I'm skipping around here, but I thought I'd divide my Germany trip (again, from mid-November, sorry!) into Mannheim vs. Heidelberg. I spent a little over two days in Mannheim and one in Heidelberg over the weekend. One of the highlights of Mannheim was not actually in the city, but a short train ride out into a small town nearby. Stephanie heard about a beer company located nearby that, for 8 euro, would take you on a guided tour followed by beer tasting. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to learn a little bit about this most favorite of German beverages. So, instead of going to church on Sunday (and joking at the distinctly non-religious reason behind it), we had ourselves an adventure. The trip involved choosing, after the train, either the bus or a 20-30 minute walk. This being a beautiful day, we opted for the walk and it was well worth it:
Sunday morning in south Germany!
Walking into our very first beer factory.
We arrived for the tour of the day held in English, and the tour guide was adorable - it was his first tour in English, and he brought notes with him and we all laughed over how hard it must be to translate some of this vocabulary, and how girls don't usually come on these tours just on their own. I learned quite a bit, and watched a really amusing video about how they created their advertising campaign.
Where the magic happens!
As you'll see in the next photo, the bottle design (and the design of the awesome souvenir glass we got to take home) is wavy. Apparently the beer is in such a happy mood that it wants to express that through the bottle, being all carefree and easygoing - that's Welde beer! Also, the caps have tabs! To make them easy for weaklings like me to open the bottle. Underneath the cap is ja, nein, or a question mark in the fashion of a Magic 8 ball. Ask it a question, and the beer responds. For the record, I tried a couple (see below!) and never got a no :)
Happy beer! From left to right: energy beer (with coca cola), grapefruit, and lemongrass. Also an empty glass of draft.
At the end of the tour (it was just the two of us), we went to something like a beer clubhouse where they said you could have three beers of your choice. But honestly, there were so few of us there (another group of friendly American businessmen and their German friend) that they didn't mind and we got to sample as much as we liked! No drunkenness, just sitting around, chatting, listening to music in the background (Village People, anyone?) and enjoying ourselves. I feel like this is how beer's supposed to be enjoyed!
Clubhouse. Classy!
Until next time, don't drink and drive? :)
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