It is a truth universally acknowledged but that I keep forgetting—just because a beer is a pretty, citrine yellow that glistens in the sunlight doesn’t mean it’s a Light beer. This time, I forgot the adage at the top of a giant, metal atom about 340 feet in the air. I blame the gnome.
The drink: La Chouffe Blonde. The location: Brussels’ Atomium, a tourist attraction built for the 1958 World’s Fair and named by combining the words “atom” and “aluminum,'' although if you’ve ever played the game Jacks, it also mimics the look of the small, spiked toys you pick up while bouncing a rubber ball. It’s one of the largest structures in Belgium and a short Uber ride from the city center. From a mile away you can spot its giant spherical structures connected by also-giant tubes, both of which you can tour. Make a day of your visit and you can stop by Mini-Europe, an amusement park featuring miniature versions of every country in the European Union and a few more.
The Belgian Strong Golden Ale features a mischievous gnome named Marcel, which made everything about the experience a little more delightful. A mascot – a redhead with a cartoonish face and spiffing bellhop uniform – greeted us at the door and ushered us immediately to the bar elevator. (We asked the teenage ticket employees who the mascot was, and were met with the perfectly universal shrug.) I don’t think we ever learned the mascot’s name, but I’ll always appreciate that we were encouraged to drink before touring the rest of the structure. In any other towering European landmark, I would gaze out on the city below, brimming with gratitude to be in that space, in this time, experiencing something amazing with the other humans around me. At the top of the Atomium, I was, frankly, a little too buzzed for all that. With an 8% ABV, the beer packs a punch. I did not learn this lesson at the bar the day before. I will not learn this lesson at another bar the next day.
But it’s a tutorial I’m not too concerned to miss, distracted by plenty of other tourist attractions, including three “urinating” statues—two of children (Manneken Pis and Jeanneke Pis) and one, a dog (Het Zinneke). I marveled at a Smurf mural on a ceiling near the Brussels train station and snapped a picture with a tall, skinny man dressed like a turtle at Mini-Europe. After all, when a man working at an amusement park comes up to you and asks if you’d “like to take a picture with my turtle,” gesturing to a turtle-man standing silently a few paces behind him, you say yes. That’s another universal truth: pics or it didn’t happen.
Words by Keeley LaFormePhoto by Bryan Roth