Sunday, September 27, 2009

Coimbra

Coimbra’s Sé Velha—the old cathedral (the “new,” 17th-century one is further up the hill)—is considered a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture in Portugal. It is a stunning example, largely unaltered since it’s construction, with a double-arched clerestory over each tall, single-arched arcade. The narrow window slits and crenellated 12th-century walls are reminders of the hostile relations with the Moors.

Inside, I overheard a young boy looking up at the elaborate Renaissance retable of Christ on the cross ask his parents, “why was Jesus crucified?” I pulled him aside and said, “because he was stupid.” Let’s face it: when Pontius Pilate asked him, “Are you the Son of God?” he only needed to whisper, “Nah, not really. Don’t tell anybody,” and voilà! He would have lived to a ripe old age and history would have been spared centuries of Catholic guilt. You know all these lunatics who swear, “I’m Jesus Christ”? He’s the one who got away with it. The joke’s on you, Christianity.
But it is still a nice cathedral.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

New car

It's a Ford.

Enough said.

Lisbon

The Ponte de Vasco da Gama, one of two bridges spanning the Rio Tejo, is an inspiring entry to Lisbon. A stunning thin white 17km-long line over blue water, it is a spectacular and beautiful piece of modern engineering. The other bridge, the Ponte de 25 de Abril, is a dead ringer for San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (it was built in 1966 by the same company).

Lisbon is a fantastic place—a laid back, tranquil, completely unpretentious world-class city where local residents mix unselfconsciously with tourists. Trams race improbably up steep cobbled hills and down narrow twisting streets with inches of clearance between the buildings. If the buildings are are not pastel blue, pink or orange, they are covered in hand-painted azulejos (tiles), many very old, and the laundry hanging out the windows testifies to the city’s realism. It is not a tourist pantomime. People live on the streets, grocery shopping, smoking on the corner, meeting friends in the plaça, eating at the corner cervezeria, and at night the streets are full, much like Seville.  There is also a very big African influence in Lisbon, stemming from the influx of refugees from the abandoned Portuguese colonies after the 1974 Revolution of the Carnations.

After returning the car and catching the bus from the airport into the centre, the first thing I was offered in Lisbon was hash. Peddlers carry it on the street. I lost count of how many times I was approached by a hash peddler that first day alone—five? And when you say no, they ask, “marijuana? Cocaine?” And they all are persistent, as if I might change my mind and say, “Actually, you know what? I do feel like some cocaine.” One time a guy approached me and there were two police officers three metres away. Unbelievable! It’s annoying, but not dangerous. Lisbon is reasonably safe. These people want to sell you drugs, not mug you, and there are police on the beat.

I was tempted to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in 97 Minutes at the Teatro Municipal de São Luís. It’s supposed to be very funny. The title was in Portuguese, though, making me wonder if it is translated, which would be very strange. Many Portuguese do speak English, though, a legacy of the 600-year old friendship with England. Also being performed was Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, worth seeing just for the brilliant title.

As I write this, I’m supposed to be out shooting things, but instead I have been seized by Lisbon’s chilled out sunny Sunday vibe and am emptying mojitos to funky Motown on the terrace of the Noobai Café overlooking the Rio Tejo.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Driving

For those interested (I am not one of them), the two vehicles I rented so far were a Volkswagen Golf 5-door sedan in Spain (really nice car), and a Fiat Dobló in Portugal. The Fiat was a 5-door minivan with a huge decal of a golf bag over the rear and side windows – very strange for a rental car. I was a bit annoyed since it was like a giant advertisement, and I don’t even like golf. I would rather have had a sedan than this poxy minivan, but I requested a diesel if one was available, which this was. And Fiat notwithstanding, I actually loved it. The extra height was nice, almost like a truck, and the diesel was brilliant over the hilly and winding roads through the national park from Faro to Mértola (a great road for motorcyclists, of which there were many). It was fun to practise driving a diesel for the first time in many years on those roads.

Three words

Lisbon is fantastic.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Mértola

There’s a little town in Portugal’s Alentejo region called Mértola which is thousands of years old. Located on the Rio Guadiana, navigable 50km inland from the ocean, it has been the home of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and the Reconquista Christians. There has recently been discovered a wall from the Iron Age.

Today, old Mértola is a little village of whitewashed buildings painted with broad strips of yellow and bright blue on steep, rolling, bumpy cobblestoned lanes in the lee of a once impregnable clifftop castle.

When I arrived, a brief rainshower after several dry months had raised an incredible perfume from the trees and soil which stained the air with a spiced incense of sandalwood and nutmeg, like antique wood. Every breath of air in the whole town smelled of it. I stayed in a bed and breakfast run by a friendly guy named Carlos which was so comfortable, like being at home, and I was so charmed by Mértola itself that I stayed for two nights.

Flamenco

The Jerez-Seville axis is an important region in Andalucía for contributing to the development of flamenco. Indeed, Seville considers itself the heart of flamenco. Yet Jerez’s Judería, the maze of back streets in the gypsy quarter where flamenco grew, was completely quiet. I couldn’t find any flamenco at all.

In Seville I could have gone to any of several flamenco shows put on for tourists—many of which charge €30-€50—but I was looking for something authentic. When I was last in Seville, I went to a little bar called El Tamboril hidden in the corner of the quiet Plaza de Santa Cruz, where I found one of the locals with a guitar and another singing. It was deep, genuine, impromptu flamenco. I headed back again this time but found it closed on Thursday night. I returned on Friday and again on Saturday, and the door never opened. It must have shut down; a real shame.

I tried another place recommended by my Rough Guide to Andalucía, an excellent resource on flamenco, but I found instead a small group playing chamber music. In any case, the place was so hot and stuffy with the hundreds of bodies crammed in there that I wouldn’t have been able to last.

So, in the end, I travelled to the other side of the world to the heartland of my favourite genre of music and was unable to see any.

(Cue Shizuka’s howl of disappointment.)

Monday, September 14, 2009

Booking ahead

Having learned my lesson, I bought my ticket today for the bus to Portugal tomorrow. Apparently, there are two daily buses. When the lady at the ticket office asked me in Spanish which one I wanted, I couldn’t make out what she was asking and all I could answer was no entiendo—I don’t understand. The guy in the queue behind me, impatient, intervened and explained to me that there is a morning bus I can catch at 7:30 or an afternoon bus at 16:30, and she was asking which bus I wanted to take—all in rapid, verbose Spanish. After he finished I turned and said to him, in Spanish, “I don’t speak Spanish.” Somehow, he seemed to think that speaking to me in Spanish would remedy that.

Meantime, the lady at the counter simply wrote 7:30 and 16:30 on a piece of paper. I pointed to 7:30, paid my €16.50, and was on my way, wishing the impatient Spanish man a continued fruitful career in impromptu customer service.

Inter… net?

What is with the Internet in Seville? It is virtually impossible to find an internet café. Generally I need wireless access for my laptop, which is hard enough to find without sacrificing a good tapas meal and eating at a crappy American Tex Mex bar with some Yank hollering baseball on five different TVs just so you can use their Wi-Fi as a paying customer, but this time I need to print my voucher for my car rental in Portugal. I spent half the day going to five different addresses listed in various guides, and there was no trace of any one operation. Apparently they start up and shut down like dot com bubbles here, which is really strange, as if Seville is one place in the world the Internet just hasn’t caught on.

Seville

Of all the Andalucían cities and towns I have ever been to—Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Carmona, Jaén, Jerez, Arcos, Ronda… Seville is the best. I thought there might have been a halo effect, as it was one of the first places Mai Li and I reached on our maiden European voyage in 2007, but having returned I can confirm it. Granada is a must for the Alhambra; Cordoba is equally important for the Mezquita; and picturesque Ronda was a lot of fun because of the fería.  But Seville, though touristy, retains its heart and lives up to all the romantic expectations. It has the cathedral and the Giralda, and the alcázar with its rambling gardens, all in the centre of the Barrio de Santa Cruz—the yellow, salmon, and white-washed quarter of tall, narrow laneways and rose-filled balconies of iron filigree. Though other places have made important contributions, it is the soul of flamenco. I feel very safe in all of Andalucía, but in Seville, at any hour of the night, utterly so. And the tapas, invented here, is the best anywhere, with dozens of bars offering hundreds of kinds of tapas in the Barrio de Santa Cruz alone.

Americans love Seville, too. It is one of the places I have found them the most as tourists, along with Paris and Salzburg. So, they mustn’t be all bad.

The bureaucracy of buying tickets

Here is a not unusual example of queuing for a ticket in Andalucía. At the Jerez train station, there are three ticket windows, one of which is open. To be served, you take a number. I pull 480. The number currently being served is 449. My ticket says it will be about a forty minute wait, yet there are no more than five people in front of me. Where are the thirty people holding the intervening tickets?   After fifteen minutes, the number being served ticks over to 450, and one person advances to the counter.

There is a line on the floor marked with the words Espere su turno—wait your turn. The Spanish word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.”

I used the automatic ticketing machine.

Friday, September 11, 2009

The Quest for Tea

Spaniards are drinkers of coffee, not tea, but in the ancient land of the Moors you can find teterías, Moroccan-style tea houses bedecked in tilework, ottoman cushions and rugs. They are more a commercial conceit than a vestige of culture, but are nevertheless mini Meccas for the deprived tea lover.

When I learned about the Salon de Té Al-Zahra in Ronda, which offers over a hundred different teas, I made a beeline. A darkened series of low-ceilinged rooms with red walls, the décor was cozy but the air was smoky and hot. There’s no ventilation in these deep old buildings, and non-smoking establishments are a very non-European idea (though France is apparently catching on). Since recovering from this flu, if I spend the evening in a smoky restaurant – which is inevitable in Spain if you want to eat – I spend the night coughing myself to sleep. But after two weeks of abstinence, I’ll do anything for a decent pot of tea.

In Jerez de la Frontera, the Tetería La Jaima has very high ceilings and is much better ventilated. Even the hookahs they have on the menu are barely noticeable. The teapots come in three sizes, and I ordered a grande, which typically serves four or five people. The waitress double-checked, thinking my Spanish must be bad.

“Grande? Por uno solo? Es mucho mucho.”

“Si,” I smiled.

It was served in a decorative brass teapot and filled my glass a dozen times.

Unpredictably, the most pleasant tea house I’ve found in Europe is in the medieval Bohemian town of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic. After seating yourself under a large tree in the garden, the bearded waiter in flowing pantaloons brings a hundred-kind menu of black, green and white teas, with milk or lemon, spiced with cinnamon, anise, roses, or even chocolate, and a little brass bell. You while away the day in the shade of the tree, and whenever you want another pot of tea, you just ring the bell.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Luck

Well, it seems my luck with Ronda may just have run out.

I have taken meticulous precautions to back up all my photography on this trip with multiple redundant copies on SD cards, my laptop hard drive and online storage. But it seems that the card I was using when shooting the Corrida Goyesca is corrupt. No matter how many precautions I take, I can’t do anything about a card that is already fucked when I’m writing photos to it.

I used three cards to shoot the bullfight, with about two hundred peripheral photos on two, and about five hundred of the real material on the bad card.

I haven’t forsaken hope yet. Recovery software does exist, so I’ll put this card away until I get back to Sydney and then do some forensic repair work.

I will just seethe quietly until then.

La Corrida Goyesca

The bullring is sold out and the crowd is dense but civilised as they funnel through the several puertos, climb the stairs to the alto seats on the upper tier of the bullring, and thread through the rows of wooden benches. I find the number of my sol seat on one of the benches in the direct sun and throw down the little square cushion I bought outside for €2. It's 38°C, smells of cigarillos, and the bullfight will go for four hours.

In the Corrida Goyesca, there are three matadors, or toreros, who will each fight two bulls, and a 500kg Spanish fighting bull is a very angry beast. At the start of each fight, one is released into the ring through a wooden gate and it is immediately clear how dangerous these animals are. It charges the matador’s cuadrilla, the team of assistants, who goad it with muletas (capes) and then slide out of the ring behind a wooden partition. It is very much like a Roman arena.

The corrida is highly ritualised, divided into three tercios, stages. Starting with the tercio de varas, the bull attacks a blindfolded horse on whose back rides a lance-bearing picadore who spears the bull in the shoulder muscle.  This  weakens it from loss of blood. The bull attempts to lift the horse with its horns, weakening its neck muscles so that when it comes time for the matador the bull will hold his horns low. The horse, draped with a padded coat for protection from the bull’s horns, seems to accept this all with surprising equanimity.

The second stage sees three banderilleros on foot take turns to deftly thrust two banderillas, barbed and decorated sticks, into the bull’s shoulders. This both fires up the animal and weakens it from further loss of blood in preparation for the final stage.

In el tercio de muerte – the third of death – the matador and the bull go to head-to-head. The torero makes ballet-like movements with his red cape and sword as the bull passes, sometimes holding the bull’s flank with his hand as they pirouette. Though significantly weakened, the fierce bull is still capable of delivering a lethal cornada, or horn wound, and there was one dangerous moment in one of the fights when the torero lost his footing and slipped to the ground. The cuadrilla quickly moved in to distract the toro, and he was able to regain his footing and resume the fight.

Finally, the matador raises his sword, takes aim at the bull, then takes a running leap towards the horns and thrusts the sword down between the bull’s shoulder blades into its heart in an action called estocada. The torero is in the most danger at this point. With a proper delivery, the sword is buried to the hilt.

The noble animal musters all its dying strength to keep from collapsing but, if somewhat prolonged, it is inevitable. When it finally does, a péon moves in with a dagger and strikes into the spinal cord, killing the bull. The crowd cheers and waves white handkerchiefs, which is a call for the bull’s ears to be cut off and awarded to the torero, who will then walk around the ring to accolades. The bull is chained to a team of mules and dragged out of the ring.

It is barbaric. It could be argued that the actual death is relatively quick, and that we kill cattle regularly for eating. The complaint by animal rights activists, however, is that the animal is severely distressed prior to being killed, and therein lies the cruelty. A cow slaughtered for meat is oblivious until an instant death when the rod is fired through its head.

But legitimate charges of cruelty aside, the cultural spectacle is compelling.

Monday, September 07, 2009

¡Olé!

And then, to top it off, I got tickets to the Corrida de la Goyesca!

The Corrida Goyesca, or Bullfight in the style of Goya, is performed in the oldest and most revered bullring in the country in traditional 19th-century costume, after the paintings by Francesco de Goya. This year, the suit of one of the matadors, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, was designed by Giorgio Armani. The popularity of the Goyesca has grown enormously in recent years, and I had reliable advice that tickets were all but impossible to get. They’re not available online, and the window at the bullring only sells them on a few set days prior to the fight. After this, licensed resellers have been known to sell tickets for up to €2000! Although I bought an expensive telephoto lens for (among other things) shooting the bullfight, I abandoned hope of actually gaining admission and resigned myself to photographing the peripheral events. But on the morning of the fight, I noticed an open window at a restaurant near the bullring advertising tickets for the three weekend corridas – the novillada (novice) fight on Friday, the rejones fight on horseback on Sunday, and the Corrida Goyesca on Saturday. I enquired, “Esta la Corrida de la Goyesca disponible? Is the Goya bullfight available?”

“Si. €92 por sol alto.”

I could barely contain my elation.

Reaching Ronda

Simply finding Ronda was not the end of my good luck.

The Feria de Pedro Romero is Ronda’s biggest festival of the year, and it attracts an influx of tourists that would turn Jesus misanthropic. Parking a car in Ronda’s narrow streets is an absurd idea, and one that convinced me to originally abandon the rental car plan. My Michelin map was too large a scale for provincial towns and, unable to navigate from my guidebook while driving, I entered Ronda blindly. There are numerous dedicated parking lots as you make your way into town, but I wanted to get as close as possible to my hotel (wherever that was) so that I didn’t have to haul my heavy pack around in the 38°C heat. Somehow, miraculously, I chose a parking lot 50m from my hotel. I actually could not have found somewhere closer if I knew what I was doing.

Finding Ronda

I hauled my pack up to the window and asked for a ticket to Ronda. At last, I was almost at my first milestone, the Feria de Pedro Romero.

“Todo completo. All the trains are full."

My heart sunk. “When is the next available train?” I asked, angry at myself for not booking ahead.

“Mañana.”

Tomorrow?!  I learned this lesson before. Mai Li and I missed Amsterdam two years ago when we had to stay an extra night in Paris because all the trains were booked up. How had I forgotten? Now, after gearing my schedule for the past two weeks towards getting to Ronda on time for the festival, it was all at risk.

I tried the bus station across the road.  They said there is no route from Cordoba to Ronda. I was in disbelief at my predicament.

I realised there was a way, but it was going to be expensive: a rental car. When originally planning this leg of the trip, I abandoned the idea as unnecessary. Now it was my only option.

Driving from Cordoba to Ronda is not straightforward. Ronda is a provincial town, not a major city, connected by secondary roads in the centre of the Cordoba-Sevilla-Malaga triangle. You need a decent map. I happen to have an excellent Michelin map of Andalucia.  At home. From the rental agency, I got an A3 piece of paper demarcating the entire 90,000 square kilometre region, from which I could discern that I had to head south. Fortunately, I know the sun sets in the west.

Two kilometres after starting off I stopped at a petrol station looking for a map.  They did not have one.  After spending half an hour in the front seat of the car poring over tiny maps in guidebooks it hit me that I have Google Maps on my mobile phone. Not only that, but it provides explicit directions and distances. My salvation! I was out of Cordoba within the next fifteen minutes and on my way.

Of course, taking technology for granted, I didn’t count on the fact that 100km into the Spanish plains there is a rather complete absence of reception, without which Google Maps on my mobile phone is useful only for smashing against my head in frustration. Being lost in Cordoba is preferable to being lost in the middle of nowhere.

But where there are roads there are petrol stations, and notwithstanding my immediate experience in Cordoba, petrol stations usually do have maps. And what did I find when I stopped?  My excellent Michelin map of Andalucia.

The drive from Cordoba to Ronda takes 2¾ hours. I pulled it off in less than double that.

Wow, it's hot

From Madrid I caught the fast train, the AVE, to Cordoba, and arrived to 40°C heat.

For my birthday in July, Mai Li bought me a North Face winter jacket for my trip.

The prime tourist attraction in Cordoba is the Mezquita, the grand Moorish mosque which set the architectural style for the region, but having seen this two years ago I focussed my attentions on those things I missed on my last visit here. I stayed in the Judería, the atmospheric old Jewish quarter of narrow lanes to the north of the Mezquita, and visited the ruins of the 10th-century Moorish palace city, the Medina Azahara. The best restored and most spectacular part of the site, the throne room of Abd ar-Rahman III, was closed for further restoration, probably in anticipation of Cordoba hosting the European Capital of Culture in 2016. Having missed this already in 2007, I was bitterly disappointed.

Back in Cordoba, I was accosted by a gypsy on the street when she abruptly put a sprig of thyme in my hand and commenced a palm reading. “No, no,” I said.

“Un momento, por favor,” she replied, and then told me I was “muy fuerte” – very strong – that I would live a long life, and I would have lots of babies. She then rubbed her fingers together and said, “coin.” I said no, and she gave me a look that made me avoid running into her again.

At the Meson de la Luna I had the menú del día for lunch. The first course was gazpacho, a cold tomato soup which was so refreshing in the hot weather that I proceeded to dump the contents of the bowl into my lap. This did not go down well with my white pants, which suddenly became stained and wet. Gypsy curses are very swift.

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Toledo

When I was last in Madrid two years ago with Mai Li, I had to decide whether to make a day trip to Segovia or to Toledo.  We chose Segovia, which I highly recommend.  It has spacious plazas and monumental sights, including the Alcazar (castle) and, most particularly, the spectacular Roman aqueduct (which I used as the cover to my book).
So, of course, this time I went to Toledo.  Given my limited time, I booked a tour.

Toledo was the capital of Spain before Philip II moved the capital to Madrid in the 16th century.  It is surrounded by steep hills leading down to the Tagus River, a perfect, almost impermeable site for defence, and it is this dramatic location which is its biggest appeal to the photographer.  Naturally, though not entirely apt or fair, I compare it to Segovia.  I'm afraid it comes up short.  The streets are narrow and there are no wide plazas, so it is very difficult to get a sense of location from the ground.  The national cathedral is sited here, and while it is impressive and deserves its reknown, there is nothing in Toledo quite as dramatic as the Segovia aqueduct.  Perhaps Toledo's own alcazar, the other defining silhouette on the city's skyline, would change my mind, but the tour can only include so much and it wasn't on the itinerary.

Spain

I love Spain.  Madrid was a dry 34°C on the day I arrived.

One of the things I love is that at nine o’clock at night the city is alive. It’s warm and people are out. I just want to wander and be out, and do nothing. It’s so pleasant; it feels like a perpetual fiesta.  Spaniards eat late.  Dinner at 10PM is the norm.

A common things to eat for breakfast are churros, often described as Spanish doughnuts.  They aren't much like doughnuts at all, but are indeed deep fried dough, extruded into finger thickness and looped into a teardrop, and then dipped in a pudding-like hot chocolate.  I ate the following morning at Maestro Churrero – the churros are crisp and not oily, and the chocolate is thick and not powdered.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Museo del Prado

A tip for those planning to visit Madrid’s Museo del Prado: buy your ticket online. I was able to completely bypass the more than 100-metre long queue. My main reason for going was for Goya’s Black Paintings, including “Saturn Devouring his Children” and “The Cudgel Fight.” All fourteen are on permanent exhibition.

When in Bruges, I saw Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Last Judgement” and thought how small it was. In Madrid’s Museo del Prado, I saw Bosch’s triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” and it’s huge! The central panel must be 2m x 3m. There were also numerous other Bosch works, several of which I was unfamiliar with, and another version of Hans Memling’s “Adoration of the Magi” triptych, which I saw in Bruges.

Ryanair

Ryanair’s maximum checked luggage allowance is 15kg.  This is one of the ways in which Ryanair makes money – excess baggage is €15 per kilogram.  My fully loaded backpack weighs 20kg.  Before catching my flight from Brussels (Charleroi) to Madrid, I managed to jam all of my books, my camera and lenses and my laptop into my carry-on camera bag, but my backpack was still two kilograms over, so I had to pay €30 (A$51). It would be a tolerable amount, except that I already paid for two tickets! I was stupid enough to book a ticket under my middle name of Wayne instead of the name in my passport, Geoffrey, and the €100 cost of changing the passenger name exceeded the cost of simply buying a new €55 ticket. Still, at a grand total of €140, it was probably still cheaper than a full flight fare on a national carrier.

Getting from the Madrid airport to my hostel was very easy because the Madrid metro is so efficient.  A single ticket anywhere on the network is €1 (or €2 from the airport), and you never have to wait longer than five minutes for a spacious and air-conditioned train.  It surely must also rival the Paris metro in its extent.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Bruges, Belgium

Bruges is beautiful, but bordering on fairy tale and very touristy.

Medieval buildings of brick and stone rise straight up from green canals of water lilies and vines.  Cobbled streets traverse canals over stone bridges.  Narrow laneways lead to small squares lined with trees and churches.  Chimes from the carillons in the UNESCO listed belfries chorus through the streets, playing “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and “Danny Boy,” and the sound of horses hooves as they pull buggies full of tourists mix with the clatter and bells of locals on bicycles.

It is possible to avoid the tourist kitsch altogether and see authentic Bruges in quarters like St Anna, a quiet, mostly residential district nicknamed Verloren Hoek – the Forgotten Corner – where I found the Jerusalemkerk, a 15th-century church purportedly based on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (though the two don't appear to share a great resemblance) and still owned by the same family.

The Groeningen Museum houses a permanent exhibition of the Flemish Primitives, a school of painters in the 15th & 16th centuries who were emulated all over Europe for their modern, realistic style.  They include Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling (known for his exceptional detail), and Hieronymus Bosch, whose triptych "The Last Judgement" is included in the collection and which I specifically planned to see.  Imagine my disappointment when discovering the museum is closed for reinstallation!

Fortunately, the Musem St Janshospitaal is temporarily hosting Bosch's triptych (which is surprisingly small—the central panel is only about 100cm x 70cm).  While I did also see some of Memling's works at the museum, I missed out on the Groeningen collection of the Flemish Primitives.

I drank beer every day through Germany and Belgium – and why wouldn’t you?  My last night in Bruges was spent in a little beer-specialist pub called De Garre, hidden down a tight lane between the town's two tourist-packed main squares, Markt and Burg. I started with the 11% strength house beer and moved onto Satan Gold.  It was Heaven.