Congratulations and Jubileeations

Whatever one might think of the institution of monarchy generally or in the UK specifically, avoiding the splurge of Diamond Jubilee events is next to impossible.

There is something altogether surreal about watching an elderly woman who always seems mild enough and who has few meaningful powers (although let’s not forget the Privy Council) being fawned on by people.

Large sections of the media in particular seem to be having a pre-Olympic competition in sycophancy and hyperbole.

Perhaps we need a figurehead. Perhaps not. Perhaps a monarch is better than a president. Perhaps not.

But whichever side of that little debate you come down on, it’s a tad disingenuous to go on at length about her longevity when, unlike the overwhelming majority of her subjects, she has all the benefits of just about the best of everything – including health care – and certainly doesn’t have to get up in the morning worrying about what to get the children for tea – or whether she can afford to pay the gas that will allow her to cook it.

And indeed, to pick up a popular theme amongst some, her model of family life, which on the surface is the oft-spouted ideal, does not seem to have produced great success in terms of her children’s own relationship histories.

Although of course, living in a goldfish bowl doesn’t help. But if that’s the case, then why do we pretty much expect the monarchy to display itself to us – and condemn other celebrities if they do something similar?

The House of Windsor is largely another form of mass entertainment. It’s just one that we all pay for.

So, to jubilate or not to jubilate? That is the question.

Well, since it is probably nobler to join in than to sit churlishly on the sidelines, when the subject of a BBQ was raised among some of our neighbours, I was more than happy.

Indeed, while it’s a pity that it seems to take something like this to get communities mixing, it’s one of the ideas behind today’s Jubilee Lunch.

Our neighbours, though, don’t generally need quite as much encouragement to mingle. For around nearly half the residents of our block, the sun is all that’s required.

The gate that is now in action in our garden, allowing us easy access to the carpark, makes it easier for us to join in too.

On Friday, I nipped down to Borough – first to Savannah, a shop specialising in South African produce that sits under London Bridge station.

There I picked up two packs of boerewors, a six-pack of Castle for The Other Half to imbibe while doing his Man Cooking, and a small bag of biltong to make sure the cats had some sort of treat for the weekend too.

At the market, I found more beers – blonde and dark Brugse Zot from Brugge, plus a US craft beer, Blue Moon, which I decided to pick up for as naff a reason as that being the Manchester City fans’ theme song. I have to say, it's very nice.

I had bottles of magnificent Bavarian white beer Franziskaner due to arrive in an order the following day, together with the necessary ingredients for trifle.

The plan was to have our little party on Sunday, but by Friday evening, the weather forecast was very poor, with Saturday looking like much the best option.

It meant a few changes – the trifle was put on hold – but nothing we couldn’t cope with.

In the late morning, The Other Half made dough for roosterkoek – a South African bread that you cook on the griddle of the braai (BBQ) – while I scraped close to nearly one and a half kilos of Jersey Royals and then cooked them until just ready.

With all this in mind, last weekend, I’d cooked chicken in a pot with water, the giblets, range juice and rind, black pepper, bay and lashings of tarragon, then frozen the stock.

Now, this was brought back to a simmer and then poured over the just-cooked spuds. After a couple of hours, the potatoes had absorbed much of the liquid, taking on the flavours. All that remained was to take a few chives from the garden and snip them over the top.

I’ve bnot actually done much in the way of entertaining, so the amount had been a guess. But it worked well – and I’m delighted that the potato salad was very popular.

So too were The Other Half’s bread and the boerewors that he cooked on our small BBQ, which we wheeled through the gate to join the bigger party.

Two neighbours had put bunting up and, as we sat around, feeling chilled and under a grey sky, it was hard to imagine anything much more British.

But the sun suddenly pushed its way through the cloud, the day suddenly bright and hot.

Later, there were enough ripe strawberries to hand round a small bowl, ensuring everyone had the chance to try at least one.

The stunned expressions and comments as people realised the difference of what they were tasting was perhaps particularly gratifying – simply because it reassures me that I’m not deluding myself about the difference in taste.

Looking back, I don’t think that, even as the bunting fluttered in the breeze, anyone mentioned or gave a thought to the anniversary that it was all supposed to be about.

Beer was quaffed, music played, banter enjoyed – and every one of our small community, from one to 50-odd, seemed to be relaxed and thoroughly at ease.

And if that's not worth a spot of jubilating, then what is?

Chocolate dreams

Along with beer, there’s one thing you’ll find very difficult to avoid in Brugge, and that’s chocolate.

The city centre alone has at least 48 chocolate shops – which is one for every week of the year except Lent.

Many of them are explicitly aimed at the tourist market, but local people do actually buy chocolate here too – often as a gift to take to a host or hostess, rather than a bottle.

And while there are chains aplenty, the real deal is also represented – artisanal chocolatiers whose products are still made by hand.

But however they’re made, chocolate has come a long way – albeit over a very long time.

Chocolate – or xocolati – had been enjoyed for centuries in South America before Europeans found out about when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs.

The first records showing its use have the Maya drinking it – over 2,000 years ago.

And it was as a drink that its popularity continued throughout the region. Indeed, historians have suggested that Montezuma’s court consumed approximately 2,000 cups a day, with the king himself being responsible for 50 of those.

The Spanish might have disliked plenty of the culture they were destroying, but they took up this habit with relish.

In the 16th century, a Spanish Jesuit missionary to Peru, Jose de Acosta, wrote that his compatriots were “greedy” for it, sometimes even adding chili, and sometimes making it into a paste that was apparently good for the stomach and “against the catarrh”.

The Spanish then introduced it to Europe, where even as they were having it produced on the other side of the world by slave labour, it remained a luxury for royalty and the well-connected. In England, anyone with money could buy it, and the first chocolate house opened in London in 1657.

It was only at the end of the 18th century that the first solid chocolate was made in Turin, and that kick-started the developments that have led to what we recognise today as chocolate.

Belgium is among the European countries where chocolate making has become an art form. And Brugge reflects that.

The city even has a chocolate museum, but I decided against it.

It is also home to Dominique Persoone – Belgium’s self-styled ‘Shock-o-latier’ – who is a sort of Heston Blumenthal of chocolate, only a bit more rock ‘n’ roll. Which in Brugge isn’t easy.

If readers thought it a tad outré when I tried cheese chocolates from Parisian chocolatier Jean-Paul Hévin last year, then what Persoone does with chocolate could give you a serious jolt.

We had first become aware of him via the Hairy Bikers, who visited his Brugge shop in their ‘bakeathon’ series.

The hirsute culinary pair had tried chocolates flavoured with grass – no, not that sort of grass, the green stuff that cows eat.

They’d also tried Persoone’s ‘shooter’, a little device that enables you flick chocolate powder up your nose. It had been created for a Rolling Stones party and is now available to buy, together with the chocolate.

To be honest, I can’t work out why a €10 note wouldn’t do, but there you go. It is, apparently, an really freaky experience.

My Brugge chocolate mission, I had decided, would include visits to a ‘normal’ chocolatier and a visit to Persoone’s Chocolate Line.

As we took our first amble around the city, we found ourselves in a small square – and there, on one side, was the Chocolate Line.

So, having sussed its location, I left this particular little treat for later in the week.

It’s a small shop with a traditional façade; at first glance, there’s nothing to suggest the unconventional nature of Persoone’s work.

There’s nothing that hits you instantly when you walk inside either.


Oh, it was crowded, and we had to wait until a group of young women who had only come in to look had moved on.

There is a large window at the back that enables you see two of Persoone’s staff busy making chocolates – something fascinating in its own right.

And then there’s the produce: cult-of-the-personality stuff – books and mugs with Persoone’s image – and then things like chocolate lipstick. No, not a bar of chocolate made to look like a lipstick, but a lipstick. That’s chocolate. Put it on and then ‘look for a victim to kiss’.

An old-fashioned, dark wood and glass counter ran down one side of the shop, full of trays of different chocolates. They looked delicious; classy but far from unconventional.

And indeed, many of the creations here are far from being wildly outré. There are bites of taste utilising entirely conventional flavours, from mint to orange to coffee.

But then, as I was guided through making my selection by a delightful young woman, I started to encounter the less familiar confections.

Bacon. Fried onion. Olives. Cola. Curry. Tobacco. Vodka.

Actually, vodka may sound strange – but why would it be? After all, booze and chocolate has long gone together.

In Persoone’s case, the ‘apero’ is a green, cubist creation with a bitter ganache of vodka, passion fruit and lime.


One thing's certain: it's a seriously superior chocolate.

I’ve yet to try the cola, the olives and the tobacco. I’m taking my time with these and alternating between the outré and the conventional.

I passed on the curry altogether.

The bacon was the first I tried and it is seriously strange finding chocolate melt away to leave a small piece of – well, bacon. It’s far from offensive, but I wouldn’t go wild for it again.

The fried onion was a revelation and produced a really interesting taste.

It’s worth remembering that chocolate was also used by the Aztecs in cookery. We’re talking about the seriously bitter stuff (70-80% cocoa solids), but it can give a nice final touch to a chilli con carne or, as I’ve used it myself, with a sauce for venison.

So when you view it like that, none of this is quite so strange.

There is, of course a chilli one, but that’s become almost passé these days. Which is not to say that Persoone’s version isn’t top notch: the flavour develops fabulously subtly on the palate.

The ‘shock’ factor of something like this is one thing, but the truth is, I’d very happily eat most of these again.

On a corner in the same square stands Dumon. Another artisanal chocolatier – with a shop that is far more modern than Chocolate Line; almost like a boutique.

They too make their products by hand. We bought a box for colleagues back at work, plus a slab of chocolate with lavender, and then a packet of chocolate asparagus.

No, don’t worry: this wasn’t some sort of Persoone-like affair, but simply chocolate shaped to look like white asparagus, with a truffle filling.

The asparagus were tasty – but very sweet. In fact, one of those made me feel a tad sickly. And the individual chocolates were very sweet too.

My own taste is much more toward Persoone’s creations.

It’s worth pointing out that there is an outlet of Belgian chocolate chain Neuhaus at St Pancras. These chocolates are not hand made.

But in London at least, the prices are noticeably higher than for top-notch, handmade chocolates in Brugge.


I may have to return to Belgium for the chocolate alone.

Ode to beer

Many years ago, in the sort of semi-mythical, dewy-eyed past that might have appealed to the likes of John Betjeman or JRR Tolkien, the hop fields of Kent were a thriving affair.

In the age-old tradition of agricultural work, seasonal labour was essential, and working-class families from London would go down to Kent for their holidays to work in the fields – and get a welcome breath of fresh air.

But it’s a while since the county’s hops grew. And while I was aware of that fact, I hadn’t given it a great deal of thought – let alone realised what this actually considered what this means in practice.

Belgium is a country that takes its beer seriously. It could be argued that it takes beer more seriously than anywhere else in Europe.

Consider the scale: more than 1,000 different beers are brewed in this small nation. In Brugge, there is a bar where you are handed a menu a good inch thick, listing more that 400 different beers.

On our own visit to Bierbrasserie Cambrinus – named for the king of Beer – once we'd got to grips with the vast choice, we tried Petrus Oud Bruin and Bink Blonde.

The former was a 5.5 dark beer a that had been aged in oak. It had a really sharp, sweet first taste, which soiftened on the palate as the sourness came in to play. Very nice.

The latter was also 5.5 (the menu includes beers up to 11, so we were being very sensible). This was much fruitier, with a nice, bitter aftertaste.

Not that you knock such stuff back – but then, when it actually tastes so good, you feel less inclined to do so.

On our final afternoon, we did the tour of the city's famous brewery, De Halve Maan, which first opened its doors in 1856.

Our tour guide was a woman with a magnificently dry way. She told us, for instance, that since beer was approximately 80% water and people say we should all drink more water, we could do that by drinking more beer.

It was also educative. I learned, for instance, that hops are related to cannabis, and that they are used in beer as a preservative. They also add the distinctive bitterness to the taste.

The cogs clunked about a bit and a light came on. The hop fields of Kent have died because we're not using as many hops in our domestic brewing industry. Why not? Because the likes of Interbrew are just using chemical preservatives instead?

Some years ago, a colleague and I did a little experiment. We discovered that, even having just a couple of pints of our work local’s generic cooking lager at night (Carling, in this case) gave us both hangovers.

So we decided to try the bitter instead – Bass, if memory serves me right. It was from the keg and not the barrel, but we gave it a shot for a month. The difference was clear. No muzzy heads.

But bitter is not as popular in the UK as it once was – much of what is consumed is that sort of cooking lager.

Things are changing in the UK – as with food. Microbreweries are cropping up, brewing beer properly.

The only unfortunate thing is that good quality food – and drink – are presently viewed as expensive, middle-class fads that are beyond anyone else.

But back to Belgium.

Many beers in the country are Abbey beers – brewed originally in monastic institutions. And as if that religious connection isn’t enough, there is even a small shrine in De Halve Maan, to Arnoldus, the patron saint of brewers. This really is a very Catholic country.

Entirely understandably, the Belgians are very proud of their beers. There is a belief that, although the country benefits by not having anything like the Reinheitsgebot, the German law of 1516, which stipulates that beer can only be made from barley, hops, malt and water.

That, our guide explained, allows brewers to flavour their beers in different ways. The Hoegaarden Brewery’s eponymous wheat beer, for instance, is flavoured with coriander and orange peel.

It’s a tad deceptive to pretend that German beers don’t have a variety of flavours simply because brewers there stick to those four ingredients – they most certainly do, as even a passing acquaintance with German beer will tell you, but there’s certainly a very wide variety of superb tastes in Belgium.

We also tried Jupiler – which was an exception to the rule, being simply a pretty generic lager.

Our first beer in the city was ordered generically – and we found ourselves with a basic Czech brew, which was okay, but not really what we’d had in mind.

A Kriek cherry was very pleasant. And we had a very pleasant dark house beer at Uilenspiegel, the hotel/restaurant where we ate on the first and second night.

The only beer we had more than once was Brugse Zot – brewed at the De Halve Maan. Well, I say “brewed”: it’s ‘cooked’ there and then the rest of the process takes place at a different site.

Brugse Zot is lovely and fruity – and the dark version is nice too. They do also brew two stronger beers, but we passed on those.

So there you have it: a very brief look at Belgian beer. And the taste was even nicer.

Art – with a capital A

One of the joys of visiting new places is the chance to visit museums and see art you’ve never seen before – or at least not outside the pages of a book.

Brugge was never going to be an exception to that after I’d read about the city’s Groeningemuseum. Small perhaps, but holding a very important collection of paintings by some of the Flemish Primitives, it went straight onto the list of ‘absolutely must visit’.

From a personal perspective, it’s an interest that goes back to my teens, when I was studying for an art A level.

At the time, we lived miles from any major galleries or museums, and I don’t recall ever visiting anywhere on holiday that was any better blessed.

Like music, art was a love that developed independently of my home life. My parents had accepted, since childhood, that I was good at drawing. So when teachers at my first grammar school asserted that I had the ability to go on and make art a career, they seemed entirely accepting of that.

I should point out that the path laid down for me was not really Art with a capital A – the bohemian, shivering-in-a-garret and painting naked people while swilling absinthe sort of thing.

It was always going to be rendered at least vaguely respectable by the insertion of commerce into the equation. In other words, I was being set on a path to becoming a graphic artist.

Much as I loved drawing, by the time we arrived at the point of laying down the academic foundations for my career, I had concluded that graphic art was not for me.

I felt, with a predictably overstated sense of teenage melodrama, that I the soul of a fine artist but none of the ability to do more than copy faithfully what was directly in front of me.

Yet a capacity that I derided in myself (and at one stage, several of my still life drawings hung around the school) was central to why I fell in love with Jan van Eyck (c1395-c1441) the moment we were introduced to The Arnolfini Wedding.

It was, I rapidly surmised, medieval super-realism.

Until a couple of years ago, I’d seen precious little by the Flemish Primitives apart from that particularly famous work of van Eyck’s, which hangs in London’s National gallery, and which I’ve visited more than once.

But then, wandering around the less popular parts of the Louvre one day – in other words, the galleries furthest removed physically from some painting of a woman by some Italian dauber – I found myself gazing at van Eyck’s Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (1435), along with works by the likes of Hans Memling (1430-1494), a German who moved to Flanders, and Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1464), whose names I’d last been aware of in those art history classes.

So the Groeningemuseum was always going to be a treat.

And indeed, there were three paintings by van Eyck, who had lived and worked in Brugge (and has a square named after him there, with a statue in it. And a Jan van Eyck cafe).

His Portrait of Christ (1440) struck me as strikingly reminiscent of German painter Albrecht Dürer’s Christ-like self portrait of 1500 – a harbinger of Lutheran ideas of a personal Christ, perhaps?

Van Eyck's messiah is no blond, blue-eyed character. German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder pictured Christ with dark hair in his 1510 painting, Christ Crowned with Thorns. Similarly, the crucifixion element of German artist Matthais Grünewald's 1515 Isenheim alterpiece does not depict a blond Jesus.

The image that has become so dominant in Western representations of Jesus seems to have emerged later.

But back to van Eyck. The portrait of his wife, Margareta van Eyck (1439), is wonderful, as is the far larger Madonna with Canon van der Paele (1436), which also includes a St George figure, thus allowing van Eyck to show off just how well he could paint metal.

So you have a mix of the secular and the religious – and, of course, the place where those meet when living, wealthy patrons want themselves painted into religious scenes.

There are two really important things about van Eyck and all the Flemish Primitives: first, they revolutionised painting by adding oil instead of egg yolk to their colours.

The results have retained a fabulous vibrancy and depth of colour.

And second, their ability to capture the detail of rich, complex textures, particularly on fabric, was just stunning. You know what fabrics are velvet, for instance, because you can see that it’s velvet. You could almost expect that, were you to touch the painting, it would feel like velvet too.

All of which is why the term ‘primitives’ in this case seems utterly absurd.

The Memling and van der Weyden paintings that hang in the Groeningemuseum are also magnificent.

In terms of the former, I was particularly taken by his sepia-toned doors to the Triptych of the Family Moreel (1484), including one of St George slaying the dragon (left).

Death of the Virgin (c1472-80) by Hugo van der Goes (c1440-1482) was also worth seeing.

A subject that was popular at one time, it went out of fashion as the doctrine of the assumption took hold. The last major Catholic depiction of Mary's death was by Caravaggio in 1606.

And there is no shortage of representations of a rather different religious scene.

The most extraordinary must be The Last Judgment (1450-1516) by Hieronymous Bosch (c1450-1516) – the first time I’ve seen a Bosch in ‘the flesh’, so to speak.

And it’s far smaller than you expect it to be, given the amount of detail that he packed in.

Fascinatingly, there are Bosch-like figures and ideas in the 1555 Last Judgment by Jan Provoost (1462-1929) – no cribbing, obviously – which also shows the Pope as one of those on the way to hell (left).

That, together with the 1551 Last Judgment by Pieter Pourbus (1523–1584), used to hang in the Brugge Stadhuis, where it was intended to inspire those making and deploying law to do so well.

And what’s also clear in both these paintings is how ordinary people are portrayed much more naturalistically than the religious figures; you go from looking at the highly stylised to the recognisably real.

There are moments of humour too – albeit unintended. The Master of the Darmstadt Passion, whose Christ Carrying the Cross and Crucifixion was painted in 1450, may have been fortunate in his anonymity.

Frankly, his thief walking to execution is rolling his eyes in such a way that it brings to mind Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the character wondering whether his brother will arrive in time to get him down from the cross this time around.

It doesn’t half make you realise the quality of some of the other artists there.

And that, in a sort of how-do-you-measure-happiness way, it’s good to see some rather poorer art as well, so you don’t start needing to worry that your judgment is shot the moment merely by the simple act of walking through a gallery door.

• In a sort of alphabetical blogging triptych, the B and C of Belgian art forms will follow in the coming days: beer and chocolate.

It's not just about the chips

Flemish food is perhaps not one of the world’s great cuisines, but that’s not to say that there isn’t much to enjoy and appreciate.

Setting aside chocolate – and don’t worry, we’ll discuss that at length in a coming post – there’s plenty left. For instance, there are waffles – indeed, and you can even get a waffle on a stick in Brugge.

But for somewhat more substantial food, there’s nowhere better to start than Vlaamse Stoverij – or Flamande carbonade as it’s perhaps better known (which does also tie in with the language issue). For the sake of this blog, though, let’s stick with the Flemish where possible.

But whatever you call it, this hearty stew of beef, slow, slow cooked in beer, is a classic – even if many people think of it as a northern French dish.

I had some on night two (pictured above), when we’d discovered that all of the restaurants we’d been considering were closed for the May Day holiday, and had had to resort to the same place as the night before.

The pieces of beef seemed huge and, personally, it hadn’t been cooked as long as I’d have liked. But while the meat didn’t flake at the merest hint of a touch, the sauce was enjoyably sweet.

Away from such meatiness, seafood holds a strong position in Flemish food – certainly in Brugge, anyway.

The stone fish market – a 19th-century creation, so a newcomer in Brugge terms – still hosts three fish stalls for several days every week.

There are vast, square trays of crayfish and shrimps cooking as people wait to be served from a pleasingly wide variety of fish. Spider crab is popular too, along with skate.

It’s a selection of fish that is familiar to British diners – and after all, the Belgians fish in pretty much the same seas. But the selection that seems readily available (and a shop a few doors from our hotel also bore witness to this) is larger than what we are generally able to buy in supermarkets.

Setting aside the obviously touristy ‘moules et frites’ on restaurant menus, it’s clear that shrimps and small sole – ‘sliptong’ in Flemish – are massively popular.

If ‘sliptong’ was a fun new word, it had nothing on my favourite linguistic discovery of the week.

‘Slagroom’ has nothing to do with slags of any variety; it’s the Flemish for whipped cream, which they employ copious amounts of, including in cups of cappuccino – you have to order an ‘Italian-style’ one if you don’t want the cream.

But for someone who enjoys the odd Carry On film, such words are irresistible.

We both tried eel (‘paling’ in Flemish, if you’re interested).

It was roasted simply in the lunch I had while sitting outside the Café Jan van Eyck in Jan van Eyckplein, and served with a spinach purée as a sauce in The Other Half’s while lunching near the brewery.

The eel has a mild flavour and firm flesh – I can’t understand why Brits have managed to make it into a rather slimy dish with jellied eel. It’s at its best, in my opinion, when smoked, but this was well worth a try.

The meal on our third night was the best. While my duck was good and my Belgian cheese platter interesting, the best course of all was the starter.

It arrived as a mound of salad: grated carrot, green asparagus, leaves and other strings of root veg that I couldn’t make out – it couldn’t have been celeriac, surely, as that would have discoloured too quickly?

But buried beneath were two rolls of very gently smoked salmon, filled with flaked crab, shrimps and a little dill. And all topped with only a minimal, light dressing.


It sounds so simple – and was so light and refreshing. And as I ate, it was with a feeling of spring greenness.


Indeed, there was a pervasive sense of seasonality.


The Belgians – like the Germans – celebrate the arrival of asparagus, using both green and white. And most menus that we saw listed at least a couple of dishes built around spargel.

In the more touristy cafes, the Flemish seem particularly fond of serving a sort of mustard cress, piled high as a substantial garnish; crisp little leaves and a big, peppery taste. Even these were always fresh and always enjoyable.

One of the other things that Belgium is famous for is chips – or fritjes. Much thinner than our chips and served with a variety of dressings – most traditionally, mayonnaise – they’re available everywhere and come with everything.

Our first chance to sample came late on Monday afternoon as we took our first amble around the streets, and realised that we had eaten little that day. So we bought a tray each of fritjes.

They were, unfortunately, very crisp – which was far from easy for me.

The bowl served with our meals that evening was far better. But by the end of our second day I was, frankly, all chipped out.

On our final evening, we ended up in a French-influenced fish restaurant, where I picked the turbot on the basis that it’s not something I’ve tried often.

A light vegetable broth preceded started our meal – and delightful and refreshing it was – and then came the fish.

It arrived as two pieces of fillet, surrounded by generous portions of a lobster bisque and hollandaise, with a panade of crab, plus spinach purée, deep-fried leek and goodness knows what else.

The sauces worked well together – a big, hefty dose of rich, savoury sweetness. But then you sit back and you think: ‘what’s the point of having turbot if the subtly of the taste is swamped?’

It was a very old style of French cooking: if not quite after Escoffier himself, then certainly predating the creation of nouvelle cuisine – and absolute evidence of what the likes of Paul Bocuse were turning their backs on when they launched that culinary movement.

It was a dish that showed just how much tastes have evolved: I found myself longing for the salmon rolls of the previous night, piled high with salad and with only the barest amount of dressing.

And as one always brings someone home from any trip, I came away wanting to eat more salad and most certainly more leaves.

And to taste again that sense of the green, of the pastoral, that has hung around in my mind since the first forkful.

Across Flanders fields to a most Catholic city

The most Catholic city in the most Catholic country in Europe. That's one description of Brugge.

And even the shortest of ambles around this extraordinary place is enough to see the importance of Catholicism.


Oh, it may not be as obvious as in the number of churches, but it's there in other ways.


There are, for instance, more little Marian shrines on buildings than I have seen anywhere else, be that in rural Ireland or in Venice.


And they're not simply signs of the past, adorning only the city's older buildings, but there are plenty of new ones too.


It's there too in the church-run alms houses that sprang up to deal with the poverty that rose when the city's fortunes declined as its sea route silted up, and in its remaining beguinage – where unmarried or widowed women could adopt a life of religious devotion without actually taking full vows.


But then again, the history of the region is such that religion is perhaps one of the few things that unites this country.


Belgium is only a century and a half old. So much of it's identity is in its religion. Language has long been – and remains – a dividing factor, with those in the Dutch-speaking north feeling as though there is still not cultural and linguistic equality.


Indeed, only in very recent years has Dutch been given equal legal status with French. And, as an elderly man told me – while I was innocently trying to buy a Steiff cat – the Belgian royal family have only just started managing to speak the odd word of Flemish (Dutch).


But far from its religiosity having turned it into a pleasure free zone, Brugge has much to offer the more sensually-inclined visitor. There's beer, for starters. And chocolate. And how much else can anyone ask for? Okay, okay - but let's not go down that route just now.


Trade made Brugge great – the high point was from 1200 to 1400. And if those dates don't don't make you gulp a tad, then some of the buildings will. Enjoying a revival – partly courtesy of EU funding, tourism and the UNESCO recognition that has put it on tick-box lists for every coach party to hit Europe – this tiny city is a real step back in time.


That's not to fall for the 'living museum' baloney, though. It's a living city, and while tourism may be massively important, it's not the be all and end all.


Yet when you walk into the Burg – a small square, first mentioned in documents in the 9th century – and see the medieval Stadhuis (left), in all its flamboyant gothic glory, your jaw is only going in one direction.


You are walking in the footsteps of millions before. And those millions include the likes of great Flemish artists such as Bruegal and van Eyck and Memling, who will have seen this scene you now see.


It is history and time concertinaed in a way that is as freakish as it is exhilarating. Because while we in the UK might all have seen the occasional old building – and the occasional ancient ruin – there is something quite different about seeing whole streets and squares that have barely changed in centuries.


This is not to suggest that the city of Brugge has stuck itself in formaldehyde. It is not a theme park. It is not a museum. Indeed, perhaps rather unexpectedly, modern buildings are present, but the architecture reveals a great sensitivity to the surrounding history. Not subservience or crass pastiche, but sensitivity.


On Tuesday, we turned right out of our central hotel and, within a few metres, had found ourselves transported to working-class Brugge. In this case, since it was the morning of 1 May, there were trades unionists gathering outside bars for an early drink, before setting out on their march.


A brass band was with them. It was a scene that could have come straight out of northern England. And later, as we stood at the edge of the inner city, beneath on the peripheral windmills, we watched a further group of trades unionists, with their own band, marching to join the ones we'd left refreshing themselves.


And walking in the middle of this scene that could have come pretty much straight out of Brassed Off was a priest in his vestments – a reminder that in parts of the continent, there are Catholic trades unions associations.


There is plenty of other history here. Traveling through the Flanders countryside after rain had left swamp conditions everywhere, one couldn't help but wonder who had ever had the bright idea of fighting a war in such terrain.


The scenery around is something so instantly recognisable: grass, water, cows and pollarded trees – you know it because you've seen it in Flemish paintings from centuries ago.


But the thought of less pastoral events brought to mind the hellish visions of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch.


In the meantime, one of our guides around the city was George William Thomson Omond, a Scottish advocate and history writer, whose Bruges and West Flanders from 1906 had been downloaded onto his iPad by The Other Half and was quoted at some length during our stay.


Omond had no obvious qualifications as an historian – one of the most interesting aspects of his work was that it was less a history and more a travelogue: indeed, you could see it as the precursor to the blogging of our own times.


But it added an extra flavour to the trip – and perhaps there is little more that any author could ask?


We heard bells peel from all around us and at many times every day.


Walking past an old alms house, an elderly, wrinkled face looked out blankly – another reminder of the impolite art of Bosch and others, revealing a reality that was hardly pastoral.


The buildings ranged in age and, on occasion, the sheer mass of step gables made you feel as though you'd been shrunk down to take on the status of an extra in Legoland.


Brugge is many things – not least, the real background for many great painters of the Northern Renaissance – it is steeped in far more history. And even a slight bit of digging quickly repays the effort required to get beneath the skin of tourist guide platitudes.


And perhaps most obvious of all is the realisation that the medieval magnificence that you can find defy notions of uncivilised times. The jaw-dropping Stadhuis alone is worth the visit.