Highlight #12: Best of the Browns.

Q: What's better than a shiny, modern, specialist beer café with hundreds of great bottles and taps from which to choose?

A: An utterly brown one, with a small handful of great beers.

I'd like you to meet the Brumaire. This is a real neighborhood brown café in Saint-Gilles, a corner bar that looks like so many others, with Stella Artois signage and smoky regulars sitting out front, holding court. Once inside you have the requisite gaming machine and little bags of potato chips or sausage bites. Inexplicably for such a small place, there are stage lights and a disco ball.

I counted 37 beers on the wall-mounted list, made from those slats and little plastic letters like you used to see in hospitals and elementary schools. To my shame, I took no photo of this. But among the usuals were Jambe de Bois, Witkap Stimulo, Hommelbier, and a few Trappists than included Orval, Rochefort 10, Westmalle Tripel, and Chimays blue and white, the latter being on draft.

Plus Saison Dupont.

Translations are imperfect, but maybe this is like an American hole-in-the-wall dive that happens to have Sierra Nevada on draft, or a British "community pub" that happens to have well-kept Taylor's Landlord. A jewel.

So there I was in the middle of a long foot-trek from central Brussels to Moeder Lambic St-Gilles -- which is just a couple of blocks away -- drinking a Saison Dupont in one of the brownest cafés in Brussels, which automatically puts it in the running for brownest worldwide. Nibbling on those awful, wonderful little sausage bites. Trying to figure out where they boogie when the disco ball goes into effect.

So for me, that's a highlight. More to come. Here's an explanation if you're wondering what I'm up to.

Celebrating Hops and Making Small Children Wear Funny Costumes in Poperinge.

Arrive to find all of Poperinge barricaded off like it's preparing for a zombie invasion. Pay €7 to enter. Feel safely protected from vehicular traffic, freeloaders and the undead.

Food search reveals pricey three-course meals or cheap bratwurst. Easy choice. Enjoy brat while looking for open café table. No problem there; you're a good planner and anal-rententively early. Have some Hommelbier and wish it was hoppier.

After a few rounds, here comes the parade (zombie-free, although there is one giant devil, a giant spider, and several Germans). Cute little tykes in insect costumes. Everything decorated in hops, whose resinous aromas waft through the air. Bavarian oompah bands. Locals pretending to be Americans, migrant workers and drunks (some don't have to try very hard). Hop queens past and present. More cute little tykes in insect costumes. Then a big finish before the beer festival in the main square. Turns out to be just a Jupiler festival. Back to the café to grab a few decent beers for the train ride.

A tip: The best beers and parade views appeared to be at the Palace Hotel on Ieperstraat. Get there a couple of hours early for a curbside table. The Café de la Paix is also worth a look, especially if you're looking for a proper sit-down meal.

But don't stress about it. You have until 2011.

In the meantime, meditate on this strangeness: