Things to See - section added 7/25/01
Thanks to Glenn Burnett, Jeremy Grey and Mark Antonation for their travel experience and assistance here.

De Dolle Brouwers Westvleteren De Bie Straffe Hendrick Rodenbach Ingelmunster Castle	Van Steenberge	Westmalle Brouwerij Moortgat
Cantillon Oud Beersel Brouwerij Boon	Achel
Rochefort Brasserie Caracole Abbaye de Floreffe	Brasserie Fantome Trois Brasseurs Brasserie de Bouillons Brasserie de Rulles Orval Brasserie Achoufee La Ferme au Chene	Brasserie DuPont Brasserie á Vapeur Chimay Brasserie la Binchoise Blaugies Abbaye Des Rocs Brasserie Ellezelloise

Belgian Pubs
Of course the best way to enjoy the treasures of Belguim is not on a web site but in a bar. The Belgian Beer Pub Finder can assist with a point and click directory of pubs in Belgium offering 100 beers or more. It allows you to see how pubs are clustered, and can show you what to expect if you are going to be in a specific area.

One interesting point is that because so many Belgian beers are bottle conditioned you don't see a lot of taps. This is counter to the American way of assessing the calibre of a bar, we like long rows of tap handles. It is not uncommon to find a pub with hundreds of beers but only 5 taps.

Also, you're most likely not going to find things like Rodenbach and Boon Kreik on draught even thought they do pop up in the states. Such things are regarded as an absurd notion over there. Draught Belgian beer may sound like the ultimate, but you really havn't lived till you have ordered a bottle of beer in a Belgian pub that cares about what they serve. From the selection to the way they pour it to the endless array of glasses they have pour it into it is truely poetry in motion.

Geography
Belgium is located in north central Europe and occupies an area of 11,781 sq. miles (continental U.S. sq. mileage is 3,021,295 sq. miles). It borders The Netherlands to the north, Germany and Luxembourg to the west and France to the south and east with roughly 45 miles of coastline on the North Sea.

Certain styles have regional concentrations of breweries - oud bruin being mainly a Flanders thing, lambic in the Brussels area, etc. This map can give you a general idea how styles are clustered.

Travel
The major airport is in Brussels, if your are fare shopping or your final destination is more northern, it may be worth your while to check out flying into Amsterdam and connecting into Antwerp.

From London, Brussels can be reached by the Eurail high speed train in 2 1/2 hours. Train stations feel like airports in as much as the arrival and departure schedules include places like Zurich and Cologne as well as domestic cities. If hitting the major cities is what you are after you will find the rail very helpful.

If you're driving there I have good news, that frightening habit the Brits have of the steering wheel and car being on the opposite side as in the US does not apply in Belgium (or the rest of Europe). So at least, while you're fighting with road maps you won't also be curbing the urge to drive into somebody.

Something to beware of, there can be quite a language barrier. More on that elsewhere on this page, but this can have a great impact on driving through the country as towns and cities may not be referred to in a consistant manner. Here are some examples of variations:

Population
About 10% of Belgium's population is in Brussels, its capital. The population of Belgium is primarily of two cultural groups, the French speaking Walloons of the southern provinces - known as Wallonia - and the Flemish speaking Flemings to the north. The ratio of Flemings to Walloons is approximately 5 to 3.

It is interesting to note these two ethnic groups seem to not think well of each other. I read a very funny book (Bill Bryson, Neither Here nor There) about a Brit traveling Europe who once pressed a Flemish person as to why he hated Wallonians so much. After much hemming and hawing he finally replied if a Wallonian comes to your house to visit he won't bring anything! Hardly civil war material. Perhaps though it would be like a Boston yankee trying to make friends in Mobile, Alabama.

Language
Beyond anything else about the Belgian people, the thing that most impressed me was their general multi-lingual nature. In Bruges I took a boat tour (it is a canal city). The tour guide asked the boat's occupants how many languages were needed. We settled on German, French, Flemish and English but he was prepared for more. This from a guy who worked for tips. Amazing. There was also lots of Japanese being spoken in a tourist capacity.

In Brussels they like French. Aside from "Bonjour" I know nothing of this language, but the wife remembered enough to get by. At one point we were trying to get back to Midi station to catch the train back to the UK. We got lost and asked a cop for directions. I said "do you speak English?" He said "no" so Anne asked him for directions in French. He said "Go down that street, take a right...". Lying bastard. If you want to hang in Brussels learn the language or be prepared for "stuck to the bottom of my shoe" status.

Filip Carrette, a Flemish Belgian who visited this site, added this about speaking Flemish in Brussels:
"Flemish people will not be served in a pub when they order a beer in Flemish. Not everywhere, but in most of the pubs. When we ask for the bill in Flemish they will not understand us. Haha, if then we stand up without paying, suddenly they do remember some numbers in Flemish! It's funny to see their faces. But things like this happens only in Brussels."

Others have written me insisting this is an exaggeration and to say similar things can happen to a French-speaking person in a Flemish bar. My experience with the cop leads me to believe it is not that exaggerated, but either way it seems the only way to insure good all-round treatment is to be multi-lingual!