Prost!
Hello, I'm Scott Bieber. Some members of the First State Brewers homebrewing club and I recently took a tour of Germany. Below is a chronicle of our adventures. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Prost!
The First State Brewer's web site says we, "visit microbreweries, attend expos, lectures, and tastings", and have "club organized pub crawls." It doesn't say anything about touring the greatest brewing regions of the world! We'll have to change that now!
In the spring of 2001, Harald Ackermann, being from Germany, offered to arrange a trip to Germany for members of the First State Brewers home brewing club. At the time, there was a lot of enthusiasm for such a trip, but deep down, I didn't think it would ever happen. Luckily, I was wrong!
Originally, my wife, Bonnie, was against the idea. She said we couldn't afford it. After a while, though, she realized that it was a once in a lifetime event that I couldn't pass up, so she let me go. I also let her get a new puppy, so I guess she felt she owed me one. She would have liked to come herself, but she didn't want to send our three kids to her parents for the week and miss a week of school. Also, after 9/11, she didn't want to get on a plane!
The reality set in when I actually ordered my tickets in July. US Airways round trip tickets from Philadelphia to Frankfurt on 10/4/2002 and returning on 10/12/2002. Jerry & Joyce Carney and Jeff Ramberg also got tickets on the same flight. One week later, US Airways filed for bankruptcy! Yikes! Harald had gotten his tickets much earlier and was flying on Lufthansa. Marty found a better deal with British Airlines, but would have a layover in London. Harald was to fly over a couple days earlier and meet up with the rest of us in Germany. That proved to be easier said than done!
As we closed in on a week before the trip, Marty informs us that he still didn't have his passport. They told him he would get it via FedEx the morning of our trip! He actually got it the day before! That was a big relief!
The arrangements were that Harald's sister, Carmen, who lives in Frankfurt, would meet us all in the Frankfurt airport and take us to the train for a short ride to Marburg, Harald's home town, where he would be waiting for us. Harald gave her our flight numbers. Since none of us knew what she looked like, I sent Harald a First State Brewers logo to send to Carmen in Germany. The idea was that she could hold up the logo as we entered the airport, and none of us would miss it.
Friday, October 4th, after leaving work a little early, my wife drove me to Jeff Ramberg's house where the Carney's would meet us to drive us to the airport. Shortly after arriving at Jeff's, the Carney's roll up with their big hulking van. Jeff and I throw our luggage into the back. I say goodbye to Bonnie and we're off! We make it to the airport, take a wrong turn, drive on a giant loop and pass the terminals, then finally make it to the long term parking area. We park and take the bus to the airport. We check our luggage and get our boarding passes. So far, so good.
Then it's time to go through security. Fortunately, the US Airways rep who checked the Carney's luggage advised them to use gate C to go through security, instead of gate A. The line for gate A was out the door, however, there was no line at all at gate C! Got through security, no problem. Now, however, we had some time to kill. It was about 5:30 and the flight was at 8:00, so we get some food and a beer of course! Fortunately, we said goodbye to America in style. We went to the Red Bell Brewery Pub and had a Victory Hop Devil IPA! Yum! That was the last time we would taste a rich, hoppy ale until we returned, though.
Joyce and Jerry Carney
We make it to our gate and wait some more. They announce boarding for first class passengers. A huge line forms. I guess there must be a lot of first class passengers. Strangely enough, there were no more calls for boarding. The large line gets smaller. We realized, we should get in that line, as well. Then we board the plane and find our seats. The Carneys are sitting together, naturally. However, Jeff and I have seats a few rows apart. Jeff sits next to a German guy who spoke good English. I however, sat next to a woman who hardly ever spoke at all, except to say, "I don't speak English." I figure she must be French, since she made no effort to communicate or even make eye contact. Oh no! I can't find my bottle of ibuprofen! Yikes! Fortunately for me, I had a lot of good reading material.
I had the latest issue of All About Beer magazine and an article I printed off of the Internet. About a week before the trip, while surfing the Internet, I came across another local home brewer's account of his journey to Europe. The article is called, "Bob and Zeke and Tony's 1999 Beer Tour of Germany and Belgium" and was my inspiration for writing the article that you're reading now. I read Bob's entire article and then printed it out so I could read it again. It took me forever to print and I ended up with a stack of paper an inch high! But, anyway, I brought it with me to read a second time on the plane.
Next stop, Frankfurt Germany!
