In Brussels, Belgium, there stood a bronze statue of a little boy urinating. His name was Julien. There were many legends about Julien, the most famous being that when enemies attacked Brussels and met resistance from the local people, they lit a gunpowder fuse as they retreated, intending to reduce the whole city to ashes. A little boy saw it and, in a flash of inspiration, urinated on the fuse, saving the city and its people.
From then on, Julien became Brussels's little hero, and later the hero of all Belgium. The bronze statue was also a fountain. It normally sprayed water, but on certain holidays it sprayed beer or red wine, which people scrambled to catch and drink...
Better to rely on oneself than on others. Since they could not find investors to dredge the canal, the residents of Ostend and Bruges had no choice but to raise the funds themselves. Every glass of beer drunk was equivalent to donating half a penny toward dredging the canal, though people could of course choose not to drink. But local paintings showed that many artists went to taverns for inspiration, and taverns were also important local social venues.
The British also wanted a hand in Belgium's beer trade, but London's major brewers preferred selling beer directly to Belgium rather than, like France, going to the unnecessary trouble of shipping brewing ingredients there.
In London, an alliance of eleven brewers had almost monopolized the beer markets of all London and several major cities. There were also private rural breweries, but they mostly supplied only local drinkers and could not compete with those eleven brewers at all.
Financing, expanded production, mechanization, efficiency, maximum profit. Yet Belgians treated beer as they did chocolate. There was even a profession called chocolate artist. It was no