Bound for Beer

  This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here .  Saturday in Zoigl County  Part 1: Falkenberg and Hiking the Goldsteig Zoigl Trip - Part 9 of 13  I was really sick at this point. The night before I suggested that maybe I should skip the hike but Rich encouraged me to do it, so I was in. And I’m glad he did. Gear for the hike. I was ready for any weather condition. More tissues would have been useful. We were up early for breakfast at the hotel. Ferdl would be picking us up at 9:30am to drive us to Falkenberg. Ferdl is German, so 9:30am really means 9:15am. Rich, Billy, and I are all prompt people so it wasn’t a problem. There used to be a bus between Windischeschenbach and Falkenberg but it was discontinued, so Rich arranged for Ferdl to give us a ride to Falkenberg. Unfortunately Ferdl would not be able to join us for any portion of the day as he was busy with a martial arts event. It really was a missed opportuni...

  This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here .  Friday in Zoigl County Part 2, including Visiting a Communal Brewhouse, & the Zoigl Beer “Style” Zoigl Trip - Part 8 of 13  We had a little time to settle into our rooms before we were to meet Ferdl at 6pm, for a tour of the Kommunbrauhaus (sometimes translating German into English is easy) in Windischeschenbach.  Ferdl is a lifelong resident of Upper Palatinate (aka Oberpfalz). Rich and Ferdl met when the tours they were each leading crossed paths. Ferdl, now a very vigorous 70something,  did some brewing earlier in life. Ferdl borrowed the brewhouse key from someone in town.  The tour of the communal brewhouse was a true highlight of the trip. Sometimes it really helps to know people who know people who know people. Stepping into the brewhouse was like stepping back in time, while also being firmly in the present, and the future since they don’t fix what a...

  This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here .  Friday in Oberpfalz Part 1, & the Zoigl Star Zoigl Trip - Part 7 of 13  Finally, after an appetizer of Munich posts, here's what you have (hopefully) been waiting for. Our D-bahn tickets gave us free metro rides in Munich for the day, but Billy and I were up early and had way more than enough time, so we hoofed it to Hauptbahnhof, the central train station.   Being a true professional, Rich had our day fully scheduled out. We arrived early at the platform to get good seats on the Alex RE2 train, which did indeed fill up. We scored a set of four seats facing each other, and the almost two hour ride passed quickly and jollily. We got off at Wiesau, where we were to catch Bus 6276 to Waldhausen. The train and bus schedules were both a little out of whack that day and the station was under construction. After some confusion and running with baggage, we were on the...

  This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here .  Thursday in Munich Zoigl Trip - Part 6 of 13  The rain returned. We were expecting this, and earlier in the week slotted the Deutsches Museum for this morning. The Deutsches is pretty much Germany’s version of the Smithsonian, except that much of it is in one huge main building, with two other locations around Munich (plus locations in Bonn and Nuremberg).  The Deutsches main location is way too big to cover in one day. They changed the entrance location from when I was there almost 20 years before, so we hit the massive air and space hall first, which I had missed before. Lots of other people made this their rainy day plan too, so it was crowded enough to be a little tight.  After having our fill of the museum, we lazily made our way back to the hotel, checking out Bavarian clothing stores on the way. Lunch was in the Viktualienmarkt, at a random place with an enclo...

This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here . Wednesday in Munich Zoigl Trip - Part 5 of 13  After a rainy Tuesday, Wednesday was sunny and temperate. I didn’t get to see the BMW Museum on previous visits to Munich, so that was on the agenda. We took the subway there, where Billy, always wanting to practice his German, struck up a conversation with a group of young people doing their public service. The parts I understood were interesting, especially what they knew about Philadelphia. The BMW Museum, which opened in 1972, is a cool bit of architecture. I found the contents very interesting and well laid out. BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavaria Motor Works), and if you want to see motors and their evolution (and I did), this is the place to go.  Besides the Museum and BMW office tower, there is another huge BMW building, The Welt, that we couldn’t figure out . Our confusion was due to The Welt being mostly closed to p...