without a flat bottom. We follow that up with a round of Bush Ambree, which holds the record as Belgium's strongest beer at 12%. Considering it was a Monday, this might have taken things too far, but all in all it was one to remember.