Belgian Beer Café Vignettes: Pelikaan, Antwerp

Belgian Beer Café Vignettes: Pelikaan, Antwerp

Antwerp offers some of the best beer cafes in the country for beer travelers willing to venture beyond the well-worn path between Brussels and Bruges. Cosmopolitan yet compact, Antwerp is the kind of place where you don’t have to walk far to find an excuse 

Dresden, Beer City on the Elbe

Dresden, Beer City on the Elbe

  Florence on the Elbe. A jewel box of baroque and rococo architecture. Onetime capital of Saxon dukes, electors, and kings. A skyline of spires and domes. And the city where Schiller composed his Ode to Joy. With its pleasant location on the Elbe and 

Berchtesgaden and the Königssee: Alpine Breweries and Lakeside Beer Gardens

Berchtesgaden and the Königssee: Alpine Breweries and Lakeside Beer Gardens

  Salt was once white gold in the region spanning southern Bavaria and northern Austria. Like Salzburg and Hallstatt, like Bad Reichenhall and Traunstein, Berchtesgaden was built on a mountain of revenue from the salt trade. Founded in 1102 as an Augustine monastery and raised 

A Recipe for Stout Irish Stew

A Recipe for Stout Irish Stew

  It’s Friday afternoon, the day after our homebrew club’s St. Paddy’s Day Potluck. It’s also been a long stretch without a break from translation projects and beer writing projects, a few of which you’ll soon see in print. And it’s been quite some time 

The Brauereienweg, Franconia’s Original Beer Hiking Trail

The Brauereienweg, Franconia’s Original Beer Hiking Trail

  Secluded Forests and Rolling Hills in Franconian Switzerland Bamberg is the epicenter of Franconian beer, but hidden gems await the wanderer willing to plunge into the verdant landscape of Franconian Switzerland, a region that owes its name to its scenic landscape of rolling hills, 

Breweries and Beer Hikes in Murnau

Breweries and Beer Hikes in Murnau

  We arrived in Murnau to a golden autumn afternoon perfect for wandering through this landscape famed for its light and colours. Since all good beer hikes need a certain beverage to make them what they are, we made straight for the shimmering Staffelsee lake 

Christmas Markets in Vienna and Munich

Christmas Markets in Vienna and Munich

  ‘Tis the Season   If you’ve spent even a few days in Germany or Austria around this time of year, you’ll have developed an opinion about the weather. Rain, sleet, mist. Steel-grey skies you could reach up and touch. What daylight there is fades 

Ales and Windswept Ambles along the Fife Path near Edinburgh

Ales and Windswept Ambles along the Fife Path near Edinburgh

  Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. ~Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust     Scotland is a walker’s paradise of wild