Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
Through a glass darkly
A Beer Like No Other Over twenty years had passed since I stopped off briefly in Bamberg en route between Prague and Heidelberg with an old friend on a crazy road trip in my grandma’s rickety Renault 5. On that sunny afternoon in the …
“A pocketful of money, and a cellar full of beer / We wish you merrie and a happy new year.” “Enter Wassel, like a neat sempeter and songster, her page bearing a brown bowl, dressed with ribbons and rosemary, before her” (Ben Jonson). …
~Oud Bruin? Rood Bruin? Flemish Red? It’s all foeders to me~ Only an hour by train from Brussels, West Flanders is renowned for its picturesque medieval towns replete with belfries and beguinages, sandy North Sea beaches, verdant open fields, and a harrowing First …
Part II of “Warming Beers for Cold Nights” “Stepping from behind the bar, the tavern keeper walked over to the flickering hearth. […] Bending over, he picked up the jug he had placed on the brick floor close to the bed of coals. Inside the …
~ “The past is a foreign country.” ~ You might have ended up here thinking this post was going to be about barley wines, Belgian quads, barrel-aged imperial stouts, or winter warmers. It’s not, much as I enjoy those typically malty styles. My apologies. Blame …
Nearly 40,000 people headed out to the horse race just beyond the Munich gates on that first Oktoberfest day in 1810. Families and groups of friends staked out places to sit on the meadowland heights surrounding the track and began tucking into their bread, sausage, …
~A History of Oktoberfest~ On 17 October 1810, 40,000 people converged on a field beyond Munich’s Sedlinger Gate to watch a horse race staged by the Citizens’ Militia (Bürgermilitär) in honour of Crown Prince Ludwig’s marriage to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. (The two …