Bud in Belgium??

I had long believed that Anheuser-Busch, thank goodness, had not attempted to export its "beer" to Belgium. That would be much worse than carrying coals to Newcastle; it would be more like carrying Taco Bell to Guadalajara or Pizza Hut to Florence.
Now, if they did try to sneak some Bud Lite into the country, odds are good they'd have to invent a new name, in a crafty ploy to trick savvy Belgians.
Shockingly, I've just discovered a beer, supposedly from a brewery in the southeast corner of Belgium, that might just be A-B's plot to foist its "malted beverages" onto the Belgian public.
How do I know this? It's all in the name, my friends: I think there must be some truth-in-advertising law here. If this isn't a front for Bud Lite, then I don't know what is. Check out the label and you'll see what I mean. If you can't see it too well, the name follows, below.



That's right. It's "Pissenlit" ! Never a truer word was spoken...

Road Respect

Coming home from work today I came to an intersection where I needed to turn onto a fairly busy, 4-lane road. At the intersection there was a wide pedestrian crosswalk and two young girls waiting patiently to get across. Directly in front of me (the only car between me and the crosswalk) was a police car. As traffic approached the crosswalk from the left, one then another then another car sped right on past the girls, in clear view of the cop. I counted 12 cars go by without a reaction by the cop car in front of me. Do you wonder why the Belgian drivers would do such a dumb thing, taking such a crazy chance of a serious fine and just being damned rude and impolite? Simple answer in the form of a question: care to guess which car was the 13th to hurry across that pedestrian crossing, right in front of the girls? You guessed it.
The simple fact of the matter, as I see it, is this: put a Belgian behind the wheel - even a cop - and respect is simply a word that doesn't exist, not to be found in either the French or the Flemish dictionary.

Not Wanting to Brag...

but we've had sunny weather for 9 straight days now! I guess that's not so much a brag as a statement of total shock. Nine days of sun is about a month's worth around here. OK - that's an exaggeration.
It's about two months worth!
But it's supposed to continue for 2 or 3 more days still. Even the birds may have to start wearing sun glasses...

Home of the Good and the Bad

We recently visited Nuernberg (or, as we bastardize it: Nuremburg), in southern Germany. It's a city with quite a past, both very good and very bad. It's the home of famous woodcutters and the painter Duerer, the site of a marvelous ancient fortress, and it's the scene of the annual Nazi party rallies. Hitler considered this city very "typical German," whatever that meant. Nearly bombed flat in the war, many of the most beautiful sites have been carefully reconstructed. Oddly, one location which neither fell to bombs nor Allied dynamite at war's end is the huge reviewing stand, where Hitler would address hundreds of thousands of troops. It's still there and you can walk right up to the actual speaker's podium. Don't even think about making any stupid hand gestures here; the cops do not think this is funny and it will lead to immediate arrest.
Nuernberg is also famous for their tiny bratwurst, about the size of American breakfast sausages but infinitely more tasty. Probably the most famous place to get them is seen here, below the huge church. It even was mentioned in a spy novel in the 1970s; as I recall, it was a Len Deighton novel. The mini-bratwursts are that good!

For "Angels and Demons" Fans

You should recognize most of these places from the movie...

The one with St. Peter's in the distance shows the actual not-so-secret, above-ground passageway linking Castle San Angelo with the church.

Two Cool Guys of Rome

Charlie and Julius near the Roman Forum...

Warning! Toad Road!

And yet another installment of the "I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore" saga...
We just returned from a quick visit to our old stomping grounds: Boeblingen, Germany, where we lived from 1989-92. As if to welcome us back, what did we encounter on the small road leading out of town but the signs telling us we were on a Toad Road! Actually, if you really want to know, the sign says, "Schildkroetenwanderung." Now, aren't you sorry you asked?
What this is is the annual, huge "migration" of toads from one side of the road to the other. Why cross the busy road in the first place? Your guess is as good as ours. But cross they do. And so, squished they get. By the dozens. Or, at least that's the way it was until the local government invested in mini-Berlin Walls, running for about 3 miles along the side of this particular road. Can you imagine local governments in the U.S. using tax dollars to protect toads?
What the wall does is keep the travelin' toads from making it to the road. Instead, they are "channeled" to small tunnels which run under the street, bringing them safely to whatever it was that was so darned important on the other side!