It is Friday evening in Mechelen, and De Gouden Vis - The Goldfish - is packed to the gills. The bar is often like this, and no wonder: it's one of the best boozers I've discovered in Belgium, a nation not starved of superb places to drink. From its faded art-nouveau frontage to the tumbledown riverside terrace, the place radiates a raffish, beery charm, attracting young and old alike.
I end up squashed against a pillar (under a joke sign declaring: "Toilet out of order - please use far corner") and soon find myself chatting to a group of expensively-dressed twentysomethings. As successive bottles of Trappist ale work their little miracles, we prattle about everything from the EU elections to the putative sexual habits of Tintin. And then I commit a terrible solecism: I mention the "A" word. There is an almost audible frown.
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