#193: World Cup City - Czechia 🇨🇿

Day 27: Shouting Lager Lager Lager Lager

Welcome to an ongoing Brussels Notes series exploring the 48 participating countries of the 2026 World Cup, without leaving Brussels. Read the explainer, check out the other entries, and then subscribe.

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Czech Street Party, Pl. de la Monnaie, 1000 Bruxelles

I love Czech beer. I love it as much because of how it tastes - very little out there can beat a freshly-tapped half litre of deep, rich, gummy, crisp, refreshing, foamy, delicious Pilsner Urquell - and what it represents - a commitment to consistency of flavour and execution, a deep respect for the art of the pour, and to a tradition that survived the predations of Soviet Communism in better shape than many of their competitors in other European countries survived 20th century capitalism.

But mostly I love Czech beer because without it, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. Quite literally, Czech beer is responsible for the life I live now - it was during one drunken night in a scuzzy beer cellar in Olomouc drinking large mugs of Staropramen (I think) that I met L, while both of us were on an Erasmus study abroad year. And the rest, as they say, is history. From Czechia to Maastricht and then to marriage and children in Brussels, it all started with Czech beer.

Imagine my dismay, then, to discover that you can barely find a half litre of fresh pilsner Urquell for love nor money in Brussels. It used to be that a bar on Place Luxembourg served tank-fresh Pilsner Urquell, but those days are long since gone and your best bet now if you live in proximity to one of the few Albert Heijn supermarkets over the border in Flanders, where you can usually find a six-pack of bottles mouldering away on the shelves. It really is a crime that a Bruxellois living in the 1880s had more ready access to Czech Lager than their equivalent in the 2020s. Especially when you consider that, when you think about it, it is thanks to the popularity and influence of these pre-WWI imports of clear and crisp Czech Pilsner (and similar beers from their neighbours in Bavaria) that Belgium - and Brussels - has such good beer.

Imagine my joy, too, when I saw earlier this year that the’ Czech embassy and the country’s cultural centre in Brussels were organising their Czech Street Party after its brief absence from the city’s cultural calendar - promising Czech culture, food - and most importantly beer. The party used to be held on Rue Caroly, home to the Czech permanent representation to the EU, the party has since been displaced to Muntplein in the centre of town.

It was in the hope of a complimentary glass of beautiful Czech beer that I ventured down to that barren square on the hottest day in recorded human history (yesterday), standing in the full sun longer while my pale Irish skin fried and my brain melted. I walked straight past the stands for the Liberec region, for Pardubice, and for the Czech educational authority and straight to the one promoting Plzeň. There, behind a display of flyers and stickers advertising the region’s other wares, was a sweaty, harassed looking man standing behind a mobile tap unit filling plastic beakers with beer.

It was slow going. The man, in a t-shirt with an illustration of a beer glass and the words I HEART Pilsen printed on it, was not the only one struggling with the heat; the beer machine, with a little PIVO sticker on it, was having some difficulty getting beer into glasses. What was coming out was mostly foam, and so it was an arduous process of filling up several beakers in succession to the brim with foam, then returning to the first one and topping it up, and topping it up, until the beaker was at least half-foam, half-amber liquid.

Eventually, when my beaker had been filled three-quarters of the way up with beer, I lost my patience with the process and the heat, and grabbed my šnyt of Pilsner Urquell and sought refuge from the sun under the temporary marquee they’d installed opposite the Uniqlo. Access denied - you can’t come in, said the security guard standing at the entrance. So I had to seek out shade elsewhere, standing in the lees of the Muntpunt public library. I was hot, irritated too, and the beer was warm. But god was it still good. I tipped it into my mouth and it barely touched the sides as it went down.

God was it good.

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Tomorrow, we’re off across the Atlantic again...

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Thanks for reading - I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here!