2018

Weekend at Belg-ernie’s

Abstract

Fgiving fun and debauchery leaked across the ocean to another continent. Whoops.

Introduction

Our experiment took place in two distinct cities of Belgium. We used traditional Fgiving binge drinking strategies but applied them in a foreign land. The purpose of this experiment was to determine how tolerant the world would be of our shenanigans.

Methods

• Vrijdag around 13:00

  • Mitch and Chelsey met Gary and David in the train station
  • First lamb dicks (lambics) were consumed and the acid reflux was initiated

• Arrive at Airbnb where the attic had many beds in a room - coziness was anticipated

• Emma, Catie and Matt arrived from London

• The next few hours were filled with eating chocolate, drinking, and waiting for the stereotypically late Italians (Morgan, Max and Russ)

• Almost immediately, the apartment smelled intensely of feet and farts

• Bought Juplier beer and drank it

• Italians show up and we walked in circles around Brussels, then David negotiated a free round of drinks for us at a seafood place where we had the entire upper floor to ourselves for dinner (Image 1 and 2)

• Russell ate mussels in Brussels

• Mitch introduced Gary to our waiter as “L’Oiseau du Merde” (Image 3)

• Walked into Delirium only to immediately walk out. Turns out it’s hard to find bars to fit 10 people.

• Went to a bar called Coaster City where we drank a few rounds and chatted with anyone who would chat back. Russ got a guys number but never called him. What a tease.

• Found an outdoor bar that had a lot of cool lighting on their patio. It was cold. We drank and took pictures with some drunk girl who didn’t want her boyfriend in any of the pictures. Confusion.

• Head back to the AirBnB. Many people pass out. Beauty & the beast was bellowed. Bitch was a cow. (Image 4 and Video 1)

• Zaterdag began with acquisition of ginger bread, speculoos (cookies), raisin bread, croissants, pastries

• Mitch die rolled Massimo to run with him. Had a great run and just ran randomly and went in a giant circle. Found a BMW store. Post run coffee/tea resulted in Mitch making eye contact with passersby and waving at them.

• The non-athletes explored the St Michael and St Gudula Cathedral with thorough architectural explanation by Morgan. Oiseau was immediately converted to Catholicism

• Went to Musical instrument museum where Oiseau was separated from the group to look at various pieces of wood, metal, and animal intestines. We showed up at 11:30AM and Oiseau stayed until 4PM. The rest of the gang met up with Mitch and Massimo, went to lunch and the continued to Cantillon.

• Cantillon: where even non-beer drinkers like the beer. 8 bottles consumed between 9 people, only slowed by the closing of the bar. Catie was die rolled to request to purchase the brewery via Russ as her translator. Apparently its cost is “too much”; will try again next year. (Image 5)

• Met Canadians next to us at Cantillon, cool dudes, own a beer canning company.

• Ate waffles that took FOREVER to be made. But they were the best of all the waffles eaten on that trip.

• Frites, Thai, kebap, lamb dick were also consumed back at the flat.

• Catie loses a die roll and has to eat the contents of a teabag.

• Drinking games, such as ‘bounce the coin into a bowl’ and ‘bounce the coin into a toilet paper roll’ were played by Massimo and Russ. ‘Super goede!’ was yelled on each successful bounce and was then established as our collective motto

• Max loses a die roll and has to ignore Russ for an hour. Russ takes Max’s pants off in an attempt to make Max acknowledge him. It did not work.

• Russ teaches the gang the phrase “Excusez vous! Nous sommes en-retard pour nos affaires!” so that we can yell it through the streets of Brussels

• Bar 1 (Moeder Lambic), accidentally met up with Canadians from Cantillon. Mitch bought a beer for himself and L'oiseau merde that caused asthma problems it was so sour and fantastic. Got to know Canadians better, took control of them for the evening.

• Cellar bar (La Porte Noir): White people dance like white people everywhere, Mitch has one button undone the whole night, Max is a hot mess, Russ becomes Canadian and trades shirts with David, L'oiseau merde gets a french girl’s number. Die roll Canadian to be mark zuckerberg, groupthink wins and bar buys a free round for mark and friends. Canadians get indoctrinated into die rolling game, come up with some good rolls. Fight breaks out in bar, both parties are back inside within 10 mins. Much confusion.

• Russ records 1m20s of glory during Max’s stumble to bed. (Video 2)

• Russ and Mitch adjourn to Delirium bar with Canadians. Mitch does shot of Jäger then promptly misplaces Canadians when he goes to the bathroom. Oiseau and David tag along but disappear almost as instantaneously as the Canadians. (Image 6)

• Russ befriends Parisians and we all get drunker together. One Parisian hits on Mitch and Russ must tell him that he has a wife and does not favor getting intimate with men outside of Trudge.

• Mitch’s phone gets pickpocketed whilst sharing a cigar and public beers with Russ in the Grande Place. Russ bouffed after the well absinthe shot and prior to cigarring. Russ and Mitch learned to never order well absinthe. Then they presently ordered higher quality absinthe and close down the absinthe bar.

• Russ tried to converse with Belgian rent-a-cop to ask about Mitch’s phone but gets told to leave. Mitch yells at rent-a-cop in English and rent-a-cop yells back in French. Russ is out of his translating depth.

• Zondag we went to Gent and the crew split for the day. Russ ate a Durum for first meal making it the first Zondag durum in Fgiving history. (Image 7)

• David, Gary, and Mitch stumbled upon the best track cycling in the world and saw the hometown hero win and chanted 'iiiiilllljjooooooo’ and sang the French version of sweet Caroline (video 3).

• The rest of the group wanders through Gent to see the sights and stumbles upon a Sinterklaas celebration in the center of Gent where entirely too many people are wearing black-face

• Very pretty bubbles were mixed in between the racist celebration to lighten the mood (Image 8)

• The gang drinks absurdly cheap beers, pets some bikes, and then galivants through the Gravensteen castle (Image 9)

• The castle goers frequently mention that “Dit kasteel is verlicht!”

• Emma, Catie, and Russ pretend to lock strangers in the torture dungeon and they don’t find it as amusing as we do. (Image 10)

• The kasteel gang find a restaurant that can sit 10 and serves traditional Beligan cuisine. The cycle squad meets up with us just after we order. Everyone orders some sort of meat stewed in beer except L’Oiseau. He orders lasagna.

• Morgan is a party pooper and bans everyone from saying Super anymore thanks to Russ's foolish gamble.

• When the gang returns to the flat we start a journey to consume all the beer remaining in our fridge. We succeed.

• Die roll results back at the flat:

  1. Russ has to change his LinkedIn profile picture to this photo (Image 11) for one month
  2. Oiseau has to drink an entire beer whilst sitting upside down on the couch. Russ joins out of sympathy and spills beer up (down?) his nose.

• Super deux was said on the television

• David got Brusseloed (previously coined by Chelsey?)

• Matt bought everythingispastabowl.com, possibly for Max's future career (to be die rolled)

• Picassodegallo.com was also considered

• Mitch, Gary and David were possibly and likely on TV during reports of the track cycling during a late night news watching session in a language we don't understand

• David almost got mugged around 330am Monday morning in French

• Max farted, a lot

Results

• Acid reflux
• Headaches
• General discomfort
• Airbnb never smelled the same after
• Extensive knowledge of the French language, thanks Russ
• Annoyed locals by degenerate tourists

Conclusions

The results clearly show that we overstayed our international welcome in just a few short hours. However, we persisted until the end of our AirBnB stay in true ignorant-American fashion and somehow got a glowing AirBnB review. This experiment will be repeated in other locations at our earliest convenience to increase the sample size.

Keywords

• Bouf
• Super goede! / Super two!
• L'oiseau (merde)
• Bonc
• Ja, zekers
• Tout de merde
• Buon sois
• Mez amie
• Lamb dicks
• Yahweh
• Coin (French pronunciation)
• Boufaphone

Files

• Eurogiving 2018 Manuscript.pdf