Bicycles, steam trains and … beer

All connected by one word – Leireken.

One of our favourite cycling routes is the Ros Beiaard, a 50km circuit through the region to the North-West of Brussels that takes in the attractive town of Dendermonde, the woods at Buggenhout, a section of the path along the Schelde and large swathes of Flemish farmland. We take as our starting point the disused station at Bardegem – now a pleasant pub – and the first 10km or so follow the track of an old railway, converted to foot- and cycle-path. Straight and flat.

This section forms part of another circuit – the ‘Leireken route’. If you don’t turn off it towards Buggenhout, but continue a bit further, you will come to another disused station at Steenhuffel, just behind the Palm brewery, which has been transformed into the Leireken tavern, complete with restored 1st class passenger coach.

Fast-forward to a trip to the Moeder Lambic speciality beer bar in St Gilles. There, chalked on the blackboard of today’s specials is that word again – Leireken. A penny drops; I’ve seen that beer for sale in my local health-food shop. For some reason, I’ve never been inclined to buy beer in a health-food shop. But next time I visit, I have a closer look. Leireken bio buckwheat blonde – I’m still not convinced, but the label on the bottle clinches it – a heroic-looking engine-driver battling through the night.

But what does Leireken mean? It’s not in the dictionary. And how does it connect with my cycle route? Well, it seems that the line, which runs from Asse to Londerzeel via Opwijk, was past of a longer route from Douai to Antwerp. How often it was used I don’t know, but it produced a character, an engine-driver named Valeir, well-known to all the locals who used the line or lived close to it. And, in that curious Flemish way, his name was affectionately ‘shortened’ by making it longer – Leireken ! When the line closed, he was immortalised, first by the bar at Steenhuffel and subsequently by the cycle-route.

When the former head brewer of the Opwijk brewery, best-known for the Affligem abbey beers, decided to set up a new venture there was oneobvious name for his new product. His choice of buckwheat rather than barley was unusual, but he knew what he was doing. The beer is delicious.

Every day, you learn something new

For me, Caran d’Ache is a maker of pencils with a name you’re never sure how to pronounce. Well, I learn that the pencil is actually named after a French cartoonist, whose main claim to fame is one single drawing – well, two actually – along the lines of the H.M. Bateman ‘The man who …’ cartoons.

There it is, on the left. The first picture is entitled 'let's not discuss the Dreyfus Affair' and the second is 'they discussed it'.

But there’s more. While Caran d’Ache the pencil is named after Caran d’Ache the artist, Caran d’Ache the artist is named after … a pencil. For karandash (карандаш) is the Russian for pencil, and while the artist, whose real name was Emmanuel Poiré, was of French extraction, he was born in Russia. Now how about that?

One thing leads to another, and I recalled something I was taught at school, that the Russian word for (railway) station is vokzal (вокзал), and this came about because a visiting Tsar was mightily impressed by these new-fangled trains at Vauxhall, in South London.

This, of course, is a myth. Vokzal was in use long before this supposed visit, and it didn’t mean railway station – well it couldn’t, could it? In fact, it meant ‘pleasure garden’. I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that an Englishman established a Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in Moscow in 1783 – named, of course, after the ones in South London.

You learn something new every day

It was 30 years ago today…

… I caught the first morning flight from Heathrow to start my new life in Brussels. I knew where I was headed – I had visited the offices twice already – but the sense of excitement and adventure was palpable. It was a Monday; they had more sense than to call me in on my official starting day, Friday the 1st.

I don’t actually remember much more about that week. I was lodged in a flea-pit hotel just off the Avenue Louise, by Place Stephanie. I didn’t spend any more time there than I had to, but I don’t recall going out either. I spent a couple of afternoons traipsing around the neighbouring streets looking for the orange and white ‘à louer’ signs, without success. Then I found an ad for a furnished apartment in Avenue Albert, shook hands on it on the Thursday evening, and on Friday headed back to the UK for the weekend.

All in all, not an auspicious start, although the simple sense of ‘differentness’ was enough to keep me on a very mild high. It’s a feeling that I still get from time to time – curious, that. It doesn’t happen around the busy areas, or the sights; it happens around the suburbs and the side-streets.

I’ve been here half my life (nearly), I’ve left my home country far, far behind, and yet from time to time Belgium still inspires a sense of wonderment. Hope it stays that way.

Rara avis

Our weekly bird-food bill during this cold snap is probably around €15. Grains, apples, raisins, cheese, balls and blocks of fat stuffed with creepy-crawlies (where do they get the raw materials from?). Special muesli for birds. We even had a pot of worms in the fridge for a while – yes, they were alive but no, they weren’t moving about very much.

All this virtue has its rewards of course, in the form of a garden full of birds. Nothing very exotic – it’s the pigeons and the collared doves which rule the roost, starlings, blackbirds, chaffinches, sparrows, magpies, tits both great and blue, a robin and the ubiquitous green parakeets which have so successfully colonised Brussels.

They are all welcome at the banquet except one – the heron, with whom we’re at war over the proprietorship of our pond and its fishy contents.

It’s very rare indeed that we see anything outside this community of ‘common or garden’ birds. Very occasionally a wren comes to visit, and last summer a red kite perched on the edge of the pond. Just once I saw a pair of yellow wagtails. So it was quite exciting to find we have been adopted by a pair of fieldfares, at least for the duration of the current snow. I knew what they were because of a BBC report on how this winter they were appearing more regularly in gardens; the fieldfare was described as a ‘large, aggressive thrush, stealing food from the blackbirds’ which fitted them exactly.

As a bonus, the vet was visiting at the time, administering the cat’s annual jab. He didn’t know what these birds were, and was most impressed when we got out the birdie-book and said ‘there, you see, that’s the one!’ Even looked up for him the name in French – litorne.

A further fall of snow overnight means they’ll stick around a while longer. Don’t worry, the blackbirds won’t starve. There’s plenty of grain, apples, raisins, cheese etc to go round – we can always buy more.