Beer Tales from Bavaria

People and personalities. It’s the reason I love beer travel so much. I’ve met people from all walks of life in North America and Europe since starting this blog, be it folks who have left comfortable careers to follow the siren call of the brewhouse, or people who visit these breweries and taprooms in search of new drinking experiences and the conviviality that comes with them. I’ve made fast acquaintances and lifelong friends over pints in places as diverse as Montreal, Tokyo, and the rural Flemish countryside surrounding Brussels.

But nowhere is this sense of conviviality more pronounced than in the taverns and beer gardens of Germany and Austria, particularly Bavaria. This has everything to do with the communal nature of seating in beer halls, pubs, and beer gardens, where every seat at every table save the Stammtisch (regulars’ table) is up for grabs. Rarely will you find two-seat or four-seat tables more common to restaurants and cafes. Rather, longer tables that typically seat anywhere from six to twelve are the order of the day. If there’s an unoccupied seat at a table, even an eight-seater that’s been reserved by a party of six, simply ask if the seat is free, then sit down, order your beer, and enjoy your solitude or engage in conversation according to your wont. And if you’re alone at a table enjoying your solitude, note that it’s the height of rudeness to answer that the seats around you aren’t free for the taking.

Both of these scenarios — asking to sit at an ostensibly full table or giving up that contemplative space you’ve staked out for a pint — might strike the average North American as uncomfortable at first blush. Fear not, though. Bavarians are a gregarious and welcoming lot. They’ll respect your personal space if you’re in a less than loquacious mood, but they’re also eager to hear your tale. After a few steins of beer, all involved will head off on their merry way enriched by the experience.

No matter what time of day you head to a German tavern or beer garden, you’ll find workers stopping in for a drink on their way home, old-timers playing cards or engaging in that age-old ritual of Frühschoppen (a morning gathering with friends over beer, often accompanied by sausage), families enjoying dinner, friends swapping stories, people stopping in for a Sunday pint after church, or university students debating their most recent seminar readings. If you show up alone, you won’t at a loss for drinking companions for long.

I’ve had the good fortune over the years of sharing a drink with people who have the broadest range of stories to tell. A few months back I met a couple at Kloster Weißenohe who spent their Fridays and Saturdays traveling around Franconia, eating and drinking at a new place just about every time. Frau H. recalled the times when she’d help out her grandparents, who owned a hop farm until 1971. Her grandparents grew Hersbrucker, a Franconian variety. One of her relatives has since gotten involved with the current hop-growing renaissance in Franconia.

Not long ago, my drinking-partner-in-chief and I had found our way to Café Abseits in Bamberg, one of those rare places that does justice to both traditional beers and emerging styles. Before long we were joined by the inimitable Gerhard Schoolmann, cofounder of Café Abseits, who regaled us with stories well into the wee hours.

On an earlier trip to Bamberg I had had an engaging conversation with one of the employees of the Weyermann Fan Shop, a beer aficionado who clearly knew his way around every aspect of beer production and consumption. A few months later I was having lunch at the aforementioned Café Abseits, a magnet for beer enthusiasts. The person at the bar looked familiar. We quickly picked up our conversation where we had left off at Weyermann. Originally from Slovenia, Gregor Fransson is a beer sommelier and beer educator who specializes in guided tastings, food pairings, and the history and culture of beer. He has since moved to Munich to further his aim of spreading the gospel of beer appreciation. He’s operating as Hop Monkey, and offers customized tastings and seminars for all levels. Look him up if you’re in the area.

In Munich I once met a Czech woman in her seventies who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1965. She worked in broadcasting for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne before settling in western Munich. The Hirschgarten, that majestic beer garden that was once a hunting preserve, is her locale. She walks here every day in the warmer months to relax in the shade with a mug of beer.

And then there was that fall evening at Alt-Ringlein in Bamberg. Aecht Schlenkerla was beyond packed that night, so I ambled across the street to Alt-Ringlein and took a seat near the benevolent Kachelofen (tiled oven) to warm up. The table was occupied by a group of elderly men trying to figure out why Hitler had appealed to so many people. As someone who has studied the Holocaust and written about the politics of commemoration in Germany, I was curious, so I joined the conversation. After a time, conversation turned to the reminiscences of one among them who had fled East Germany through the fields of Saxony during the Cold War.

Memories of the war are never far from the surface in Germany, especially among folks middle-aged and older. During my most recent trip to Bamberg, I had ensconced myself at a table at Brauerei Spezial and was setting up a new notebook for this particular trip — numbering the pages, drawing margins on each page of my Muji notebook, and the like. An older gentleman had taken the seat next to me while I was lost in this repetitive but Zen-like task. After a smile and a clink of our steins when his beer arrived, I returned to scribbling tasting notes in my notebook. Another five or ten minutes passed before he said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but might I ask what you’re writing in your notebook?” (Interestingly, the fact that I write in a notebook has been a conversation starter on several occasions.) Beer was my answer, and thus began another of those epic gem-like sessions that only a shared table can spark. As it turned out, Herr S. is not only a fine judge of the best beers between Bamberg and Kulmbach from whence he hails, but also an actual judge.

It wasn’t long before talk turned toward the troubling rise of far-right extremism in Germany, and then back to that conflagration that looms so large in German collective memory. His parents met as a result of that war. His mother, originally from Kulmbach, was stationed as an official in Ukraine, where his father, originally from Silesia, was fighting on the front. Fast forward to the end of the war. Herr S.’s father had been transferred to the western theater for that last, desperate, and apocalyptic defense of Germany, the Battle of the Bulge. He was captured by the Allies. Upon his release in 1946/1947, he was caught up in the general chaos of a Germany reduced to rubble, former POWs and Germans displaced from what is now Poland and the Baltic states moving from one place to the next in search of a place to settle. Herr S.’s father had made his way to Kulmbach with the dim hope of finding the woman he had met in the Ukraine. One day shortly after his arrival, he was walking along a street when a tram passed by, a tram that just so happened to be carrying Herr S.’s mother. “Schorsch!” she called out (Schorsch being the Franconian version of the French name, George). Her voice didn’t carry. She called out again. By now, all the people on the tram had joined her in calling out to Georg. Herr S.’s father never did return to Silesia, which had, at any rate, become part of Poland by then, and settled down in Kulmbach.

These are just a handful of the memorable experiences I’ve had over beer in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. The best thing about beer travel is that these kinds of experiences are so effortless — just head to a tavern or beer garden, pull up a seat, have a beer or three, and let the conversation flow where it will. And if you miss your next train, don’t worry. You can always catch the next one.

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Addendum: Sometimes online meetings with beer folks will turn into real-time sessions. This is how I met Rich Carbonara, who has hiked in places as far-flung as Nepal and Alaska. Now living in Munich with his German wife, he has turned his love of hiking and travel into a finely-grained knowledge of beer hikes throughout Bavaria. What started as mutual comments on one another’s blogs led to a memorable Sunday that kicked off at Paulaner’s Nockherberg during Munich’s Starkbierzeit (strong beer season). We’ve since swapped stories at numerous breweries, taverns, and beer gardens during beer hikes in the Franconian Switzerland region of northern Bavaria. The man behind Beerwanderers, Rich is currently putting the finishing touches on his book, Beer Hiking Bavaria, due out this fall.

Related Tempest articles:

Bamberg’s Storied Rauchbier: A Brief History of Smoke and Beer

Munich’s Beer Gardens East and West of the Isar

Berlin Calling: Beer in the Capital of Germany

With the exception of Gregor Fransson’s photo (used with his permission), all images by F.D. Hofer.

© 2019 F.D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard. All rights reserved.