Tuesday, April 18, 2006

 

Eater's Easter


If a latter-day Dick Whittington were to go looking for a city whose streets were paved not with gold but with dog shit, he’d be well advised to head for Brussels. The pavements are slathered with the stuff. Christ knows what they feed their dogs, but I suspect it might be the same praline spread you see on breakfast tables as the faeces are of the same colour and creamy consistency.

Vampirella and I spent two days there, and a terrific Easter weekend it was too. The beer is fabulous. I sampled some nine varieties but barely dipped into the pot as there are over 500 kinds. My favourite was ‘Judas’, an apparently innocuous brew which, true to its name, bites you on the figurative arse once you’ve had a bottle and suddenly can’t stand up. The food’s pretty good too, though I started to tire of mussels after the first meal. I mean, they’re all very well, but they do look like detached vulvas and they don’t really fill you up. Rabbit stewed in cherry beer was a better bet.

As with most continental European cities, the public transport system is excellent and cheap, and puts our own British travesty to shame. Brussels is not a beautiful city by any means, and while its cathedral and Grand Place square are mighty impressive, there’s an air of drab seediness hanging over the place, as though all the money there has gone into the trough feeding the hogs in the EU area which it probably has. That said, many of the buildings are decorated with enormous murals from comic strips, Belgium being one of the comic capitals of the world, and you can go on a walking tour of comic mural sites as we did.

There’s a weirdness about the place that I found fascinating and unsettling at the same time. Bizarre statues – of stooped old ladies, of busty cartoon rabbits riding bicycles, of dogs cocking their legs – appear all over the city free of any apparent context. Going back to my earlier remark about dog turds, there are places where an emblem of a squatting dog appears on the pavement, without a line through it, as though this is a designated canine toilet area. And, of course, the city’s most famous landmark is a pint-sized statue of a urinating little boy, which says a lot.

The night life is excellent. We wound up in a cheesy jazz bar and got to sit up on a balcony where we could watch the super-slick bartenders mixing drinks with dazzling speed and elan. At one point I was buying a round and the lounge singer was belting out Hey Big Spender, which was entirely apt considering that I was handing over a 20 Euro note for two drinks and getting a couple of coins as change.

Worth a visit, especially since there are very few Brits there. Those people are awful on holiday.
May they step in dog shit up to their waists.

Comments:
These Europeans seem to be much freer with their evacuations than we Brits. I remember seeing my first pissoire in a country village in France when I was little and my mother tried to convince me it was cultural and charming in it's own stinky way. But I know what she'd have said if they wanted to put one in Stornoway. We don't have the climate for a pissoire anyway.

Brussels sounds lovely apart from all the poo. I expect the dogs get fed on the city's famous sprouts or something with a lot of roughage to make that kind of mess. They wouldn't waste Nutella on the dogs, would they? Who knows, they're barmy in Belgium.
 
You're right! The British on holiday are a disgrace.
Did you turn into a 'real ale twat'? It's easy to do when there is a big range to choose from. And they taste better over there. I take it there was no sign of a big bearded brute rolling in the dogmuck crying his eyes out?
 
Those people are awful on holiday.

Not that they're up to much at home.
 
GOd, sounds like Paris, dog shit central. Other than that I loved the place.
 
Sam: the excrement is too liquid to be the product of something fibrous like sprouts, which tend to cause flatulence instead. But I'll bear your suggestion in mind as I continue my odyssey into the heart of the matter.

Doc Maroon: I'm a bit of a real ale twat anyway, and many other kinds besides, although I don't have a beard and am not very big. But I'll bear your comment in mind as I strive for self-understanding.

Philip: true, but they tend to stand out more abroad where the general standard is higher.

FMC: I think there was a Metro station called Dog Shit Central in Brussels. I'll have to check the map. There is a station called Silence/Stilte so this idea is not entirely far-fetched.
 
Paris - so romantic, so full of dogshit - they should issue wellies at the aiport.
 
Dorchester is a good place to find a large amount of dog shit. Have been loathe to return ever since.
 
High heeled wellies naturally, for the very chic.
 
Dog shit is useless and smells worse than primate turd. At least you can make paper out of elephant dung.
 
haha!

"creamy consistency" this is just fucking wrong used to describe dog shit.

mussels from brussels = detached vulvas.. of which i am sure you've seen your share of.

so the people there are obsessed with golden showers and defication rituals. different strokes for different folks.

(vomits)
 
I live quite near a park in the doggiest part of the city, which I walk through occaisionally when I'm in a hurry, but it's the most high brow part of the city where they all have fancy pants dogs to match their supre handbags. It always gives me no end of pleasure seeing those MILF's bending down with a council supplied plastic bag to pick up their pooch-paste off the ground. They know that their clone is right around the corner with a dog that's twice as small and "you wouldn't want it to happen to you". I've never been to europe, I prefer to stay home in the land of the courteous MILF.
 
May they step in dog shit up to their waists.

I'm so stealing that. Thanks, Footsie!
 
I absolutely hate seeing hordes of Brits on holiday.... or over here, in fact! The ones that come to Sinless City are either backpackers who just want to get pissed or old guys who only seem to be interested in getting "massages" and visiting the tranny-bars.

Most of my friends here are either locals or the odd few enlightened ex-pats from a wide variety of places (including the UK and the US, despite the tone of my post yesterday!).

Good European place to see without worrying about twatty tourists is Budapest - I loved it there!
 
SexyB and FMC: I reckon the two of you should get together and start a designer wellie line. I'm sure there's a big earner in it.

Kim: will avoid. Though I like the name of the place... very Trollope or Hardy.

GB: if you let dog turds dry and whiten they make excellent ornaments for the mantelpiece, or Turner prize entries.

Sarah: you haven't seen the Brussels variety; it truly is creamy. Looks that way, anyhow; I didn't investigate further.

Mr Kunts, sorry, Kunst: welcome. I gather you're a New Zealander. I didn't know they had dogs there, other than sheepdogs.

Lindy: you're welcome.

Binty: Budapest is somewhere I've long wanted to visit. I hear even Prague is getting infested with boorish Brits these days.
 
Excuse me, you did say Judas bit your a**e, didn't you.

Oh and don't Gorillas, ahem, have a tendency to eat theirs!
 
So do dogs. The solution, therefore, may be to let the dogs self regulate the Belgian turd problem. Instead of dragging the animals away from the excrement, let them do what nature dictates

Problem solved!
 
Here in the States the eruption taboo is similarly strong, and apparently getting stronger. When I was young they had piss-traughs in some men's rooms, where random fellows would expose their hopefully-deflated meat balloons to one another and join their waters as one within the greater porcelain.

This is no more. Sanitary and/or modesty concerns have driven the communal tinkle underground.

Now you must pay outrageous membership fees and bide your time on extended waiting lists hoping for a chance to visit the "River Club" downtown where loud, obnoxious music and strobe-lights surround the amber fountains.
 
We only have sheep to chase the dogs around.
 
Me have to differ with GB when he say Dog shit am useless. In fact, it a really good way of attracting other dogs. This am REALLY helpful if you am just starting up you first authentic Koran restaurant.

mmmmMMMMMmmmmbosintang!
Boshin-jeongol ***drool****, Suyuk & Duruchigi!
mmMMMMMmmmmmm
***stomachs growling***
 
A restraunt based on the Holy Word of the Islamic religion, Monstee? Well I never!
 
I dined at a Koran restaurant once. When I'd finished my plate of gammon I called out to Edward the waiter, "More ham, Ed!"
 
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