Pub - work

Here's part two of the work pub interface. At least as experienced by one fat old bloke. You would have got it all in one chunk, but Stonch called me out on one of my numbers posts yesterday. "Why not write some more travel reports?" I could have just said "because I haven't been chuffing travelling recently." Then I remembered: the past is a foreign country. Let's do some travelling there.

I was already past the passage where Lexie tells me to bugger off to my computer when I noticed Stonch's comment. Two blogs, indeed. Diversity is the name of the game here. And I'm never going to fill a blog with amusing stuff. The numbers occupy the spaces left by my intermittent imagination. The stories of my kids help me through the days when I can't face statistics. Well it makes sense to me.

Where was I? Pissing it up during and after work. That was my theme. See where interrupting me gets you, Stonch? Just delays the fun bits. Whatever they might be.


Arms Factory, Shoreditch, May - July 1979.
While I was living in a squat with just about everyone I knew, I got a job at an arms factory. Well, not just me, me and Matt. I can't for the life or me remember the company's name. But it made the boxes for anti-aircraft missiles and doors for warships.


George and Vulture
63 Pitfield St,
London, N1.

We often ate our lunch (me and Matt) in the little park opposite the George and Vulture (still one of my favourite pub names). Occasionally we'd nip in for a quick pint of Pride. A few years later, Piers worked behind the bar.


Bricklayers Arms,
63 Charlotte Rd,
London, EC2A.

I think this is the right pub. It was a specialist real ale place. I can well remember one lunchtime session there. We only got 30 minutes. And it was a 3 or 4 minute walk to the Bricklayers. One Friday they had Fuller's Hock on. I manged to sink 5 in 20 minutes. That's still a dinnertime record for me.

Work - Pub

I've just finished explaining the form, function and fine etiquette of trolling down the pub from work to Lexie. He stopped making eye contact and concentrated on his pasta before I even got to past Legal & General.

"Go away and do what you have to do on the computer."

"What?"

"Before I count to three."

"You want me to go on the computer?"

"One . . . .two . . . two and a half . . . ."

That's when I started typing. After two and a half. The discovery of a lifetime, afternoon, er, somewhere inbetween. How to get peace while I type. Bore the eyebrows off everyone. Boring done, we can continue.

When half of Lexxie's left eyebrow had dissolved, a thought struck me a glancing blow. "Why not write about the work pub dynamic?" Loads of pseudo-sociological stuff and dim recollections of postprandial pissups as padding. Tastobrillic.

The customs surrounding drinking in conjunction with work are as varied as some incredibly varied thing. (Five minutes is long enough to try thinking up a good simile. I'll use the Blackadder defence.)

I've worked in a few towns and a few countries. Nowhere, in my experience, matches Britain, and in particular London, in its dedication to pissing it up down the boozer during or after work. Lloyd George - bastard - put paid to pre-work pub fun.

Here's an overview of my work/boozer experience:

West Yorkshire Passenger Transit, Leeds, 1979
Every Friday, after we got our paypackets everyone went to the Highland Laddie. Considering me a middle-class ponce, my Tetley's Mild drinking abilities were unexpected. Three or four pints in 25 minutes.

Legal & General, Surrey, 1983-1984
A dream job, in a way. My first employment as a programmer. The canteen had a licensed bar. And they had cask beer. And it was cheaper than in a pub. The food wasn't bad, either. On a side note, it's where my career as IT professional began. But they had a bar in the canteen! With good, cheap beer!

That wasn't good enough. Friday lunch, everyone went down the pub. Restraint isn't my middle name. I'm more a get two pints and a couple of double short in on last orders type of bloke. I found my colleagues a bit overenthusiastic. Office work tempered my thirst: three pints in an hour.



Oh dear. I forgot about London. When I worked in the arms factory in 1978. Shit. I didn't want to mention that. You'll think I'm a nazi. What the hell. It's a good tale. And involves Matt. I'll tell you tomorrow. Promise.

Rough pubs

I've been prompted to write this by an excellent post on the same topic by Zythophile.

The roughest pubs I've been have been mostly outside the UK. Mostly.

There was the aptly-named Whip in Leeds. With what my mate Harry called the "industrial accident" bar at the front and the Ted's bar to the rear. The Blind Beggar, when I visited in the late 1970's, was horrible in every single way, including the beer. The Whip had a decent pint of Tetley's.

U Rotundy in Prague is a perennial favourite. I even forgive them the fag smoke. A man's pub in many of the bad senses. But where beers appear magically, without the need to speak to the barman. U Fleku could be a bit scummy in the old days. U Zpěvácků, not far away, used to be totally crazy. I once sat opposite a couple of ZZ Top lookalikes rummaging through a stolen doctor's bag.

Then there's the DDR. The place opposite my mother-in-law's where we bought a bucket of beer. My brother-in-law's local, where everyone had a tattoe above shoulder level and you had to order a shot with every pint. Or the station buffet in Leipzig. Sour Pils and drunks trying to make political speeches with wee stains on their kecks. Happy days.

Hebendanz in Forchheim merits a mention. Rough, but unthreatening. Patrons drinking litre measures before breakfast. And scowling. Talking incomprehensibly. That's another rough pub favourite. Preferably in some weird regional accent.

That reminds me of the place I stumbled across in Salzburg. While I was waiting for Augustiner to open. Where I so impressed the locals by drinking schnapps for breakfast, that they bought me a couple more. I'd thought I could understand Austrian accents until I went there.

But I reckon U Dobreho Kata (The Good Executioner) in Brno has to be the roughest of the lot. There were few nights in my month at Czech summer school when I was the soberest in the pub. In Kata, I was the sensible one. And I came home without a shirt. I gave my "DR & Quinch say nuke your parents" T-shirt to some Czech youth changing trains on his way to the Balkans.

Samuel Smith's

Ever so occasionally, I come across a brewery in the Whitbread Gravity Book that's still going strong. Like Samuel Smith's. I thought you might like to see some of their old beers.


You'll note that their Brown Ales in the 1940's and 1950's were quite unlike their current version. They were "Southern style", while today's is "Northern style". I wonder when and why they changed?

I drank quite a bit of Old Brewery Bitter in 1975/76. That was my first year at Leeds University. It was just 18p a pint in the Student Union bar. Then they had a disaster with their yeast. It took a while to sort out and I believe they had to change yeast strain. Old Brewery Bitter became a completely different beer. And one I wasn't that keen on.

I hardly touched a drop until I moved to London in 1983. Then I used to drink Sam's on a semi-regular basis. Mostly because their pubs were cheap and pleasant. I still wasn't that keen on Old Brewery Bitter, but at least it was cheap. And Sam's pubs usually looked after the beer reasonably well.

Back during WW II, who would have dreamed that in 2008 Sam Smith's would be the best brewery in Britain and the 76th best in the whole world? I certainly wouldn't have just 25 years ago.

Czech trains and beer

The Czechs always had their priorities right. There was never any problem getting the necessary provisions for a train journey in Czechoslovakia. You could even buy draught beer, served in wax paper cups, on the platform to carry on with you. Where else do they do that?

I have many happy memories of boozing on Czech trains. Buying tickets, now that was tricky. Not the actual ticket itself. That was easy enough to purchase at one of the many windows. It was getting hold of a mistenka that was the problem. For all the long distance trains you needed one of these, too*. In Hlavni Nadrazi in Prague there was just a single counter selling them, hidden away somewhere in the bowels of the building. With no-one speaking English, finding it was quite an initiative test.

As just one person sold mistenky, there was always a long queue. Which is how come I had so little time on the platform. When I was travelling to Brno in 1985. For the summer school to learn Czech. I'd flown into Prague and was taking the train the rest of the way. I should have had plenty of time. For some reason, the service between Prague and the country's second largest city wasn't great. There was a big gap in the middle of the day. If I missed the train, I'd have several hours to wait for the next.

By the time I had my mistenka in my hand, there were only ten minutes before the train was due to leave. Luckily, there was a kiosk right on the platform. It sold beer. Unfortunately, there was a queue. I dumped my bags on the train and joined it.

Eight minutes to go. Five people in front of me. I hoped no-one had nicked my unattended bags. The customer at the head of the queue finished. Six minutes left. Hurry up will you. There's a man with a thirst and a train to catch back here. The next two were pretty quick. Five minutes. Naturally, it was now turn for the chatty but indecisive old dear. Get a move on will you. She finally made up her mind. Two minutes. The bloke in front of me just wanted a packet of fags. Brilliant. I still had 90 seconds. "Sest piv, prosim." Six beers should be about enough for a four-hour train ride. I threw a note in the assistant's direction and didn't bother waiting for my change.

Still 20 seconds to go according to the station clock. I jumped through the nearest door. Where was my seat? The train started moving before I found it. My heart was still thumping a dark jungle rhythm as I bustled through the train. Bang! Why's my shirt so wet. Have I been shot? Not to worry. One of the beer bottles had exploded. Compartment found, I sat thankfully down in my beer-perfumed shirt, clutching the five intact bottles. "What happened to your shirt?" That's what I think a fellow passenger meant, pointing at my shirt quizzically. I mimed an explosion. That seemed to satisfy him.

Just one slight problem. I had no bottle-opener with me. "Mate otvirac?" I asked my new friend. I knew all the important Czech vocabulary. He didn't have an opener. But that wasn't a problem. No Czech needed one. They were incredibly ingenious when it came to getting at beer. We were in a compartment carriage with pull-down windows. My mate demonstrated how to hook the crown cork on the lip of the window and push it back up into the closed position. The crown cork magically flew free. Another useful skill learned.

"Chces pivo?" "Ne." He didn't even want a beer as reward. What wonderful people the Czechs are.

Which beer was it? I think it was Mestan. But I could be wrong. Rarely has a beer tasted so good. I know that.


*There's a passage in "Three Men on the Bummel" taking the piss out of the need for several tickets to travel on central European trains. Almost a century later, the Czech system was still the same.

Brewery Life

Despite all my obsessing on the subject, my professional contact with brewing has been achingly brief. Just a few weeks between school and university, back in 1975.

I'd been looking forward to a summer on the dole and was a bit miffed when the Labour Exchange found me a job. Bastards. On the plus side, it was in a brewery and the money wasn't bad. On the minus side, it was shift work and it brewed no cask beer.

There's a particular smell that all breweries have. A mixture of fermentation and disinfectant. As soon as I catch a whiff, I'm transported back to James Hole's 1975. it permeated the whole brewery. Even the kegging line, where I worked.

My work was relatively simple, but physically demanding. Put six kegs in the rack and set the washer going. While that went through its cycle, I'd fill another six kegs and roll them over to a corner of the bay or straight onto a lorry. By the time I'd filled the kegs, it was time to take the six others off the washer and start the whole process again. Not exactly varied.

I'd been taken on because of increased sales due to hot weather. Not something you always get in England. That had affected what was going into the kegs, too. More lager than usual. Most of what I filled was lager, AK and, to a lesser extent, Mild. There was also the odd keg of IPA. It was a former Warwick's beer and at that time was sold in just one Newark pub, The Vine. I can clearly remember that the IPA sticker was blue - just like the bottle label had been for decades before.

We had two 15 minute "tea" breaks and half an hour for dinner. These were spent in a dank and dingy cellar, with a couple of kegs standing in the corner. I put tea in inverted commas because no-one drank tea during breaks. The kegs were full and you could help yourself to as much beer as you wanted. The regular staff could easily knock back 5 pints in 15 minutes. My intake was far more modest. Firstly, I couldn't physically drink that fast. Secondly, because I wasn't that keen on the beer. Typical. Get a job in a brewery and it's one whose beer you dislike.

I'm sure no brewery still allows its workers to slurp down as much as they like during the working day. We were working pretty heavy machinery and lugging weighty full kegs around. It can't have been very safe if you were half (or three-quarters) cut. Though I have noticed that hard, manual labour soon wears of the effect of alcohol.

I never got to see most of the brewery. The mash tuns, coppers and fermenters. All the interesting bits. I did once go up into the malt loft. Shafts of sunlight from the tiny windows illuminated the thick dust and the air was filled with the sweet, comforting smell of malt.

It was just as well that I'd been issued with a pair of industrial steel toe capped wellies. A couple of times I dropped a full keg on my feet. I'd have had a full set of matching broken toes, if not for those wellies. And there was water all over the place. I remember the floors being permanently wet everywhere I went in the brewery. From my viewpoint, it seemed to exist exclusively of gloomy, damp spaces. Except where we worked which, being next to the loading bay, was open to the outside on one side.

Though it never brewed anything decent after I started drinking, it was still nice to have Hole's in Newark. It spread the delectable smell of mashing across the town every day. Every day until 1982, when it was closed by Courage. And that was it. The end of Newark's brewing industry. Today the town has no brewery of any kind. I'm glad that, in some small way, I got to participate in the trade that had once made Newark famous. Before just its memory remained.

Exorcism

I used to work with a bloke called Bernie. Way back in the days when I still lived in London. He taught me many of my assembler programming skills.

We also used to go boozing a lot. At lunch time. After work. He liked his beer. So he should have. He grew up in Lewes. His mum still lived in town, not all that far from the brewery. I went down there for the weekend a couple of times. Once for November the 5th.

They make a big deal of Bonfire Night in Lewes. Something to do with some protestant martyrs. There's a big procession. When that's over, people dressed up as Roman Catholic cardinals are sat in thrones. And the crowd throw fireworks at them. It's dangerous, it's weird and quite disturbing. It shocked me. In Leeds they just used to set light to police cars. I'd honestly never realised there was an anti-catholic aspect to Bonfire Night. Maybe I'm just naive. Or perhaps, elsewhere in Britain, that side of it has been long forgotten.

Of course, while in town I tried to get around as many Harvey's pubs as possible. I can't remember and of the names. But I can clearly recall many excellent pints. And the pub on the same street as Bernie's mum's house having a very flexible interpretation of opening times.

I've had a few strange experiences in my life. But this was a particularly odd one. Once when I was staying there, Bernie's mum asked if we'd take part in an exorcism. The house was pretty old - 17th century, I think - and she thought it had a ghost. Or some strange spiritual presence. So she got in this sort of C of E monk to exorcise it.

It wasn't like in the movies. No green bile or any of that malarky. Just a few prayers and a bit of sprinkling holy water. But it was a fully fledged exorcism ceremony. And I did say a few words when required. I can truthfully say "I've taken part in an exorcism". Haven't you?

Who's the boss?

Phrases like "the global beer movement" "beer's golden age" have a weighted meaning. Are either true? (Notice that I haven't explained the origin of either expression.)

[My arm is very itchy. Dead itchy. I'm scratching so hard, it's turning red. Pink, really, at the moment. More application is necessary to achieve red.]

That new breweries are being established all over the shop can't be denied. I would have said incontrovertible. But that's too easy to spell. Ye can't fegging argue with it. No spelling is need in a dialect expression. Gearer - is that right? Is there a right?

Many things annoy me. Mr. Angry is me. Being corrected. I've never taken well to that. Being corrected when that was exactly what I intended . . . . that's red mist time . . .

You think you're immune? Think on. We're all tinder waiting for a spark. Are you nice and dry?


Question marks?
Don't you think my use of question marks is unrivalled in the blogging world? No? Who can you quote as a more frequent user of the interregational sentence ender? Eh? You? You? No f*cking way. No - are you right? You think you fecking can?


Global
There's a stack going on. With beer. All over the shop.
Calling it a global movement doesn't do justice to the very local nature of much that has happened in furthering the case of quality beer.

Local and global transmogrification of the extant fabric of stylisticity

That's my beer mission statement. Oversimplified, incomprehensible and untrue. Perfect. Should I have explicitly mentioned beer?



Structure. I left it outside next to the shed . Do you reckon I should go and fetch it? I'd need to put on a pair of trousers. Midnight? It's not worth it. Leave it until tomorrow.

European tour

In 1982 me, Harry and Johnny Ash went to Europe for a week. I was still an inexperienced foreign traveller. I'd still spent very little time outside Britain, except for a couple of visits to Jamaica and a few weekends in Belgium.


Amsterdam
We didn't have much in the way of a fixed plan. About the only thing that was certain was that we would begin and end in Amsterdam. We had return tickets on the train and ferry. It was my first time in Holland. I can remember thinking how modern it looked staring out of the train window on the way from Hoek van Holland to Amsterdam.

We arrived in the city early in the morning. After finding a bed in some fairly grotty hostel, we went straight to the pub. Not a particularly good pub. On Dam Straat. It only sold Heineken. We spent the next couple of hours there, drank several pints of Heineken, then moved on. We didn't get very far, just 20 metres or so further along Dam Straat. Another pub pretty similar to the first. More pints of Heineken were consumed.

That's all we really did that first day. Work our way slowly along Dam Straat drinking Heineken. I didn't know any better. The next day we looked around a little more. Either on or just off Martelaarsgracht we found a pub selling Duvel. We drank several each, before its strength caught up with us.


Deventer
After a couple of days in Amsterdam, it was time to move on. After consulting the railway map in the station, we decided to go to Apeldoorn. As the train pulled into Apeldoorn station, we realised we'd made a mistake. The town was dully modern. Oh dear. We opted for the simplest solution. We stayed on the train. "Let's see what the next stop's like". The next stop was Deventer. It look far more appealing, so we got off.

Even before we'd left the station, 20 people had told us Deventer was where "A Bridge too Far" had been filmed. We stopped on a campsite on the other bank of the river. There was a little ferry that took us almost directly there. We had a two-man tent and two sleeping bags. For three of us. Naturally the one sleeping outside got one of the sleeping bags. I was the lucky one, getting to both be inside the tent and have a sleeping bag.

We found a supermarket and loaded up with bottles of Grolsch. That's all we bought. I remember the girl on the checkout giving us a funny look. The reputation of the English as irredeemable pissheads hadn't yet penetrated that far into Holland's interior. I knew from Michael Jackson that Grolsch was a superior Pils and unpasteurised (sadly, no longer true). Sure enough, it was a big improvement on Heineken. I had the World Guide to Beer with me. Despite its size and supposedly travelling light. It proved later to be a good decision to have taken it along.

That evening I had my first encounter with a pocketless billiard table in a Grolsch pub somewhere around the main square. Deventer isn't a huge town (far smaller than Apeldoorn) but has a lively and compact centre. We played some billiards rather badly (I'd only start getting the hang of this billiards lark when I was living in Rotterdam), drank some Grolsch and ate some fried things out of the wall at a Febo. That was living.

I can't remember how long we stayed in Deventer. Maybe two nights. When we did move on, we decided to head off on foot. We were aiming for Enschede. Looking back, deciding to travel on foot seems an odd decision. I was much younger then, which could explain some of my blind optimism. I'd been doing some walking with Harry in the hills north and west of Leeds. That probably contributed.


Enschede
We set off early. By midday we'd had enough and caught a bus to the next town. From there we took the train to Enschede. Once again we stopped at a campsite, this time rather more crowded and commercial than the one in Deventer. This was filled with Dutch and German families, mostly in caravans. Our little tent looked quite forlorn amongst much grander tents and campervans.

It was boiling hot, somewhere around 30º C. Luckily the campsite had an air-conditioned bar. I camped out in there while Harry and Johnny Ash went swimming in the pool. I'd had several Grolsches before they joined me. I remember a rather long and quite rowdy drinking session that continued into the small hours. And Johnny Ash naming one particular young lady "chapel hat pegs". I can't think why. Once again, I was Mr. Lucky, inside both the tent and a sleeping bag.


Wolfenbüttel
One of our vague plans had been to visit Johnny Ash's uncle. He was in the army and stationed in Germany. In Wolfenbüttel, just east of Braunschweig. We got the train there the next day. The uncle's family were very friendly, happily putting up all three of us and passing around the apfel schnapps.

The next day we went for a look around Wolfenbüttel. It's a very pretty town of black and white half-timbered houses. The houses were all pretty sinmilar, the whole town having been rebuilt in the 17th century. I think it was destroyed in the Thirty Years War, a conflict which devastated and depopulated large areas of North Germany. Deathly quiet reigned. It was just after midday on Saturday and, of course, all the shops were closed. There was no-one about and I can't remember us even finding a pub open. I did see a Bitburger sign and recalling that it was a beer Michael Jackson had written positively about.

I had a Thomas Cook's Continental Railway Timetable with me. It listed the main train routes in Europe. In the pre-internet days, it was essential when wandering about by rail. We used it to plan the next section of our trip. After consulting my World Guide to Beer, I managed to persuade the other two that our next two stops should be Düsseldorf and Halle, just outside Brussels. Nowadays I would either have printouts with me or drop into an internet café. So much simpler than lugging books around with you.


Hannover
The timing was slightly odd. First we had to change trains at Hannover. We were due to arrive in Düsseldorf around 9 P.M. There was a train to Brussels at around 4 A.M that we could take. Basically, we would just have the evening in Düsseldorf.

We had a while to wait in Hannover, about an hour. It's a huge station, with a dozen platforms of more. Ensconced in a little bar on one of them, Johnny Ash noticed there was a similar bar on most of the island platforms. He had found a mission: drinking a beer in each bar before our connecting train arrived. Johnny Ash liked a challenge. He'd been trying for years to do the 50. That's drinking 50 pints in a weekend visit to Leeds. 50 pints in 5 sessions. That's tough. He did eventually manage it. What a hero.

Harry and I remained in the first little bar. Every few minutes we'd see Johnny Ash run up onto another platform and dash into its bar. It was a crazy thing to do. We had a heavy evening ahead of us in Düsseldorf. He must have had 5 or 6 40 cl glasses before we even got on the train.


Düsseldorf
Outside Düsseldorf Hauptbahhof, we asked for directions to the Altstadt. We were advised to take a tram, which in those days still ran overground from the square in front of the station. Before very long we were sitting in Zum Uerige. I was impressed. Very impressed. At both the atmosphere and the beer. We continued on to Schlüssel, which was OK, but not as good as Uerige. Then on to Füchschen, which we liked almost as much as Uerige. We didn''t get long in the homebrew pubs, as they closed relatively early. So we continued around random Altstadt bars. I can remember we were in Der Spiegel. It was wild. Harry danced on the bar. At one point everyone started singing The International. After that, it gets a bit blurry.

Back at the station, with us rather the worse for wear, our train came in. It was all sleeper carriages and you needed a reservation to board. I did try getting on, but slipped on the step. I gave my left shin a nasty knock. To this day there's still a dent in my shin. I can show you, if you want. We had to doss around the station another couple of hours for the first normal train of the day to Brussels. There we got a connection to Halle.

Halle
Why had I chosen Halle? Because it's in the Payottenland, simple as that. I was hoping to trap some proper lambic. At the time, the town still had a small brewery, Vander Linden. Their flagship beer was Duivel's Bier (not to be confused with Duvel). It was a mix of a dark, top-fermented beer and lambic. Quite tart, but tasty and not too strong. (The beer has been revived, at least in name, by Boon. Though the new version is much stronger and quite different in flavour.) Quite a few places in town had it on draught.

For some reason just me and Johnny Ash were together when I tracked down proper lambic. It was in a slightly more upmarket place, more a restaurant/bar than a pub. I asked for a Gueuze. The waitress returned from the cellar with what I recognised as the real deal - a bottle without a label, just marked with a stripe of white paint. Don't ask me which brewery it came from. Probably one of the small blenders, as even then the practice of paint-marking bottles was becoming rare. The beer was, as you would expect, uncompromisingly sour.


Antwerp
We were now on the return leg of our journey. I'd planned a few hours in Antwerp on the way up to Amsterdam. It was another Michael Jackson tip: a pub in Jeruzalemstraat selling 1,000 beers or something silly. I'd spent hours before leaving searching for the street on an unindexed map of Antwerp in a road atlas. It hadn't been easy. The pub disappeared many years ago.

Not knowing a great deal about Belgian beer, knowing what to choose was tricky. I tried asking for beers with sediment, but the barmaid didn't understand what I meant. Harry and Johnny Ash just stuck to Duvel. That might have been a better idea for me, too. I somehow managed to keep picking cherry beers. Not things that would ever have been my first choice, not then, not now. Adventure has its price.


Amsterdam
Our last stop was Amsterdam again. This is when I did one of the stupidest things ever. It could have turned out really, really badly. At the time, I wasn't aware of the enormity of my stupidity. I didn't realise that until I moved to Holland. What was my act of idiocy? I wandered along the Zeedijk totally pissed, at night, alone. I was lucky I only had my bank card nicked. Which wasn't any use to anyone without the pin code. At the time the Zeedijk was well dodgy, lined with junkies and smack dealers even during the day. At night, no-one respectable went down there. In the state I was in, I could easily have got myself badly hurt.

And that was it. Back to England by train, ferry, train. Another two countries under my belt and considerably wiser.

Lists

Some people love lists. A site like RateBeer is basically nothing but lists. Nothing wrong with that. For some members that's clearly its main attraction. They're always coming up with lists generated from their own ratings and inviting others to post their versions. Maybe it's time for me to come up with some lists of my own.

(The entries that follow are in no particular order. I've just plucked out some of my favourites and listed them in a random order. Trying to come up with an ordered list would just take too long.)


Beer-drinking destination

This isn't just about where has the best quality or variety of beer, although these factors play a part. Really, it's where I enjoy going on the piss most.


Amsterdam. Choosing my hometown is a bit of a cheat. But Amsterdam is pretty good for beer. Wildeman, Arends Nest, Het Ij, Engelbewaarder, Gollem, Gollem II, Hesp, De Beiaard, Bekeerde Suster, Elfde Gebod. That's just the beer specialist places. I'll never stop if I get started on great pubs with a limited beer range.

Salzburg. Often overlooked by beer-lovers (as is Austria as a whole), there's much to drink in this manageably-sized city. A couple of great local breweries - Weissbräu and Augustiner - and a couple of reasonable ones - S'Kloan and Stiegel is a good start. Add a plentiful supply of good pubs - Augustiner, Sternbräu, Stiegelkeller and many, many more - and you have a real winner.

Forchheim. It may seem perverse to pick Forchheim over Bamberg. But perversity is what I'm all about. At 9 AM, there's no place in the world I'd rather be than Forchheim. Crazy Hebendanz of laidback Neder. There's something for every mood. You could even try Eichhorn if you want to be all posh.

Prague. In the 1980's, Prague was my idea of heaven. I've still never found anywhere closer to it here on earth. Universally good beer, great pubs, friendly people, low, low prices. There was a period after the restoration of capitalism where my affections strayed, but the city has bounced back. U Cerneho Vola, U Kocoura, Pivovarsky Dum and, naturally, the incomparable U Rotundy.

Leipzig. This one can be explained in a single word: Gose. I haven't been able to get Gose out of my head since I first heard of it. There are a few excellent palces to drink Gose in Leipzig: Bayerischer Bahnhof, Sinfonie and, of course, the place where its revival started, Ohne Bedenken.

Copenhagen. There's but a remarkble transformation of the beer scene in Denmark's capital. Some truly wonderful beer bars - plan B, Pegas; a cask ale specialist - Charlie's Bar; an outstanding beer restaurant - Tatoverede Enke; and several brewpubs - BrewPub København, Nørrebro Bryghus. The city is beautiful, human-scaled and friendly, too. There's only one downside: the prices.

Düsseldorf. Again a single word will do: Altbier. The four city-centre brewpubs don't just make outstanding beer, they're great places to drink it, too. They all have a wonderfully varied clientele, from all ages and classes of society. That's something you don't see often. And the Alt just keeps on coming until you tell them to stop.


Brewery

De Molen. I couldn't omit where my beers are brewed. Menno, is a great bloke as well as a skilled brewer. He brews a long list of excellent beers, my favourites being Tsarina Esra and Rasputin.

Hofmann. Frau Hofmann only brews one regular beer, but what a great beer it is. Unusual, distinctive, wonderfully drinkable. It's a pity she already has a husband.

Schlenkerla. A bit obvious, this one. Still, some of their beers are so outstanding I couldn't ignore them. Urbock robust, complex and uncompromising. Helles, on the other hand, is delicate and subtle. Their other beers cobver everything inbetween. Great range.

St. Bernardus. Another one I couldn't miss out. I drink so much Abt, I have to include them. 6, 8 and 12 - one is suitable for every occasion. Like Wednesday or Tuesday. That sort of occasion.

Harvey's. One of the last remaining established independent breweries in the South of England. They brew a series of classic English ales. Sussex Best Bitter, now King & Barnes and Brakspear's have gone, is one of the few traditional Southern Bitters left. Their Imperial Stout is the closest to a genuine 19th century beer brewed anywhere. Should they close, I would be heartbroken.

Bernard. One of a very small number of Czech breweries that stuck with open fermenters out of choice, rather than because they couldn't afford conical fermenters. Their 12º pale Kvasnicové was the best beer I tried last time in the Czech Republic.

Nils Oscar. Micros come and go in Sweden. This one has managed to stay the course longer than most. They brew a could range of top-fermenting beers, including a particularly tasty Imperial Stout. What's even better, I can buy it in Amsterdam.

Cooper's. What would I have done without Cooper's in Australia? Become a wine-drinker, probably. Their Stout, earthy and coarse, is still one of my favourites. And who could fail to love a beer as inappropriately-named as their Sprarkling Ale?



Pub

Augustiner, Salzburg. My favourite beerhall. The little indoor market for stuff to make your own sandwiches is wonderful. As are the little old ladies in Sunday best, complete with hat, sipping a litre of beer. Everything about the place is charming and perfect. Worth crawling a few miles over broken glass to experience.

plan-B, Copenhagen. A very unpublike establishment, that looks more like a cafe or cakeshop inside. The beer selection is gloriously eclectic and a little bit eccentric. I'm not sure even the landlord is 100% certain of what is hidden away in corners.

Mathäser, Stuttgart. I have mixed feelings about Stuttgart. Despite its outer ugliness, there is something likeable about the city. Breaking my ankle there did strain our relationship, but its charm prevailed. The evening before my ankle break, spent in Mathäser, was one of pure joy. A beautiful pub filled with beautiful people. The beer - a full set of Löwenbräu products - isn't bad either.

Zum Uerige, Düsseldorf. You just can't be miserable in some pubs. If Uerige doesn't bring a smile to your face, you may as well throw yourself in the nearby Rhine. Their Alt is killer, too.

Wildeman, Amsterdam. There are beer pubs all over the world that have a good range of Belgian beer. But how many sell any quantity of good German beer? Tell me if there's another, because Wildeman is the only one I know of. Special events, like their British and German beer weeks, really are something to look forward to. Excellent, but not resting on its laurels and still trying to improve. My local.

U Rotundy, Prague. This is another of my perverse choices (especially for you, Stonch). A smoky dive full of weird locals. It doesn't even have any particularly good beer, only Staropramen 10º. For reasons even I don't understand, I just adore the place.

Olofspoort, Amsterdam. Simply the most beautiful pub in Amsterdam. Is there anywhere in the world that looks better? I seriously doubt it. The landlady is friendly, attentive and always welcoming. Then there's the jenever selection, one of the best in Amsterdam. There's only Affligem for the beer-lover to drink, but that's irrelevant. The atmosphere is magical.

Hebendanz, Forchheim. It may now be a smokers' club (probably not for long, as I expect the law will change to close that particular loophole) but it's still a great pub. Wall-to-wall weirdos, but totally unthreatening. The beer isn't bad, either, gravity-served Export. And only 1.80 euros a half litre.

Augustiner Grossgaststätte, Munich. If only every high street had a pub this good on it. A classic beerhall, with several massive rooms, speedy waiters and Edelstoff from a wooden cask.

The Canada, Melbourne. I haven't been in since 1991, so perhaps this belongs iin the timewarp section. When walking home in 40º C heat, a pits stop in the Canada was the perfect pause. A quick schooner of draught Cooper's Stout was the most delicious beer imaginable.

I would have liked to select a Newark pub. Sadly, all the good ones are currently derelict.


Time travel Pub

Many of my favourite pubs have closed or changed beyond recognition. I've given the year so you know how to set the dials of your time machine.


The Whip, Leeds, 1978. A pub hidden down an alleyway in the centre of Leeds. A Tetley's pub, of course. It had two quite distinct rooms. The front room, which Harry called "the industrial accident bar" was full of weirdly-shaped old blokes watching racing on the telly. The back room had an amazing 1950's jukebox that played records vertically and was full of old Teds. As a leftover from its days as a men-only pub, when I first visied it had no ladies bogs.

The Wing Tavern, 1974. My first pint of cask beer, Barnsley Bitter, was drunk in the Wing. A tiny pub, with no frontage on the street, it survived against the odds for decades. I suppose the site was just not worth much as anything else. Currently derelict and looking very forlorn.

U Dobrého Kata, Brno, 1985. You may be starting to detect a theme of craziness. This was another dive full of drunks. I spent a mad evening there in the summer of 1985. I came home without a shirt. The name means "The Good Executioner". It was converted into a milkbar around 1987.

Baker's Arms, Swindon, 1989. The formica fittings were so 1950's. The landlord and his wife looked as if they had been installed when the pub had last been done up. Now there was real retro chic. They had near-perfect Arkell's BBB.

The George and Vulture, London, 1984. Crazy name, but a great unspoilt Fuller's pub. Where I learned to love London Pride. I was only slightly put off it when two local psychos set about the landlord with an iron bar.



Beer

Tetley's Mild. Undoubtedly the beer of which I've drunk the most. By a very long way. Malty, unassuming, but delicious when on form. Let's hope it stays that way.

St. Bernardus Abt. Could well be closing in on Tetley's Mild. A beer that never disappoints. Rich, complex and fruity, but not overpowered by the alcohol, as it so easily could be.

Schlenkerla Urbock. A heady mix of smoke, hop and malt, it's one of the most complex German beers. Great from the bottle, a world-beater from the cask.

Courage Russian Stout. The best ever brewed. The best I've tried, at least. The soulless bastards at S & N discontinued it after over 200 years of just about continuous production. I hope my recreation will come somewhere close to its excellence.

Het Ij Struis. I really had to pick at least one local beer. When it's on form, Struis is a chocolatey delight.

What I'll be doing on my holidays (part two)

Dolores's friend Kerstin and her family are holidaying in Belgium this year. At a coastal resort right next to the French border. We plan spending a weekend at the same hotel.

Kerstin is another of Dolores's friend from lovely Merseburg (Messyburg, as I used to call it). She lives on the outskirts of Leipzig. Her house has an attic room large enough to sleep me, Dolores and both kids. I do my best to keep in Kerstin's good books. Leipzig is a city I definitely want to visit again.

I haven't been to the Belgian coast for ages. And the last time was just an afternoon in Oostende when we were on a weekend break in Gent. That was before Lexie was born (he'll be 10 in November). Come to think of it, I haven't been to coast anywhere for quite a while. Tunisia, over 18 months ago. That was it.

I was careful to make sure we booked an apartment in Port El Kantaoui for our Tunisian holiday. The good brewpub is there: Golfbräu. As you might be able to guess from the name, it's German-inspired. They had the usual German brewpub holy trinity of beers: Helles, Dunkles and Weizen. Though the latter tasted like the Helles mixed with lemonade.

Our apartment was only a couple of hundred metres from the brewery. I'd walk down there in the morning and get a 2-litre flip-top bottle filled with Dunkles. The Weizen might have been a bit dodgy, but the Dunkles was first class. Perfect for drinking on the beach. I must have drunk my way through a couple of barrels over the course of the week.

Despite the good weather of the last two weeks, I haven't gone the few kilometres to Zandvoort. The rampaging teenage gangs do put me off a bit, I have to admit. It isn't great for beer, either. There's one beer pub, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

That reminds me. I need to check if there are any good pubs in Oost Duinkerk. Or close by. It being Belgium, finding decent beer shouldn't be that difficult.

Pie and Peas

My kids are big fans of pies. Proper meat pies. Whenever I go to Britain I pack my bag with pies on the return journey. It must be in the genes. Every couple of weeks I take Lexie to Amsterdam's only fish and chip shop for pie, chips and mushy peas.

During my second year at university I wasn't the most studious of students. My day began at around midday, when I'd drag myself out of bed and walk to the campus. Not that I was going to a lecture. I went straight to the refectory in the Students Union. In the balcony there was a pie and peas bar. That's where we'd all meet to eat, well, pie and peas. Meat and potato pie was my favourite. There's health food for you. Carbohydrate, fat, more carbohydrate and a dash of protein in gristle form.

My days were so full. After eating we'd head for the student bar. By the second year, I'd progressed beyond Sam Smith's Old Brewery Bitter. In 1976 they started having problems with their yeast. After about a year they adopted a totally different strain and their beer never tasted the same again. I think it was probably Tetley Bitter I drank in the Students Union in my second year. I can't remember it selling any other cask beers.

After throwing out time (the pubs shut in the afternoon then) we moved on to the table tennis room. That occupied us until five-ish, when it was time to go home and have tea. I don't know how I found the energy. Each day was a heady whirl of pie, peas, beer and table tennis. It's no wonder I don't have a degree.

The DDR with Matt

I first visited the DDR in, I believe, 1984 [11.04.1984 according to the visa stamp]. With Matt. We'd forgotten about the unsavoury incident in St Sebastian station (the closest I've come to a fight in my adult life) and were travelling together again.

The trip was quite complicated. We first went by train to Prague and then continued on to Dresden and Leipzig. I'd already visited Prague and had a good idea what to expect there. The DDR was virgin territory.

It was no surprise to discover that much of Dresden city centre had been rebuilt after the war. War criminal Bomber Harris's fault. The firebombing of Dresden was one of the most senseless and inexcusable acts of the British military during WW II. Harris deserved to be in the dock with Göring in Nuremberg. We were staying in an Interhotel on the main drag, a street almost as soulless as the centre of Frankfurt. It was a tall, concrete box with all the charm of Swindon bus station.

Our first task was to find somewhere to have a drink. I didn't expect it to be quite as a difficult as it turned out. My only experience with the Eastern block was Prague. Finding a pub in Prague (or anywhere else in Czechoslovakia) wasn't exactly a challenge. They were on almost every street corner. Dresden was very different. Perhaps the chief planner had been a teetotaller. There seemed to be zero pubs. We resorted to asking passersby "Wo ist eine Kneipe?". We got plenty of weird looks, but no directions.

Eventually we found somewhere promising: a large cellar beerhall. We had to stand and wait in a queue at the entrance because, in typical DDR fashion, there were no free seats. There were plenty of empty seats, but they were all at tables decorated with a "reserved" sign. They hadn't been reserved, of course. These were just the tables the staff couldn't be arsed to serve. Matt insisted on going straight to the bogs for a shit. While he was doing his unspeakable business, some people who had come in after us were given seats. When Matt finally emerged we had a good deal more waiting to do.

It looked very promising. I could see them serving a lovely-looking dark lager. Brilliant. I was staring to get a real thirst. That first pint was going to be so sweet. After quite a bit more waiting, we were shown to a table. My order was easy: "Zwei Bier, bitte". "What do you want, Matt?" (I could have said "Do you want a beer, Matt?" Despite knowing him for more than 30 years, I still find that funny.) My joy was short-lived. The waiter informed us that they stopped serving beer at 14:00. It was 14:05. Triple bugger.

Rather ungallantly, I blamed Matt and his shit for missing out on a memorable beer experience. Come to think of it, my resentment is still simmering just below the surface. Why else would I remember the incident so well after all this time?

More frustrating exploration confirmed the city centre as a disaster zone, pub-wise. Time for plan B. We decided to try the outskirts. Jumping on the first tram we saw, we frantically scanned the passing streets for a boozer. "Gaststätte - that means pub, doesn't it?" We jumped off and took a closer look. It certainly looked like a pub from the outside. We entered. It looked like a pub inside, too. It wasn't even that crowded. (Getting a seat immediately in a DDR pub was a rare event.) A half-litre of a beer-like substance was soon sitting on the table in front of me. I relaxed for the first time that day.

That evening, we took the easy option and drank in the hotel bar. Bottled Pilsner Urquell or Wernesgrüner. After one of the latter, I stuck with the Czech beer. Wernesgrüner never impressed me, even though it was supposedly better-quality than most other DDR beers. I always preferred either Thüringian beer - Mühlhausener Pilsator was a great beer - or Berlin beer. Sternquell in Plauen brewed a good Pilsator, too. (Pilsator was a style specific to the DDR. Brewed from better quality ingredients than the standard Pils and actually - unlike 99.99999% of Pilsners - quite similar to Pilsner Urquell in flavour profile.

Type	OG	FG	app. attenuation	ABW	hop gm/hl	colour EBC	CO2
Deutsches Pilsator	12.5° -13.3°	2.75° (max)	min. 78%	3.8 - 4.5%	300	max 12.2	0.40%

[At this point, in my speedily-written original (no time to check anything too technical) it said ******* ADD SOME TECHNICAL STUFF ABOUT PILSATOR. *********. The table above is that information. The columns don't line up. I know that. I'm not stupid. But to fix it would take too long. The kids want psycho slasher game. It shouldn't be too much of a challenge to your intelligence to work it out. A pencil and paper should suffice.]

The next day we tried our luck across the Elbe in Dresden-Neustadt. This part of town mostly survived the war. It wasn't much more heavily-pubbed than the other side of the river. We did, however, find a kiosk with a few outdoor standing tables clustered around it. Here we drank bottled beer and looked out over the Elbe. I'll tell you what reminds me of it very much. Have you ever seen Tatort? The episodes set In Cologne feature a similar kiosk with a view over the Rhine to the Dom. The two detectives go there and drink Kölsch a several times every episode. Sadly, it isn't real. The kiosk is only there for filming. Shame. I wonder what happened to the one in Dresden?

After two nights in Dresden, we took the train to Leipzig, hoping it would be better for pubs. Well, I was hoping that. Who knows what goes on in Matt's mind. I gave up wondering about that years ago. We were staying in another charmless Interhotel. That must have been their mission statement: to provide non-socialist foreigners with adequate acomodation in an ugly building at a slightly unreasonable price.

Leipzig wasn't quite as severely rearranged by the RAF as Dresden, though there were still plenty of ugly holes in the city centre. My mind is a strange place. I couldn't tell you what I ate for breakfast the day before yesterday, yet I could lead you to the Leipzig pubs we drank in. At least their locations. I don't think they're all still pubs.

The first place was a pub/restaurant behind the Town Hall. As usual, we had to queue for a seat. We'd been travelling for 6 or 7 days by then and Matt's conversation was even more sparse than usual. So I started reading the book I'd brought with me. After about three pages the waitress came past, spotted my book and told me to stop reading. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe she'd been taught as a child that it was impolite to read at the dining table. Or perhaps whe was just being weird. Or power-crazed. You didn't argue with the staff in Eastern Europe if you wanted to drink another beer sometime in the next week. I put my book away.

The next day, we stumbled on a pub not far from the station. "Since 1982" a sign proudly proclaimed. See, things were getting better. Once we'd got our beers, Matt decided he wanted to buy a momento of the DDR and disappeared into the department store opposite. I wish I could remember what he bought. It was bound to have been something weird, pointless, tacky or all three. I was happy enough just having a seat and a beer. No way I was going to move, short of nuclear war.

That was it for my first visit to the DDR. I've returned to Leipzig several times, but never to Dresden. Surely there must be more pubs there now? (This pub guide seems to confirm that. I hope the author knows what he's talking about.)

Encounters with foreign beer

Map by Andrew.

When I was a young man, you didn't see foreign beer in Britain. Apart from the odd dull lager, but even those with Germanic names were usually brewed in the UK.

I'd read of Belgian beer in Michael Jackson. It sounded very exotic and different. When would I ever get to taste it? I suppose when I finally visited Belgium.

After finishing university my mate Pete and his American girlfriend Justine went to live in Bordeaux. I was still living in Leeds working at the WYPTE garage on Kirkstall Road. It's where they repaired and refurbished buses. My role was vital - sweeping up the crap the craftsmen made and brewing tea. It was a former tram garage and there were still tracks inside the building. After getting paid on a Friday everyone used to go over the road to the Highland Laddie (Cavendish Street, Leeds LS3 1LY) for a couple of pints. It was a cosy, odd-shaped pub, hidden away next to the RSPCA kennels. My workmates were quite shocked at how quickly I knocked back the Tetley's Mild in our half hour dinner break.

I had a temporary contract for just three months. Matt suggested that when I'd finished, we went out to France to stay with Pete. It was a very vague plan. Very much like Matt. I think he'd been living back in Sevenoaks with his parents. Job finished, I left Leeds for Balderton to wait at Mum's for my tax refund to turn up. Then we'd be off.


View Larger Map
Map by Andrew.
It didn't quite work out like that. My tax refund still hadn't turned up after a few weeks. Matt proposed that we leave anyway, using his money. I didn't need asking twice.

This was early 1979. I'd never left Britain. Getting the boat train to Paris was pretty exciting. The plan was simple: a couple of days looking around Paris then hitch down to Bordeaux. Some of it worked out.

We stayed in a hostel. I've no idea where, but it was reasonably central. It was good enough for us. We were used to student houses. Not exactly posh residences. As soon as we got out of Gare du Nord, I'd noticed brewery signs on cafés: Kanterbrau, Mutzig, Jupiler. Jupiler? wasn't that Belgian? This was thrilling - foreign pubs with genuine foreign beer. I was eager to get into one.

I didn't have to wait too long. We were soon inside a pub close to the hostel. It was a fairly typical Parisian café, with a zinc bar counter and tall, delicately curved fonts. Jupiler Pils was on draught. Just that. I'd actually heard of it and knew it was brewed in Belgium. "Bound to be good" I thought. We ordered two. Well I probably did. What with my A-level French and all. Matt didn't speak any foreign language at the time. He didn't even speak that much English. There were often long silences in his conversation, gaps that I gladly filled. Maybe that's why we got on.

There it was in front of me. My first glass of Belgian beer*. Jupiler Pils. I really didn't know what to expect, though I understood it was a rather prosaic example of Belgian brewing. I took a sip.

At this point, it's very tempting to invent, or reinvent, history. To tell you this or that about my first taste of Jupuiler. It was almost 30 years ago. Many of you (I'm looking at you Stonch) haven't even lived that long. I can't remember how it tasted or what I thought about it. (Now I think about it, that makes for a rather dull story, doesn't it? Should I think up something more exciting for you, or stick with the boring old truth? I've always thought that an interesting lie trumps a boring truth any day of the week.)

It can't have impressed me that much, because I remember asking what other beer they sold. They had just one other: Pelforth Brune. That'll do. Something dark. Sweet, but sort of OK. I tried mixing it with Jupiler, too. That sort of implies I wasn't that enthusiastic about the Jupiler. At least I hope so. I would hate to have enjoyed it.

After those first few beers, we didn't drink much more beer in Paris. Cafés were far too expensive for our modest budget. The cheapest plonk from a supermarket became our drink of first resort (second and third, too).

So far, so good. Now for the hitchhiking part. We took the metro to the outskirts of Paris and stood by the side of the road. We did quite a bit of standing with our thumbs out. Some walking, too. Then some more standing. It didn't go great. Eventually we did get a lift. But nothing like as far as we had hoped. Bordeaux is a long way from Paris. By late afternoon, it was clear that we weren't going to make it. We gave up and took a train.

It was late evening when we arrived in Bordeaux. The station isn't very central and Pete was living in an old part of town, just off Cours Victor Hugo. It was a fair walk. When we knocked on his door, it was even later.

Something Matt and I hadn't done before leaving was to tell Pete we were coming. He was pretty surprised to open his door and find us there. I'm not 100% sure it was a pleasant surprise. Not more than 70% pleasant, at most. With hindsight, his reaction was predictable. But in them days, I didn't used to think very far ahead.

Pete's flat was small, just two rooms. Far too small for four people. If Pete had been less than 100% welcoming, Justine was openly hostile. What a socially aware being would expect. Just a shame Matt and I were trainee sociopaths. But we were in luck.

An English friend of Pete's was in the process of moving. He'd moved out of his old flat but still had a little of the lease left to run. Me and Matt could use that. It was on the top floor of an old stone house, right in the centre of Bordeaux, on Rue du Pas St. George. There wasn't much in it apart from the kitchen. That didn't matter. We weren't used to luxury. There was a record player and a set of Sex Pistols singles. What else did we need?

We had somewhere to live, now we just needed a source of income. Matt's money was running out and there was still no sign of my tax refund. Pete did something at the university. I can't remember what. It was through him that Matt and I were able to get a few English conversation classes for mature students.

The lunches were the best. Students on intensive courses weren't even given a rest during lunch. A few native English-speakers were taken along to make sure they didn't revert to speaking French over their meal. This really was money for old rope. We got a few francs and a free meal with wine. All we had to do was speak English. On reflection, it's one of the better jobs I've had. It was no effort and I could get half-cut while doing it. Getting more than my fair share of wine was easy. The students were being worked so hard, they didn't dare drink more than a glass. Me and Matt always polished off whatever wine they left on the table.

A proper meal was a welcome relief. Our normal diet consisted of bread, potatoes, onions and cheap red wine. If we were feeling really rich, we'd buy a sausage and share it. Sometimes we'd have beer. Kanterbrau or something equally cheap in a litre screwtop bottle. Not particularly inspiring and worse value for money than plonk wine. We borrowed English-language books from the university and sat reading and drinking wine for most of the day. It was much like being a student, except with far less money.

Pete lent us his camera to take some snaps of the stunning view from our borrowed flat. After takin a couple of naps, Matt suggested we photograph each other naked, to give Pete a shock when he developed the film. They were very tasteful. I wonder whatever happened to them? (I have almost no photos of myself before the age of 30. Pete took a few at university and in Bordeaux. Maybe I should ask if he still has them.)

We often shopped at the Prisunic supermarket on Cours Alsace-Lorraine. I say shopped. We didn't buy a great deal. We did a lot more drooling at products that we couldn't afford. Like beer. Prisunic had a surprisingly good beer selection. It included a French beer Michael Jackson had mentioned, Jenlain, and some Belgians. Chimay Blue and Gouden Carolus were amongst the latter.

When my tax refund finally arrived, we went crazy apeshit. A whole packet of sausages and a bottle of Gouden Carolus. I didn't know what to make of it. This sudden intake of protein. The Gouden Carolus was difficult to fathom, too. Not quite like anything I'd had before. Spicily fruity in a way British beer just wasn't. There's was nothing I could compare it to. We got a bottle of Jenlain as well. That fitted into my mental framework of beers much better. Not that dissimialr from the beers back home.

Bordeaux was way in advance of Britain when it came to Belgian beer. In addition to Prisunic, there was also a café selling a dozen or so Belgian beers. Not that I ever drank in there. It was way too expensive. Two beers would have blown half my week's budget.

Feeling flush with my tax money, Matt and I decided to hitch to Spain for a few days. It's not that far from Bordeaux, after all. The first day didn't go too badly. We had one decent lift and got as far as Toulouse. It's a city I'd love to revisit. With it's red-tiled roofs it looked completely different to Bordeaux. We stayed in a hostel and were in pretty good spirits the next day. Onwards to Spain.

It didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. We made bugger all progress and ended up in some little town in the middle of nowhere pretty damn late. There was nowhere for us to stay. Brilliant. What the hell were we going to do? Somehow - don't ask me how - we stumbled across a half-built house and dossed down in that. Definitely better than being without shelter, but not great. Would we be woken by angry builders at 6 A.M.? We were too knackered to care.

Either the builders started unusually late or they'd left this job unfinished while they worked elsewhere (judging by Matt's later experiences in France, a distinct possibility). Our sleep was undisturbed. But our attempts at hitching were no more successful. We decided to take the train the rest of the way to Barcelona.

*I've just remembered that I had tried Belgian beer once before. But that story will be in another post.

Map by Andrew.

Dancing

Do you recall me mentioning my music? Hoppy Head, one of the tracks is called. I suppose that's beer-related. Not that it has any words. The only words on any of my tracks are "I hate Arsenal. I hate all London teams." What a noble sentiment.

Yesterday evening Dolores had taken Andrew to his chess club and Lexxie was upstairs playing a Star Wars game. It meant I had a window of opportunity to listen to my last CD. I'm not allowed to play it when any other family member is within earshot. It's that good.

I must convert some numbers to MP3 and make them available here. There's a drum solo in Hippy Hop that I'm particularly proud of. Thuck, thick, thucky, thucky, thick, thack. That's how it goes. It's not a long drum solo. That would be pretentious.

Where is all this leading? Who knows. I often start a journey unaware of my final destination. All part of the fun. I remember. Kris.

Finnish Kris is up from Frankfurt. I haven't seen him for ages, not since he moved away from Amsterdam. We used to go clubbing together, what seems like several lifetimes ago. Mazzo was where we usually went. So often, that I became a member. The music wasn't great. Way too thumpy-thumpy for my taste. But it was a pretty cool place, so I could forgive them that. After the fire, when they temporarily relocated from Rosengracht to the Ouderzijds Voorburgwal, Lucas used to DJ in the chillout room. He played pretty good stuff. Lots of dub and ambulance music. Unfortunately, there wasn't the space for a chillout room in Mazzo's permanent home.

Rather susprisingly, Mazzo wasn't a total beer disaster. It sold Duvel. Just what you need when you're all sweaty from dancing: a strong, highly-carbonated beer. Occasionally they had a more interesting draught beer. One Easter they had Tuborg Kylle, Kylle. Not the world's greatest, but quite an unexpected choice for a club.

Sadly, Mazzo has closed forever. I hadn't been for years, but it was reassuring to know it was still there, should I ever need it. Other things - kids, a mountain of beer books - now demand my attention. There's no time for dancing.

What I'll be doing during the holidays

Did I mention that I've finally been paid? Just 10 weeks after starting my new job. Oh the joys of contracting. Now there's something in the bank, we can start booking our summer excursions.

The first week in August we're going to Berlin by train. We couldn't get a budget flight so we're going by train. As all the cheap second-class tickets had gone, we're going first class. It's still less than half the price of the cheapest flights.

The train takes a little over 6 hours. That's about the limit of what we can expect the kids to endure. Fortunately, we have a psp and a portable dvd player to amuse them. And the train has a buffet car. They like going to the buffet car. Almost as much as I do. I like to sit there and have a beer or two. German trains are so civilised. They usually even have a fairly decent beer - some sort of Hefeweizen (a great German Ale). Served in the proper glass, too. If only every country could be like that.

There's a reason why we're going to Berlin. Several reasons actually. The trip, however, has been timed to coincide with the Berlin Beer Festival.

The Berlin Beer Festival is a slightly unusual affair. It's held on about a mile of street. Karl Marx Allee, to be precise. It's a street I've admired ever since one of my Polish friends acquainted me with charms of Stalinist architecture. The style is one of the highpoints of post-war architecture. Sort of socialist classicism. Karl Marx Allee, built in the early 1950's, is a great example. It even used to be called Stalin Allee. (Amsterdam used to have a street named after Stalin, too. Stalinlaan. They soon changed the name to Vrijheidslaan - Freedom Avenue. I suppose it's just about the same, really. Stalin is synonymous with freedom, after all.)

It's a huge wide street, Karl Marx Allee. Wide enough for them to be able to form two rows of stalls without coming anywhere near the actual road part. Lots of breweries are represented. Several hundred. And a couple of thousand beers. You could call the selection eclectic. Or totally random. It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff can be difficult. Last time I prepared a list of the beers I wanted to try and their location. Saved me loads of aimless wandering about. Potsdammer Stange was top of the list. I wonder if they'll have that again?

The beer festival isn't the only reason we're going to Berlin. We have friends there.

Jörg went to university with Dolores. In sunny Merseburg. I went there once. Dolores told me it was a horrible, filthy place. I thought she was exaggerating. She wasn't. Either side of the town is a massive chemical works. We once took the tram from Merseburg to Halle. When the doors opened at the stop by Leuna, air that had a higher chlorine than oxygen content streamed in. I almost choked to death. Lovely place. Coincidentally, during the war Dolores's granny was on a train passing through Leuna while it was being bombed by the Americans. I hope I never have an experience as scary as that. Leuna is also notable for being responsible for losing Helmut Kohl his job a German chancellor. He took a big back hander from Elf to sell it to them for 7 or 8 Deutschmarks. Naughty man.

Jörg lives just a couple of hundred metres from the beer festival. Very handy. I wonder if he's still planning to emigrate to Venezuela?

I'm sure the kids will like the Pergamon Museum. They'd better at least pretend to like it, because I'm taking them there. That's the sort of father I am. One with children. I keep telling the how lucky they are. My dad hardly ever took me to the pub.

The beer festival isn't the only reason I want to revisit Berlin. I still haven't got around all the brewpubs.

Spandau's a bit far, but there are a couple of other, less inconveniently placed ones. Like that in Köpenick, which is tiny. It's in a shed or something similar. I have happy memories of Köpenick. Dolores and I ate in the stylish Ratskeller in the pre-capitalist days. I'd read about Tokay in André Gide's "Les Faux-monnayeurs" (a wonderful, wonderful book) but never seen it until then. We shared a bottle with our meal.

I've heard good reports of Marcus-Bräu, too. I must check it's exact location. Andrew will be able to guide me there, I'm sure. He's good with maps and public transport.


Berlin stories

Me and Dolores spent a great deal of time in Berlin leading up to our marriage. The first months of 1988. It was a pain in the arse getting an entry visa for the DDR. But you could get a 24-hour visa for East Berlin (Haupstadt der DDR) at the border. I used to catch the train on Friday evening after work and arrive at some ungodly morning hour at Friedrichstrasse, 06:30 or something like that. The journey was such fun. Despite it being overnight, there were neither sleeper nor couchette carriages. You get used to it. You really do. And I used to be a complete bastard and just lie across three seats and pretend to be asleep if anyone else came into the compartment.

Sunday night I made the journey back to Amsterdam and went straight to work from the station. You can do that type of thing when you're young. I did it two or three times a month.

At Friedrichstrasse I'd go through the border controls. That was also a real pleasure. You could never be certain how long it would take. The guards were in no rush. Dolores would be waiting for me on the DDR side. She'd also travelled overnight from Thuringia in the south, where she lived. Through John Hamilton, who was working for Radio Berlin, we knew someone in Prenzlauer Berg whose flat we could stay in.

Because the visa was only valid until midnight, I had to return to Friedrichstrasse late in the evening. I would technically leave the DDR, but remain in Friedrichstrasse station. I'd pass the outward border control at 11:50 and walk straight around to the inward side again. And go through the whole palaver with the guards again.

I wasn't the only person playing this game. I soon started to recognise the same faces queueing up each time. Like me, they were mostly men with a girlfriend in the East. I even bumped into a bloke who'd been at the Czech language summer school in Brno with me. It was the same for Dolores. She waited with the same people on the DDR side every Saturday night.

It wasn't so bad. There was a decent pub just over the river from Friedrichstrasse station. We used to sit drinking in there until 11:45. And, even though I didn't often get through until 01:00, that wasn't a problem as East Berlin had a night tram service. It was a very civilised city. The shops had more convenient opening times than those in West Berlin, too.

We stayed on Glassbrennerstrasse, which is just off Wisbeyerstrasse. I became acquainted with most of the pubs in that part of Prenzlauer Berg and there were quite a few. Feierabend Klause. That was a good one. Very nice food. The first piece I ever had published was a pub guide to East Berlin that appeared in What's Brewing.

Most of the pubs are gone, converted in restaurants or buggered up. There's a delicious irony in Zum Hackepeter, a former Nazi Stammlokal, having become an Indian restaurant. Zum Schusterjungen, the communist Stammlokal opposite it, is still a pub. Metzer Eck is still going strong. It was a quite a shock to discover that Mike's mum used to fetch beer for her parents from it in the 1920's. Even more remarkable, given the upheavals since that time, is that it's always been run by the same family. Me and Mike went there when we were in Berlin for the beer fesival two years ago.

Leipziger Strasse used to be lined with restaurants from other socialist countries. There was a rather good Czech restaurant that sold both Pilsner Urquell and Budvar. But it was always weird being in that part of Berlin with Dolores. It was very close to the border. You could clearly see buildings on the West Berlin side. Yet she couldn't go there. A strange sensation.

East Berlin wasn't bad for beer. Berliner Pilsener was acceptable enough and pretty cheap. Though it was often hard to tell exactly which brewery it came from. The Berliner Weisse, on the other hand, was truly outstanding. I often passed the Schultheiss Weissbier brewery, which was on Schönhauser Allee just about where the U-Bahn line emerged from it's tunnel and became elevated. Very sour and packed with character. The best Berliner Weisse I've ever had. Which is why (West German) Kindl bought and closed it after the Wende. They didn't want it showing up their crappy version. The premises are now a Kulturbrauerei, whatever that means. I preferred when it was a Bierbrauerei.

I get funny looks when I say East Berlin was one of my favourite cities. It really was and it still saddens me that it has disappeared. While waiting for Dolores to get hold of all the documents she needed for our marriage I spent a great deal of time in the city. Parts of it I got to know pretty well.

Feeling, for the only time in my life, a rich man probably helped. I could afford to eat anywhere. I did, too. We tried the most expensive restaurants but I still often couldn't get rid of my Klara Zetkins quickly enough. There was a Cuban restaurant on Friedrichstrasse that was supposedly the priciest in the DDR. I found it was reasonable - a meal was slightly less expensive than a Currywurst on Kurfürstendamm.

At least once I got hold of a couple of bottles of Porter. I can remember the purple label, but nothing else. If only I'd taken proper notes and kept the labels.