Day 37-38: Plzen & Prague

Heyo! Daryl has been a pretty happy guy the last couple of days, with lots of Pilsner Urquell being consumed. On Monday, we took the train to Plzen, Czech Republic (about 2 hours away from Prague) to tour the Pilsner Urquell Brewery, one of Daryl's favorite (*bloody hell...everytime I try to spell favorite with a 'U', it is automatically corrected) beers. We got to the train station fairly early and booked our sleeper car for the overnight trip on Friday from Prague to Krakow, Poland, as well as our ticket to Plzen. We also grabbed a quick snack and boarded the train. Here is a pic of Daryl in the train car, looking pretty psyched.

While the brewery was only a 10-minute walk from the train station, it was actually rather confusing (even for us supposedly "well-traveled" folk). We eventually managed to arrive at the brewery and signed on to the 12:45 English tour.

To be honest, the tour started off rather poorly. The guide did not speak fluent english (to be fair, she also spoke Czech, Russian, and German), and the depth of information seemed to be rather shallow. In addition, the tour group was rather large and guests were not allowed to take photos unless they had a green "camera" sticker. This really pissed me off, especially since there were quite a few guests with these stickers and I am guessing they only had to ask at the Visitor counter. Anyway, over time, the tour (and my mood) improved.

It started with a short history of the brewery, which was started in 1842. The story goes that the Czech King gave beer brewing rights to around 300 individuals in the 1300's, but most of these people had no idea how to brew beer. Czech beer quality continued to get worse until the 1830's, when a coalition formed with the goal to brew good Czech beer. They brought together brewmasters and in 1842, introduced Pilsner Urquell, a lager-style beer that eventually became world-renowned. It was called Pilsner for the town of Plzen...any other beer that is called a Pilsner is modeled after it.

We then hopped a bus to drive the short distance to the bottling factory, which outputs 120,000 bottles of Urquell every hour. Pretty impressive. By this point I decided I was just going to take pictures anyway.

Then we got back on the bus and went to the brewing factory. We watched a short film on the brewing process (water, malted barley, hops, yeast, oh my) and checked out the huge copper brewing kettles, which are unique to Urquell.

We then checked out each of the starting ingredients in the beer. While the barley was hard and bland at first, the malted barley was softer and pretty sweet. It was difficult to pull Daryl away from the sample barrel.

Then the best part of the tour began. We got to head down into the 9km of cellars, which used to store the oak barrels where the beer would ferment (today the beer is fermented in steel kettles). Lucky for us, they still ferment small batches of beer in oak barrels for the tour groups to sample. The beer is unfiltered and fairly hoppy, combining two of my favorite (sorry Canadian readers for the lack of the letter 'U') beer styles: IPA's and hefeweizens.

We sampled some beer (it was delicious), and then headed to the last part of the tour. The guide showed the top of an old oak barrel, with a small cutout. When barrels were used to ferment the beer, they would have to be cleaned in between batches. The small cutout would allow a worker to climb inside the barrel and clean it out. The tour guide asked if anyone would like to try to climb through the small hole. An older gentleman volunteered, got an arm through, and gave up. While I thought he threw in the towel a little early, there was no way he was getting his sizable belly through the hole. The guide asked for another volunteer and Daryl stepped up. While I know Daryl is thin, he made it look so easy that I wondered if he has been climbing through barrels all his life. There was a healthy round of applause upon the completion of the climb. I got a picture, but it was rather dark and I don't like to use my flash (I know I should get over this, but it always results in horrible pics). Therefore, the picture is quite blurry. Regardless, check out the size of the hole.

We finished the day by hitting up the souvenir shop (getting a couple of shirts and mugs) and sitting outside in the beer garden enjoying a few Urquells.

All in all, it was a long day, clocking in around 12 hours out of the house. We were exhausted. So, this morning we allowed ourselves to sleep in and relax a little. We woke up, had a leisurely breakfast, and watched a movie on HBO (weird to have cable and a large flat screen in the apartment). We finally got our stuff together around 1pm and headed to our favorite vegetarian restaurant where Daryl enjoyed the $6 daily special and I had veggie kebabs, salad and scalloped potatoes for $8.

We then set out on a walk to check out the "Dancing House", a building in Prague co-designed by Frank Gehry, the architect that designed the Stata Center (Dr. Seuss) building at MIT. It seems that we are going on a Frank Gehry tour through Europe, checking out all of his creations (albeit, unintentionally). Maybe it is just that he has designed a building in every major city around the world. That is yet to be seen. Regardless, the building provided a great photoshoot opportunity.

We also got a couple of fun pics of each other.

We then walked to U Zlateho Tygra (At the Golden Tiger), a highly recommended bar in Prague's Old Town that supposedly has the best beer on tap (seemed strange to us, given that most have Pilsner Urquell on tap...see pic).

At 17:00 everyday, all tables within this bar are reserved for regulars, so if you are not a regular you need to show up between 15:00 and 17:00. We walked in around 15:30 and sat down beside a couple of Czechs. Admittedly, it was awesome. We didn't even have to order anything...two beers were just set down in front of us. Daryl was in heaven. They keep your tab on a small sheet of paper, with each mark indicating the number of beers you have consumed.

We stayed for a few rounds (as is evidenced by the photo above) and then walked the short 5 minute walk back to our apartment. On the way, Daryl stopped in at a local photo gallery to check out the work of local artists and I captured some street photos (for my own future photo exhibition...haha).

We are now relaxing at home, writing up this post. Soon, we will be heading down the road to a local restaurant for dinner. Till next time :)

P.S. What can you get for two pints in Oslo? Two roundtrip tickets from Prague to Plzen, two tour tickets to the Pilsner Urquell brewery, and 2L of Pilsner Urquell beer at the beer garden.