Tag: German Beer

Euro beer trip day 4 – Wuppertal / Koeln

9 Sep
Most of today was spent travelling from Prague, changing at Dresden, Lepzig and Hannover. After a quick look round Wuppertal, we headed for Köln. Köln’s main export (as far as beer is concerned!) is Kölsch.

Kölsch is a pale golden lager type beer with a bit of hoppiness and it’s all pretty much the same. I’m sure seasoned drinkers will be able to tell the difference between them and have their favourites, but they were all pretty similar to me. Generally, the beer is served in 200ml glasses known as ‘stange’ by be-apronned (is that a word?) Köbes. Depending on where you drink and how much of a local / how gullible you are, the Köbe will bring you another glass as soon as the one you’re drinking is empty.

Anyway – we did call at various bars serving Kölsch, namely

Brauhaus Sion (Sion Kölsch)
Peters Brauhaus (Peter’s Kölsch)
Alter Markt Treff (Gilden Kölsch)
Kalisse (Suenner Kölsch)

Euro beer trip day 1 – Getting to Praha

I’d started my journey from Doncaster on Monday afternoon after grabbing a few hours nap as I’d just finished a stretch of night shifts. No time for beer in London as there’d been problems on the trains. In fact I’d only get 14 minutes from my train arriving at Kings Cross to the Eurostar leaving St Pancras. Easy!

There was time for a quick beer at Bruxelles Midi before joining the Thalys service to Köln. In no time at all I was in the land of German beer. Unfortunately, there was some kind of concert type thing going on around the cathedral so after having a Kölsch beer (see more about Kölsch here) in Früh am Dom and decided there wasn’t time to eat there, I headed back towards the station to try my luck in Gaffel am Dom. After pondering over the menu with one of the small 200ml glasses of Gaffel Kölsch, the waiter, sorry Stange advised me that I could get the half metre long sausage with potatoes and whatever within 10 minutes. This would give me ample time for eat it and get to the station to get the overnight train to Praha.

Time ticked by and still the food didn’t arrive. Two more beers later, it still hadn’t arrived and the place started to fill up very quickly as the concert by the Cathedral had finished. With not much time to spare, I left a €5 note to cover the bill (€4,80) and legged it! The people who by then were sharing my table will have had a bit of a shock when my grub finally arrived!

Anyhow, a currywürst mit pommes quickly became my tea, scoffed down before joining the overnight train to Praha.