Bruges beer pipeline, revisited: "The pipeline is just weeks away from completion."

Halve Maan.

In 2014, having just returned from Belgium, I was moved to make a comparison.

The difference between Bruges and New Albany? It depends on Jeff Gahan's definitions of "ruining", "quality of life" and municipal impotence.

While in Bruges that fall, we heard about the construction of the beer pipeline. It's nearing completion -- and the street outside my house?

It's still running one-way. I live in an exceedingly stupid place, indeed.

Brewery Builds a Pipeline, Sending Beer Lovers Into a Froth; Belgian project will carry 1,500 gallons an hour; requests for home taps fall flat, by Matthias Verbergt (Wall Street Journal)

BRUGES, Belgium— Xavier Vanneste, heir to a dynasty of beer brewers in this medieval city, had a pipe dream.

When he woke up and looked out of his window one spring morning, he saw workers on the street laying underground utility cables in front of his house, situated on the same ancient square as the brewery he runs.

“I immediately realized this was the solution,” Mr. Vanneste said.

The brewery’s truck fleet had been bottling up the city’s narrow, cobblestone streets. Matters had been getting worse since 2010, when the brewery moved its bottling facility out of town.

His brain wave? A beer pipeline.

“It all started as a joke,” said Mr. Vanneste. “Nobody believed it was going to work.”

Four years later, the pipeline is just weeks away from completion. It stretches 2 miles from the brewery, De Halve Maan, or The Half Moon, in the city center to the bottling plant in an industrial area. It will be able to carry 1,500 gallons of beer an hour at 12 mph. Hundreds of truck trips a year will no longer be necessary.

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A photo a day while I was away: Daisy!

I don't pretend to know Daisy Claeys all that well on a personal basis, although perhaps in a professional sense, "mutual admiration society" is a good way of putting it.

She is the owner and operator of the legendary 't Brugs Beertje, a specialty (entirely) Belgian beer cafe in Brugge/Bruges. My first visit was in 1995, and I remain enamored of the cafe's principled timelessness. It is impossible to overstate the influence of it in my own working world. Both Cafe Abseits in Bamberg and 't Brugs Beertje are 31 years old. My pub business is 27. I'm not sure what any of this means, apart from it being great to see Daisy again and to know she's doing well.

A photo a day while I was away: Transitioning to Brugge by means of a Cologne rail layover.

On Wednesday, September 17, four of us (minus Jeff and Karen) were to ride four trains over a seven-hour period to travel from Bamberg to Brugge. Little did we know that the German rail system was poised to fail massively; in the end, it took six trains and twelve hours to make the trip.

The silver lining was an unexpected opportunity to be stranded in Cologne for three and a half hours. That's time to check baggage, see the cathedral, and dash around the corner to PJ Fruh for a Kolsch-powered midday meal.  Above is a huge salad, boiled potatoes and herring remnants, with rolls and lovely small glasses of subtle golden ale -- roughly two swallows per glass.

Serendipity. Sometimes it works. We came into Brugge around 8:00 p.m., and shifted gears, patronizing a "night shop" license for French and South African wine, and shifting multiple bags of takeaway Tandoori from shop to rental apartment.