On this topic, I feel I must point out that Belgium is the home of sheer, sublime, beer heaven; Germany and the Czech Republic (both of which make excellent beer) are mere runners-up in the matter of range and scope of Belgian brewing.
Forget Tintin and chocolate (and indeed, the EU): Beer is what Belgium does superlatively well. I have been in restaurants, (and indeed, pubs) in Belgium where the menu is decent, delicious, and perfectly delightful to read. Then, a waitress (or waiter) hands you a veritable door-stopper of a book, invariably the size of a telephone directory (for those of a vintage to recall such publications).
This will be the beer menu, a massive tome that it may take some time to read from cover to cover, all the while an individual stands near, notebook in hand, awaiting your order, politely.
You mutter something on the lines of, 'perhaps give us a few minutes to make up our minds', only to find that you have barely perused a third of the - literally hundreds and hundreds - of seductive offerings in the lavishly illustrated doorstopper when the waitress/waiter returns a few minutes later
.feebly, you ask for a recommendation, only to be asked, in turn, for your own preferences in the esoteric field of brews and beers, as the waitress/waiter will, of course, wish to steer you in accordance with what you may like.
This is because there will be beers on this sort of menu that you have never, ever even heard of
.
Adventurously, you try something completely new, never before heard of; and then, to compound an evening of exploration and discovery, you sample something else equally revelatory. Unfortunately, they are both so robust you have no recall whatsoever of what you sampled. Never mind.
However. On further thought, you make a heartfelt vow to return
in the next life, and then, the one after that, and indeed, whatever form the one takes that follows that one, too, irrespective of how many eternities it takes
.in order to sample a few more lurking in the depths of this telephone directory
..
