Cologne Beer and Culture Dinner

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Last evening we participated in what will go down as one of the highlights of our cruise.  Cologne is known for its 'beer' culture specializing in Kolsch beer.

Two groups of us headed off for an evening of beer drinking (right up my alley) and interesting dining!  Our group consisted of 1 Aussie, 10 Americans, a member of the wait staff from Portugal (she had the night off so joined us on the tour), and Sue and I.  The other group had way more people with one major problem.  They had the pleasure of the company of the obnoxious lawyer that I talked about yesterday.  More about that later.

Our first stop was at Peters Brauhouse where the beer began to flow.  Over the next hour we enjoyed a 3 course meal and way too many 7 ounce pours of Kolsch.  The 'loud' lawyer was sitting at the table behind us.  The more beer that he had the louder and more obnoxious he became.  The guy beside me leaned over  and said to me, "I apologize on behalf of the State of Nebraska...that guy is an asshole"!  It turns out that 2 couples in our group were also from Nebraska.

We lost 4 of our group after leaving Peters.  Now we were getting down to a nice sized group.  Our guide decided at this point to part ways with the other group.  He asked if that was okay with us.  We suspect he was trying to escape from our loud American lawyer.  He took us to a local hangout, Bierhous En D' R Salzgass.  This place serves beer directly from wooden kegs. The beer is never bottled for sale.  It was a pale ale.  It was incredibly 'crisp' (my term) tasting beer.  It was here that we got talking to the Aussie.  As a hobby, he brews small batches of beer in his garage.  What a fun guy!  And of course after who knows how many '7 ounce pours', things were getting livelier.

We then moved on to our 3rd stop, JW Augustiner Brau Mundhen.  Here our guide talked us into breaking Cologne tradition and had us taste a light as well as a dark Dunkel.  Dunkel is a Bavarian Beer.  We sat out on the patio and enjoyed the warm breeze.  Shortly, or at least it seemed a short period of time, we were forced to head back to our boat.  It was leaving by 10:30.  We walked back listening to our young Portuguese waitress tell us about her travels to Kitchener last year.  It was great to see that the Viking staff are encouraged to spend time with the paying customers outside of their jobs.

We had intended to continue the festivities back onboard our boat in the lounge but 'common sense' prevailed.  I am pretty sure it was a wise decision.  Dam, I am starting to sound responsible...not sure when that happened!!!

This morning we sailed into the Netherlands.  Unfortunately today is our last full day on the boat.  Tomorrow morning we disembark.  We are a little bit sad, but looking forward to our couple of day stay in Amsterdam.



Souvenirs From Our 'Pub Crawl'

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