Europe doesn't need last calls. If you keep drinking you'll fall down long before midnight, in which case they roll you out of the door onto the street. It catches a lot of Americans out, because they're not used to European beer strength, and consider anything stronger than 2% to be brain damage.
Storch - you mentioned Grimbergen. My favourite Euro bar is one called the Grimbergen, right outside the Cathedral in Antwerp. In true Euro style, if the ladies wish to use the powder room, they have to walk past the men watering the dadffodils. lol I was working for an American fiem 1996/97, and took one of my American friends there. He was like a kid in a candy store!! We were given "a map of the beer" - the young lady serving us didn't know the word "menu". I had to ask her - what are these numbers (eg 12.5) next to the beer? That was the alcohol strength column.
Hehe, too strong for me. I like a Euro beer to be about 5% or maybe 6%; anything above that is not a session beer. Between strong beers we had a fruit beer (~3%) - blackcurrant beer, or strawberry/peach/lemon/cherry
So if you get over here, storch, we'll go there, and then we can meet Saintaw, as Antwerp is in France as you know.
