One That Got Away

Have I mentioned that Berlin is a big bugger? I think I have, but to emphasise, it is big, wide and very spread out. They don't seem to have been worried about space there when throwing up the odd building, street or avenue. The centre itself is big enough - not surprising really as it is two centres knocked into one - but pretty walkable. When it comes to moving out a little though, maps can be a bit misleading. What looks like an easy walk turns into a long trek down never ending streets. That's tip number one for you.

We decided that we'd go to Friedrichshain, to a brewpub that is gaining a reputation for moving off the mainstream a bit. In theory Friedrichshain is one area up from our hotel in Mitte and the pub, Hops and Barley, looked an easy walk from the Ostbanhof. Outside, on impulse, I flagged down a cab. It was a lovely evening and I was thirsty. Boy am I glad I did. I wouldn't have fancied the walk at all, dragging my thirst behind me. Thus we found ourselves deposited right outside the pub on Wühlischstrasse by our very friendly taxi driver. Now this is an area I like. Big tenement buildings, both new and renovated, lots of jumping studenty bars and restaurants and loads going on. It was one of the most damaged parts of Berlin during WW2, depressed during the DDR days, but now has  recovered its vitality and is a pulsing part of Berlin social life.

We sat outside and ordered our beers. A dunkel for me and a pils for E. Served in non cheaty half litre glasses.  The dunkel was dark - always a good sign - and its dark, chewy malt and light hopping were an excellent thirst quencher. E's pils was a cut above the usual brewpub stuff, though still a bit dull.  I asked what the special was.  "A Cascade Pale Ale."  Alas though it was competently enough made, it showed little trace of cascades, except in the aroma.  A disappointment, though probably better overall than I'd anticipated.  I've a long record of visiting German brewpubs and almost every one is an outright disappointment.


I'll come to our next beery port of call in a moment, but leaving the pub and heading towards Karl Marx Allee, on the same street, on a corner we noticed a pizza place.  Large open windows, graffitti decoration, candled tables and waitresses and waiters bawling at each other in Italian - what's not to like?  We hadn't eaten, so in we went and were squeezed into a table in the middle of the throng.  The pizzas were thin, crispy and superb.  The place was rightly going like a fair.   Second top tip.  And now, hot on its heels, the third.  If you are going to look for the new Tilsiter Brauerei as first revealed by Knut Albert, the easiest way is to walk along KMA to the Kosmos Kino (direction Frankfurter Tor), go behind it and follow the path onto Richard Sorge Strasse. Walk five minutes and it is on your right. This is much better than the roundabout way we went.  I'll now hand you over to Knut for the history and to tell you about the beer. I can't, as it wasn't on!  We settled for the full bodied, bitter and moreish Wernesgruner Pils instead and a chat with the barman about the cinema, which was showing West is West when we called.  The pub, converted out of the former cinema foyer, is stunning and charmingly old fashioned.  One little anecdote.  We were given a tour of the projection room.  No real electronics here, but old fashioned reel to reel from two giant metal projectors. Our host told us he bought them for a song.  They used to show films in the old Stasi HQ! Films of what, he didn't know.  The other titbit is they are maintained by the guy that does the brewing, which is off the premises in Mitte.  He was between brews and is apparently a kind of mad professor type. Needless to say, he built the brewery himself and produces 1000l at a time.  Two beers are produced; an unfiltered pils and helles and the odd special. When and if he gets round to it.

We returned along KMA to Frankfurter Tor U Bahn station. The beer festival was packing up, with vans and drays being loaded, while the odd reluctant drunk was still spinning out his last beer.  A good and different night out.

Sorry about the chopped off photo. It was dark in there and without the flash, which bounces back off the photo, I couldn't see a thing.

Same Again. And Again

I have mentioned from time to time the moribund state of German brewing. I think probably the first time was in 2008 in this article, where the author I quote scathingly remarked that most German brewers can't even identify their own pils in a blind tasting, so alike have they become.

So what would it be like with dozens to hundreds of German brewers all in a row?  The Berlin Bier Festival gave me a chance to find out. Would they rise to the occasion or would we sink in sea of samey beer?  I think you can guess the result. What we used to get is the unholy trinity of pils or (helles), dunkel beer and a wheat beer.  Now we have added to that miserable mix, a special. This special will nearly always be called "zwickel" and will often be the pils, but unfiltered, while purporting to be a keller bier.  Well it might be, but it will likely be even less hoppy than the pils, whatever it is and you will never find out for sure, but they'll tell you anything.  Sometimes the dunkel will be replaced by a blacker beer - schwarzbier - and these can be quite good.  There might even be a stronger beer too, but you will have to ask for it. Franconian breweries will likely offer a kellerbier, but these will be a shadow of the wonderful country beers that you may be thinking of.

Of course, this being an international festival, you could avoid the native beer altogether.  There was beer from Williams Bros served by handpump, but re-racked. There was Belgian, though mostly mainstream, but you could get La Trappe and Chimay. You could also get Leffe and Hoegaarden.  Guinness too and Smithwicks, Fullers, Greene King, beers from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Caribbean, South East Asia, Africa and more.  There was in fact something for everyone, though some of the foreign stuff was a lot more pricey.  All in all though you would be pretty fussy not to find something.  Unless you are a fan of the hop of course. Then you'd be in deep shit. Humulus Lupulus was hiding its light well under a bushel.  In fact it had pulled another bushel onto the one that it was hiding its light under and burrowed deeply underneath.

We stuck to German stuff mostly as we wanted to do some direct comparing.  First of all there is glassware and we tried to find decent glasses to drink out of.  Pils just doesn't taste as good in a thick walled glass, so we chose some stands on the quality of their glassware.  It does help. Now you can roughly chop it up as follows: Pils and Helles will be often be sweet, under hopped and underwhelming, though there will be exceptions of enjoyable poise and balance. Dunkel will be sweet, under hopped and underwhelmimg. You may just get one that has something about it, but it will be a long search.  Schwarzbier at its best will be like a really good dark mild. Or it will be like the dunkel.  Weizenbier will be competent, tick most of the relevant wheat beer boxes and will be cool and refreshing. If you like that sort of thing, you rarely get a bad one. Frankly, choosing a stand by its seating, people watching potential and standard of glassware is as good a plan as any. Unless you are some kind of demented ticker of course. Then you have hit the mother lode.

But we weren't here for the beer as such. It was the atmosphere, the people watching and the sense of gemutlichkeit and that was there in abundance. The sun shone like a shiny thing and we divided our time between stalls with a decent view and a stage with Deutsche Blasmusik - that folksy and innocent stuff you hear in the background a lot in Germany - for which we are both suckers and just wandering around doing more of the same.  We joined in the singing later on, watched the dancing, scoffed bratties, talked to Dutch people, fought our way into the Baltika Stand where there was a huge throng intent on cheap and strong beer, fought our way out and back in again for the deposit - no mean feat I assure you - drank loads of pils, wheat, schwarz and dunkel beer, seeking out some old favourites from our many German holidays. We also drank Muhlen and Reissedorf Koelsch and  some awful Czech beer - but the guy from the brewery was really nice so we didn't tell him. We queued for toilets, hopping from one leg to the other and I got misunderstood at the Schneider stall, not once, but twice, by the same guy.  Both times ending up with an extra beer.  Avoiding him,  I did manage to finish unwisely with a Schneider Hopfen Weisse, which wasn't visibly on display, but  a bottle of which was produced with a flourish by the dirndled barmaid and drank far too quickly by me.  Thus hoppily satisfied, we staggered off to a taxi.  Neither of us fancied walking.  We'd stayed far longer than intended, drank far more than intended and sat in the sun longer than advisable too. We'd had a great time, great beer or not.

I felt a bit rough next day, but we did go back.  Much more modestly.  Well it started out that way. It's the atmosphere you know - it gets to you.  Don't worry about the beer - just have a good time.

The next night was less of the same, punctuated by a leisurely Greek meal.  The place was jumping and again the sun beat down.  Some events may have taken place that night. It's hard to recall exactly which was which.

Berlin Bleibt Doch Berlin

Berlin is big. You notice that on the way from the airport and when walking around. It is ever changing and still, 22 years after the wall fell, a city of contrasts and still 67 years after the last shell and bomb landed, undergoing repairs and renovations. In short, in the centre at least, it is a large building site, with former buildings reappearing phoenix like from the sandy soil, or large U Bahn extensions causing diversions as you pick your way through it. It is a marvellous place, though frustratingly difficult to remember precisely, even though I've been there quite a few times.

Mitte is the centre of the old East and that's where we stayed in the excellent Novotel. Great for breakfasts - and handy for more or less everything - trust me on that one. Our short first night was spent trying to find the quaint Nicolaiveirtel, a small part of the former East German capital, renovated by the DDR in its dog days - mostly in concrete - but you can hardly tell. The building works didn't help either, nor did a sign that pointed to its direction the wrong way. They are wags these Berliners. The huge former Palace of the DDR, riddled with asbestos, is now a giant hole in the ground which seemed to block our every way, but eventually we stumbled on a neat little pub with excellent food and a very snooty attitude. We'd been there before with others a few years ago and it was the same then, but the Radeburger- the drink of the DDR politburo - didn't touch the sides and the portions were mighty, even if the craic wasn't. The next day, when the pouring rain eased, we found our goal a mere five minutes walk away. It's easy when you know how.

Determined to do better we headed for Brauhaus Mitte. Now I knew where that was and felt confident. It is more or less opposite the Fernsehturm, the huge former DDR TV tower which dominates Berlin. Well we found the tower OK - you could hardly miss it - and after only a little swearing and cursing, found Brauhaus Mitte. We sat outside, just as it started to rain again and enjoyed a flight of samplers. Nothing that special, but competent enough. A recurring theme.  We took our bearings and planned our day. It was a simple plan, therefore one I felt capable of executing. We were going to the Berlin Beer Festival. That's simple.  And so it proved. A quick shimmy round the Fernsehturm, along Alexanderstrasse and we were there. Karl-Marx Allee.  Now just a touch more history here for you.  Karl-Marx Allee started out as Stalin Allee, though of course in an even earlier incarnation, it was Grosse Frankfurter Strasse.  It arose from the rubble of the Second World War bombing and was perhaps the DDR's most ambitious building project. It is grandly stupendous in an insane sort of way.  Actually it is rather handsome. And why go there? It is where they hold Berlin Beer Festival.

Most of the 2km stretch of Karl-Marx Allee is used for the festival. Not in the middle of the road, but on one side. There is plenty of room, as the whole thing is nearly 90 metres wide.  Stand after stand for the whole stretch is filled with individual breweries beer offerings.  Any brewery who is noteworthy seems to be there and you simply start at the beginning - either end will do - and work your way along. Almost all the beer is German as you'd expect, though there was a bit of British, Czech and Belgian.  There  was even some Russian stuff and other oddities.  I'll tell you later about that in part 2.

To finish part one though, I'll tell you how it all works.  You can buy a festival glass for a few euros and wander around and have that filled, or just get a brewery glass from whatever stand you fancy and pay a deposit on that glass.  You have to take the glass back to the stand you got it from to get your money back - or you can keep it.  And despite the thousands of people, it is real glass. No plastic here. Most stands have a few benches where you can watch the world go by as you oil your neck.  Of course this being Germany, you won't go short of vittals.  Every few metres there is a bratwurst stall, a pizza stall, various chunky meat stalls, roast chickens, hamburgers, fried potatoes and more. You will be entertained by Bavarian Oompah bands, singers, heavy metal and rock, Beatles song singers (lots of that) and cheery German equivalents of Val Doonican, while all the while, elderly couples and old ladies dance away to Deutsche Blasmusik.

Another slight oddity is pricing.  This is set by the stallholders and varies a lot.  Many sold 0.4l, that odd, slightly cheaty, North German favourite, at a very reasonable €3, while some sold 0.25l for the same price or more. It was notable that those with the biggest prices were emptiest, including Zum Uerige who sold their beer "vom holzfass" that is straight from the barrel by gravity.  At the height of the festivities, the AB InBev stand was pretty empty. Who wants to pay top dollar for their stuff? Hardly anyone it seemed. By contrast, Baltika of Russia was bashing out their wares, including some pretty strong stuff, for €3 a half litre.  It was bursting with thirsty bargain hunters.

Customers ranged from young to very old.  Most were German, but there was, astonishingly quite a few British stag parties, looking completely incongruous and out of place, dressed in Joe 90 costumes, chicken costumes, silly wigs and the like.  Not the place for that really, but the atmosphere is one that encourages conformance and there was little by way of bad behaviour, though there was by the end a lot of completely pissed people, again almost all German, but rather well behaved pissed, though a tad noisy. Drinking makes you a bit deaf it seems.  There was one Scotsman in a kilt that was delighting the young frauleins, by showing what he didn't wear under his kilt.  I didn't see this myself thankfully, though I did see him, but E confirmed it was the case. Seems they all found it funny, though I'd have had him locked up.  Funnily enough the GBBF habit of wearing silly hats was noticeable too.  Why does a beer festival make some people want to wear daft headgear? A mystery to me.  Everyone who could had looked out a brewery T shirt too.

Lastly, a word about toilets and policing.  Portaloos were plentiful and free, though some were a grim experience. E opted for the paying version, where for 50 cents, you got toilet paper, guaranteed running water and hand washing facilities.  As the night wore on and things got more hectic, the signs for male and female were simply ignored and people dashed into the first loo available, often after a bladder stretching wait.  By closing time, the abundant bushes were freely and all too openly pressed into service.

All the while the place was patrolled by quite casual looking special police and various security guards.  I didn't see either of them doing anything at all in particular. Apart from public pissing, which was studiously ignored, there seemed no need.

The photo at the top show Leipziger Strasse and was the view from our hotel room.  East German practicality and function. 

Reasons to be Cheerful

My morning walk in Alkrington Woods was punctuated, not this time by the usual avoidance of dog shit, but the poignant sight along my route, of carefully placed posters for the missing Stone Roses fan, Chris Brahaney, who vanished at Heaton Park, a mile from the furthest point of my walk. Sadly there was no happy outcome.

I reflected and resolved as I trudged along in a slight drizzle, that lousy summer or not, I'd better be a bit more cheerful. There's a lot of pain in the arse things going on around me at the moment and there might be no good weather to look forward to here, but I'm alive and kicking and there is good beer to be supped both here and on my future agenda too. Maybe even in sunnier climes in the shape of the Berlin Beer Festival, where I'll be in just over three weeks. The weather that far east in August ought to be sunny. Right? Well I have had a good record of sun there in the past, so here's hoping. Then, after that, a bit of work at the GBBF. I'd previously decided to have a year off, but instead I'll just do a fair few hours less, back in our old haunt of Olympia, though travel may be a nuisance. In between I have a trip to see my dear old Mum and a chance of a couple of fly pints in Glasgow. Then after all that two weeks in sunny Andalusia.

Reasons to be cheerful? I think so. And tomorrow these soggy posters referred to above should be a reminder of that.

Although I think I have what I need, any Berlin tips from those there recently, are welcome.  Beermug is scheisse though.