It seems that the chronology went awry during one of my customary tangents. Consequently, here’s my earlier account of the other 1999 trip, as Barrie, Allan and I scouted “micro” beers on the grounds of a former collective farm (somewhat) near Moscow.
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 75: My shoes are filled with Volga mud (1999)
How many times must I say it?
Beer is a prime building block of civilization itself.
Need proof?
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List includes 1248 properties that form “part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.”
Often these properties are classified by buildings and sites, but they’re more accurately regarded as conceptual representations of culture and broader themes reflecting the wider range of human endeavor.
I’ve never attempted to count how many European world heritage designees I’ve experienced during four decades of travel; math wasn’t ever my strongest suit. Rest assured, there have been a great many.
Accordingly, in 1999 our group took a day trip to Žatec, a venerable city north of Prague that has been the center of Czech hop production for 1,000 years or more. In 2023, UNESCO formally (to me, belatedly) awarded the area world heritage status.
Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops
This cultural landscape has been shaped for centuries by the living tradition of cultivating and trading the world’s most renowned hop variety, used in beer production around the globe. The property includes particularly fertile hop fields near the river Ohře that have been farmed continuously for hundreds of years, as well as historic villages and buildings used for processing hops. The urban component of the property is represented by the medieval centre of Žatec with its southern extension, known as the “Prague Suburb” (Pražské předměstí) including numerous specific 19th to 20th-century industrial structures. Together, these illustrate the evolution of the agro-industrial processes and socio-economic system of growing, drying, certifying, and trading hops from the Late Middle Ages to the present.
Our two specific objectives in Žatec were the Hop Research Institute (dating to 1950) and the large processing plant now operated as CHMELAŘSTVÍ (družstvo Žatec), which I believe was a communist-era structure dating from the period when hop farms and processing facilities were nationalized and consolidated.
I returned to Žatec in 2006 for the city’s autumn beer festival, and observed a quickening of the pace in civic refurbishment, although there wasn’t time to trace our exact steps from 1999. To shorten a long story, it appears that since 2006, Žatec has made energetic use of EU development funds to add hop- and beer-oriented tourist infrastructure.
During our day on the ground in 1999, Žatec seemed as yet rooted in the old school, though evolving quickly.
Farm tractors brought huge bags of freshly harvested Lubelski/Lublin hops into the processing facility from neighboring Poland (cover photo), then we drank the special small-batch lager from the research institute’s tiny test brewery, as brewed each time with the same recipe used as a control, the hop bills varying by type.
These beers were scientifically-oriented quality control checks ― and they tasted great, too.
Our guide brought out a couple of cases (bottles only), and for an hour, we were the only damn people in the world drinking that particular beer. I’d love to book the time machine for a journey back to the Hop Research Institute in 1968 during the ill-fated Prague Spring, although I doubt they were able to brew a unique “Alexander Dubček Žatecký Světlý Ležák” (pale lager from Žatec honoring the leader of the ill-fated reform movement).
Esoteric much? I certainly do, and so we must digress.
—
Communism in Czechoslovakia began after a questionable election in 1948, and ended in 1989 with the largely peaceful “Velvet Revolution.” Shortly thereafter, the dissident writer and playwright Vaclav Havel (1936 – 2011) was chosen as president.
It was a stunning development.
Less than a year before communism unraveled, Havel had been imprisoned by a seemingly impregnable regime. He was released just before my arrival in Prague in 1989.
A humanist and intellectual, Havel was considered a “class enemy,” and accordingly, he was subjected to persecution in the form of an enforced loss of profession. Doctors became window washers, and symphony players mined coal.
As an essayist, playwright and stage manager in the theater arts, Havel was subjected to internal exile during the 1970s by being sent into the countryside to work as a manual laborer in a brewery.
Being a beer-lover, he found the experience unexpectedly invigorating and later wrote a two-person play called Audience about an artistic, city-dwelling enemy of the people (in essence, the author himself) who is abruptly sent as punishment to the hinterlands.
There he must endure the muddled ramblings of his working class boss, who continually samples the fermented wares, sinking inexorably into comic inebriation while haplessly pretending to interrogate the urban exile.
It is both hilarious and moving.
In late 1989, the Velvet Revolution turned this situation on its head. Now the erstwhile kingpins were jobless, and a playwright outranked them all. The intrinsic absurdities of the Soviet-style system were evident to everyone, yet ordinary people were accustomed to the incongruities.
True, the system had to change quickly lest Czechoslovakia fall even further behind, but how to manage change without exacerbating human misery and risking societal chaos? President Havel’s position was largely ceremonial, and he actually offered few viewpoints (apart from urging basic human decency) as to how the country’s economy might be reinvented, or its foreign policy pursued. However, others did.
A program of privatization was designed to quantify the value of Czechoslovakia’s state-held assets through vouchers (or shares) that could be bought, sold and swapped by citizens, and in 2004 the Czech Republic, along with former stablemate Slovakia, joined the European Union.
Havel was an artist, not a politician; he tried to hire Frank Zappa as a special ambassador for culture and trade in 1990 (the U.S. State Department intervened against it), and instead focused his interpretive powers on matters of conscience and consciousness, which he perceived as vital at a fundamentally human level.
According to Havel, any reform program would have little chance of succeeding without an examination of the society’s daily psychological condition. He theorized that the chief legacy of Communism was a trauma at the grassroots core of Czechoslovak society, a miasma that despoiled the very nature of daily interaction between friends, lovers, neighbors and co-workers.
During the communist period, incessant indoctrination in the ideology of class warfare soured human relationships, and the cynicism of everyday reality, far apart from the panaceas of official propaganda, had gradually subverted all aspects of trust, caring and hope.
Havel offered a consistent, firm, but gentle remonstrance: The success of post-communist revitalization depended on “civil society” being rebuilt virtually from the ground up, and preferably without exclusive recourse to the unfettered mercantile self-interest preferred by victorious capitalism’s adherents.
While fascinating, it must be conceded that Havel’s thoughts had a negligible impact on the subsequent course of affairs in his homeland. Communism clearly “lost” and capitalism just as obviously “won.” For a fuller account about how all these changes impacted brewing in Czechoslovakia (soon to be known as the Czech Republic after Slovakia’s departure), see here: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 50: Papazian goes AWOL as we contest AB’s aggression against Budvar.
Throughout the 1990s, my visits to the former East Bloc were of sufficient frequency to witness bits and pieces of these gargantuan post-communist shifts. During the collapse of the Soviet system, socio-political talking heads referenced the crux of the tasks awaiting these nations: we all understood how capitalist systems become communist, but not so much the other way around.
By the time of my group’s arrival in Prague in 1999, the capital city was rapidly becoming the equal of its Western European brethren in economic terms. It would take longer for this transformation to trickle into the rural areas.
Meanwhile, Havel’s “civil” society was manifesting itself in the form of “civilizing” full frontal nudity ― because, hasn’t this always been the way we gauge social progress? There were two primary venues for this emerging civility variant, and my tour group was privileged to witness both, on television and in a bar.
The first involved TV Nova, and no, there’ll be no photos. This is a family-oriented beer remembrance, after all.
“At 11 p.m. every night a buxom woman or (more recently) a muscular young man goes on camera stark naked. He or she then does a reverse strip tease as the announcer reads the weather forecast. The amount and type of clothes he/she puts on depends on the forecast …. TV Nova’s ratings have gone through the ceiling since they added nude weather reports.”
The second was underway at a pub down the street from the hotel, with this situation being brought to my attention when a posse of middle-aged, married male tour participants materialized, praising the exemplary quality of the beer being served at this otherwise nondescript establishment.
They couldn’t remember the beer brand, or whether food was available. Only the mode of presentation was clear: the female server was clothed from toes to waist. Above that, nula. You’d think this humdrum fact wouldn’t be such a pressing matter for Louisvillians fluent in their city’s long history of strip clubs (PTs, Trixie’s et al), but admittedly, even I was seized with an interest (in purely academic terms) in this facet of Wild East reform.
We found the joint packed with mostly older men, their attention riveted on the server’s sheer professionalism, by which I mean she glided through the silence (pins dropped, crickets chirped) and unalloyed stares with absolute focus and admirable panache. Let’s hope she was making bank, at least, but the scene was so uncomfortable that I, too, forgot which beer we were drinking.
I never was much for strip pubs, anyway.
There were enough great lagers being poured in Prague, along with the occasional imported ale and a few new micro creations, that the occasional loss of a beer (as opposed to one’s career) might be considered an occupational hazard.
Maybe this is what Milan Kundera (1929 – 1923) was suggesting in his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Just never, ever, forget to pay your bar tab.
—
The Czech Republic was the final stop on what I called “F.O.S.S.I.L.S. Ultimate Road Trip IV: Continental Beer Paradise 1999.”
Here’s the capsule itinerary for the trip. (1)
Wed., Sept. 15 – Thurs., Sept. 16
Depart Louisville, arrive in Brussels and transfer to Brugge.
Thurs., Sept. 16; Fri., Sept. 17
Lodging in Brugge. Beer academy at t’Brugs Beertje and free time.
Sat., Sept. 18; Sun., Sept. 19
Lodging in Ieper. In route, a stop at De Dolle Brouwers and lunch of gourmet beer cuisine at t’Hommelhof in Watou, then to Poperinge for the hops festival. On Sunday, a full day in Poperinge for the hops festival.
Mon., Sept. 20
Lodging in Bacharach in Germany. A long bus ride and one-night stay by the Rhine.
Tues., Sept. 21; Wed., Sept. 22; Thurs., Sept. 23
Lodging in Bamberg at the Hotel Altenburgblick, owned by the Greifenklau brewery family. Planned activities: Weyermann malting house; Brauerei Heller-Trum tour (Schlenkerla); day-long brewery crawl. Optional excursion via rail to Munich to experience Oktoberfest.
Fri., September 24; Sat., September 25; Sun., September 26; Mon., September 27
Bamberg to Prague, with a Pilsner Urquell brewery tour in Plzen along the way. Several optional guided tours in Prague. A day trip to the hop research institute and hop processing facility in Žatec, north of Prague. Ample free time for wandering.
Tuesday, September 28
Depart Prague for the flight home.
The package:
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- 12 nights lodging, including all breakfasts
- 2 other meals (Sept. 19 & 20)
- 4 or more brewery tours
- Activities at the Hop Festival on Sunday the 19th, including seats for the parade
- Motorcoach (Vanlerberghe) transport from Brussels to Prague Airport transfers
- Beer academy at ‘t Brugs Beertje
- Yet-to-be-determined daytrip while in Prague
Price: $919 per person, which included my fee for organizing the trip, not including airfare, for which individuals contacted Bliss Travel in New Albany.
Full disclosure: Portions of the preceding have slipped my memory entirely. Either I took no photos at ‘t Brugs Beertje, or it didn’t happen, and maybe Dewi and Boris took a rail trip from Haarlem during one of those evenings, or they didn’t.
However, there exists a photo, dated 17 September 1999.
It’s a reminder that I’m writing this narrative as much for my own benefit as the edification of my readers, of whom many will recall that the first of my European motorcoach itineraries came to fruition in the spring of 1998.
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 74: Down a rabbit hole, deep into the Belgian beer paradise (1998)
After the exploratory run in 1998, beer-themed group travel became an option worth examining more closely. I was building a network of importer and brewery connections who were eager to connect with visitors.
Was I comparable with Arthur Frommer or Rick Steves?
Absolutely not. I’d rate myself as a marginal, Double-A ball prospect as a tour leader, even at my most optimistic. This said, it was the sort of endeavor calculated to prompt self-reflection.
Who really wants to be responsible for a couple dozen people, 5,000 miles away from home, on a trip expressly devoted to drinking? If not for the majority of my clients being folks I already knew, the potential liability would have terrified me (and eventually, it did).
However, leading group tours to European breweries was another way of making a name for myself professionally (along with a few koruna) by combining pre-existing interests. It’s that old, creaking, parachute-coloring thing: do what you love, build it from there, and they will come. Or maybe that’s Field of Dreams; I can’t always segregate (or even dial) the cliches.
In 1998 when I met the estimable Luc Dequidt, Poperinge’s tourism chief, he made sure I was aware of the city’s fabled triennial Beer and Hops Festival, which would be taking place again in 1999. From that precise moment, the outline of a more ambitious, wider-ranging motorcoach journey began nestling into my receptive brain, and the trip that emerged was the largest I ever attempted, with 30 of us aboard.
There was no doubt that the “hoppeland” in and around Poperinge would be as much a high point as Bamberg and Prague.
—
And so it has been almost 30 years since my first visit to the tidy and welcoming Belgian provincial city of Poperinge (circa 20,000 population as of 2025), and after all this time I still find it bizarre that “Pops” doesn’t appear all that often on the bucket lists that beer lovers enjoy compiling.
It is a bizarre omission, as Poperinge is a relaxing place to spend a few days thinking and drinking beer. It is off the beaten path in a Belgian context, although not too far from anywhere given the compact size of the country.
There’s a picture-perfect central square ideal for ale-inspired loafing, plentiful opportunities for recreation, and excellent eateries and cafes for refueling after hikes and bike rides. I’ve enjoyed so many excellent meals in Poperinge that I cannot remember them, but one in 2017 bears mention. We dined at the Café de la Paix on the square, and the following came my way for a total of approximately $50, a jaw-dropping bargain for the time:
Opener: Escargot with Rodenbach Grand Cru. The oyster-like texture of snails, slathered in garlic and butter, paired with a classically soured, wood-aged red ale to slice through the richness.
Middle Innings: Steak (medium rare) with Béarnaise sauce, green salad, frites and De Dolle Oerbier; the latter malty, fruity and complex, elegantly filling the slot red wine might otherwise occupy.
Closer: Rochfort 10, with a stolen bit of a fellow diner’s tart. Still one of the top Trappists on the planet, and a dark, rich, dessert in itself.
Poperinge is an ideal human-scaled base for beer tourism. These nearby destinations (the majority in the province of West Flanders) merely scratch the surface:
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- Pioneering beer cuisine at the famous t’ Hommelhof restaurant in the “brewing village” of Watou, as of 2025 seemingly back on track with new owners following Chef Stefaan Couttenye’s retirement.
- Brouwerij Leroy, the successor to the Van Eecke brewery, and maker of Poperings Hommel (hop) Bier.
- Bernardus abbey ale brewery, one of my top five non-Trappist breweries in the whole country
- Café In de Vrede, official tasting room for the St. Sixtus monastery across the road where the famous Westvleteren Trappist ales are brewed
- Ieper/Ypres, destroyed by more than three years of fighting in World War I, now rebuilt and a place to learn and remember, with or without beer
- The nearby French hilltop town of Cassel, where the amazing Estaminet Kasteelhof restaurant offers a comprehensive selection of Bieres de Garde, arguably the most underappreciated beer style on the planet.
“Hommel” is the Flemish word for hops (in French, houblon), and the magic cone prefaces Poperinge’s civic celebration every third year. For a very long time hop cultivation was big business in Poperinge. For various reasons pertaining to modernity, this most highly specialized of agri-businesses declined to the verge of disappearance during the 1970s.
Since then there has been a modest and encouraging resurgence, driven on the one hand by pharmaceutical uses, and the other via spillover from the “slow food” movement, enhanced beer consciousness, and ongoing campaigns to promote beers that are brewed using Belgian-grown hops.
Taken as a whole, Poperinge’s Beer and Hop Festival is a retro-meets-digital era delight, a three-day event reflecting a refreshing commitment to local values. Hops-related events and related revelry take place throughout the festival weekend.
New Albany has its Harvest Homecoming; Poperinge’s triennial gathering functions as a Hop Homecoming, and it welcomes the stray visitor (or in our case in 1999, a busload of visitors).
A boisterous Bavarian-style beer hall operates for the weekend. Visiting delegations appear periodically from Poperinge’s hop-growing twinned towns in the Czech Republic (Zatec), Germany (Wolnzach) and England (Kent County).
They bring along their brass bands, which play at the beer hall and join other such bands from near and far to stage a “tattoo,” or marching-style performance on the street.
A hop queen and queen’s court is selected.
More recently a “sampling” fest within a fest takes place on the square, with beer and food samples. The Hop Museum, located in an old hops storage warehouse, is free of charge and offers tours throughout the weekend.
However the undisputed festival highlight is the Sunday parade that closes each triennial weekend. The parade tells the story of beer and hops, with an accompanying libretto of sorts printed in several languages, periodic “chapter” markers, and a happily muted presence of commercial considerations, mostly of the local and independent variety.
In obvious contrast to the sort of parades Americans tend to stage, you’ll notice no sirens, police cars, municipal stormwater suck-trucks, monster rigs, militia jeeps or deafening fire engines; instead, there are actual human beings, many walking, some on horseback or riding in wagons.
Actual sheep may have been witnessed.
The parade’s story concerns the history of brewing, the significance of the hop, and the latter’s importance to the Poperinge’s economy. Onlookers meet the enemies of the hop ― for instance, brightly festooned children as beetles ― as well as the climbing vine’s friends, as in another set of kids performing as a flock of birds, whistling.
I might easily belabor this point, so allow me to close with a few parade scenes from 1999. Overall I’ve attended Poperinge’s municipal festival six times: 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2014 and 2017: The COVID 19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the proceedings in 2020 (we’d planned to attend), and as I write, the 2026 renewal approaches.
Beer and brewing can be quite big and expansively international, when their foundational essences remains very small and local. The festival emblemizes the latter, and even if I never attend it again, there’ll still be enough fond memories to last a lifetime.
—
The greater number of participants, the better economies of scale in motorcoach tours, but they also eliminate the chance of demonstrating the nuanced charms of that elusive back street specialty beer bar with only five tables.
Compromises are inevitable, and in 1999 it quickly became clear to me that Poperinge didn’t have a hotel capable of housing a group of 30 during the fest. Consequently, we stayed ten clicks down the road in the larger city of Ieper (French: Ypres) at a pleasant enough business traveler-oriented hotel near the industrial park.
For the hop fest itself, Luc arranged a package that included group seating on the bleachers for the hop parade and passes into the German-style beer tent. I advised everyone about the local cafe and restaurant options, trusting they’d break up into smaller groups to explore, and they did.
Everyone was told the location of the motor coach and the deadline for returning to it, assuming they wanted a free ride back to Ieper. We had a long trip to Germany the following morning; hangovers could be nursed on the bus, because drivers must take breaks and cannot be worked beyond contractual limits.
I stressed this point. It also was the pre-Uber era, and while mobile phones existed, they were uncommon. Taxi service was available, if not optimum in terms of convenience. Poperinge was, and remains, the last stop on a branch rail line through Ieper, and trains do not run for very long into the evening.
On Sunday, counting heads as we prepared to depart Poperinge, I saw that a few were missing. There was a fifteen-minute grace period, then as promised, we left for Ieper. My tour members were adults, and Poperinge is a friendly, accommodating place.
What could go wrong? Morning came, and it seemed everyone was accounted for.
At first.
However, as I dug into a plate stacked high with the items from a fabulous breakfast buffet, one of the tour members approached me with a request. Joe Sr.’s son had flown into Brussels the previous day and joined us in Poperinge for the parade.
I knew Senior and Junior had successfully connected with each other; I ran into them several times while hunting beers. Although Junior was not part of our group, I’d agreed to take him on for a few days (to Germany) on a pro-rated basis.
What I didn’t know is that the son’s commute from America to Europe had taken roughly twice as long, sleeplessly, owing to flight cancellations and delays. Too many beers followed; he’d managed to keep track of his Poperinge selections in a pocket-sized spiral bound notebook that listed a succession of Belgian ales all in excess of 7% abv.
Given too little sleep and too many beers, as well as the possible intervention of a stray demon, Junior had been involved in a fracas at the beer tent, resulting in broken glassware. Poperinge’s gendarmes merely shrugged, scooped up Junior and deposited him into the drunk tank for a recuperative evening, all impeccably professional and polite, with instructions to his father as to when he’d be released in Poperinge next morning.
The turning out landed at precisely the same time as the motorcoach was scheduled to depart Ieper, hence dad’s earnest request for a dispensation — and of course we waited. The hotel briskly arranged for a taxi; Sr. sprang Jr.; and the delay was only 45 minutes.
I pitied Junior; the physical condition of our liberated friend was almost comical (not quite; remember: karma), and I recall him prone on the floor for long stretches of the ride to Germany. My decision was to hold a motorcoach session of the tour’s kangaroo court, which levied a fine: the first round of beers in Germany were on him.
He gracefully paid up, and we kept rolling.
—
Bamberg was the middle leg. This was the period of my life when I became enamored of the city and its surroundings, and was absolutely sure that those breweries had always been there, and would always be there for me.
Of course that’s ridiculous; there is nothing constant apart from change, and while many remain after a quarter-century, the beer and brewing scene in Bamberg evolves, just as anywhere else.
As time has passed, the problem has not been Bamberg’s. It’s mine. I’ve been there only twice since 2009, an infrequency that testifies to shifting priorities, and while this, too, is perfectly normal, there are times when I’m disappointed at a dream slipping away.
So be it.
In 1999, we took a tour of Weyermann and enjoyed a tasting at the venerable Schlenkerla tavern.
Then, emboldened, I reprised the legendary 1996 brewery crawl, incorporating a coalition of the willing.
The record shows that the single most important outcome of our presence in Bamberg in 1999 had nothing to do with my purported expertise, because BISCUIT DISCOVERED THE SPEZIAL KELLER.
Phil Timperman’s nickname at the time was “Biscuit,” a friend having once mistaken Phil snoozing on the couch for his dog named Biscuit. Shrewdly, Phil doped out the existence of this spectacular beer garden, of which I was entirely unaware.
Spezial’s brewery, restaurant and lodging is located in the only slightly less ancient part of town that lies on the canal bank in route to the train station. The density there precluded a beer garden, so in the Franconian habit, the (primarily) outdoor beer garden was called a Keller (cellar), and situated in the (then) outskirts, on a hill overlooking the Old Town, where some, maybe all, of Spezial’s delicious, smoky lager would be hauled for aging, and when ready, already there, underground and cool, why not just drink it and enjoy one of the best possible views of the city?
As John Mellencamp once observed, “When I think back about those days, all I can do is sit and smile.”
It isn’t entirely a case of Spezial Keller’s brilliance, or the fact that I’ve returned too many times to keep count. It’s that so many of the tour participants foraged, explored, and returned with findings that added to our base of knowledge.
Travel shouldn’t be passive, and my people got it.
—
As planning for the tour progressed during the spring of 1999, my frequent co-conspirator Rick Buckman suggested that if I had the time (affirmative), then he did, too, and we should take a swing through territories further east after packing off the group at Ruzhnye airport.
My arm was in no need of twisting, and the plan came together. We’d hop trains to Budapest and Eger (both in Hungary), then on to Košice, Slovakia. Once in Košice, a local travel agent would be engaged to help tie down an inexpensive flight to Prague for a final night there prior to our own return stateside.
The early autumn weather was nearly perfect; food, drink, accommodations and transportation were inexpensive, and I had the chance to reconnect with a few of my former students in Košice, where Dr. Roland, my boss at the hospital, escorted us to a beer festival amid a complex of century-old warehouse buildings that I recalled vividly from my walking route home while teaching.
Košice’s big annual event is the Peace Marathon, which is a century old. I missed it in 1991 in favor of my hike in the Tatras, but in 1999, we were there to feel the pain suitably from afar, while nursing beers.
I began this episode by considering the task of dismantling communism. In addition to difficult and often harsh decisions about economics and politics, there was a symbolic aspect as well, because the landscape was filled with literal reminders of a discredited era.
Some of these reminders weren’t going anywhere, and remain intact today, like urban patterns of development in the form of entire housing districts; these were (are) vast, necessary and unmistakably redolent of the communist period, although architectural embellishments and paint has helped soften the patina of utilitarian under-investment .
Others intrusions, like ubiquitous “heroes of communism” statues and propagandistic public art, could be more easily erased by enterprising individuals wielding sledgehammers, or with the assistance of bulldozer, cranes and dump trucks.
Sometimes these symbols were chopped into pieces in the fashion of serial killers and buried on a farm somewhere, but other times, as in Budapest, the discussion turned to preserving bits and pieces of the communist era, presumably heeding the hoary dictum about learning from history so as to avoid repeating it.
Hence Statue Park, since renamed Memento Park (nothing to do with director Christopher Nolan’s film).
Rick and I were enamored of this weird spare-parts repository.
Displayed in the Park are pieces of art from the Communist era between 1945 and 1989, including allegorical monuments of “Hungarian-Soviet Friendship” and “Liberation”, as well as statues of famous personalities from the labour movement, soldiers of the Red Army and other gigantic pieces: Lenin, Marx, Engels, Dimitrov, Captain Ostapenko, Béla Kun and other “heroes” of the communist world. A favourite with visitors is the Liberation Army Soldier. A hammer-and-sickle flag in its hand and a cartridge-disc machine pistol hanging in its neck make the statue complete. This 6-meter tall statue of the evil-eyed Soviet soldier once stood on the top of Gellért Hill in central Budapest, well-seen from every direction.
In fact, I’d seen this very same statue atop that hill in 1987, when I spent two weeks in Budapest.
The words of architect Ákos Eleőd, the conceptual designer of Memento Park serve as its motto: “This Park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described and built up, this Park is about democracy. After all, only democracy can provide an opportunity to think freely about dictatorship. Or about democracy, come to that! Or about anything!”
The return flight to Prague was booked without a hitch. Rick and I spent a final day riding the tram out to the site of the White Mountain battle (1620; Catholics defeated Protestant rebels), located by a neighborhood near the airport filled with modernistic, albeit generally modest, houses once occupied by the ruling communist elites. On a whim, we dined at a deserted Brazilian steakhouse that served the cherished Budvar.
Later, as I checked my credit card transactions, the flight from Košice was found to have been converted first from Slovak crowns into Venezuelan bolivars, and only then into American dollars.
Drug cartel or pioneering Saudi money laundering?
Maybe just beer money.
—
By whatever metrics exist to calibrate success, the 1999 motorcoach excursion passed muster.
It was followed by the inaugural Euro Beercycling outing in Belgium and Netherlands in 2000, which obviously was a far more specialized endeavor, with fewer participants. The next motorcoach tour (East-Central Europe) wasn’t scheduled until the fall of 2001; unsurprisingly, the events of 9-11 caused it to be postponed until the spring of 2002, with another Belgian run added for fall.
At last, the “40 Years in Beer” narrative has arrived at the year 2000.
During the four calendar years to follow the slightly misplaced and occasionally comical “new millennium” celebrations on Dec. 31, 1999, daily business continued as usual at the pizzeria and public house, augmented by the installation of the former Tucker Brewing Co.’s brewhouse in our building and the launch of our own NABC beers.
There were seven trips to Europe, three revolving around beercycling, two via motorcoach, and one by car, the latter undertaken in Ireland with my Maine squeeze Diana in the aftermath of my divorce from Amy (the three NABC owners continued to work together until 2018).
My father died. I changed houses. Life went on, and my own existence was altered tremendously, just like the lives of so many people behind the Iron Curtain when it ceased.
In short, welcome to Book III, beginning next time with: 40 Years in Beer (Book III), Part 84: Y2K and the Belgian beercycling inaugural (1).
—
NOTES:
(1) We somehow also squeezed in visits to De Dolle Brouwers and Brouwerij de Bie (in its original location outside Watou).
