A blog resurrected!

It’s been two years since the last blog post, so most of you probably thought that this blog was dead. Well, not quite. It may be on its last legs, it may be having a mini-revival, it may go on to unforetold greatness, we shall see. Suffice for now to say that a new post has been blogged, and that the topic is beer.

Travelling is, as the avid reader of this blog will have discovered by now, one of my main hobbies. There’s nothing more exciting than checking out new places, countries, cities, bars and pubs. However, having been to almost all the countries that are fairly easy to get to, the number of new countries I manage to add to the list seems to diminish every year. This year, however, has been a bit of an outlier – I have been fortunate enough to visit no fewer than two new countries: Ukraine and Cyprus.

Ukraine has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in the last few years, mostly due to the conflict in the east that never seems to quite get resolved. This country is, however, massive – if you’re in the west then all the shooting is at a safe distance, so that’s why I booked a long weekend for my lovely wife and myself in Lviv, only 70km or so from the Polish border.

If you want everything to be clean, efficient and predictable, then you should go to Switzerland. If, on the other hand, you like a city to have contrasts, charm, history, a great vibe and ancient trams you could should consider Lviv – seldom have I been to a place with such a youthful spirit mixed with centuries of history and ancient trams. Oh, and to top it all off they have ancient trams which rumble around at just over walking speed where the fine you have to pay if you get caught without a ticket is less than the cost of a normal bus ticket in most western European countries. Did I mention that Lviv has trams? You probably think that I have gone off the rails (as it were). Time for a beer.

Beer drinking in Lviv is an absolute pleasure, not least because it’s dirt cheap, but also because the beer is surprisingly good. The standard brands are OK, though owned by the big multinationals – I guess the foreign investment has improved quality from what it was back in the Soviet days, so from that point of view I approve. The real excitement for beer lovers is, as usual, the microbreweries, of which the main one in Lviv is smack in the middle of the town centre: the Pravda Beer Theatre.

The Beer Theatre is something quite extraordinary. It’s a cavernous bar/pub/restaurant building with multiple floors, multiple bars, and a shop. Their beers are very interesting, not least because of the political nature of their labels and the unabashed support for Ukrainian independence. Suffice to say that political correctness is not a priority, and that Russia is not a popular country in this place. For example, they have a beer called “Frau Ribbentrop” with the picture of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, on the label. The label helpfully explains that, just like the Nazi foreign minister Ribbentrop did in 1939, Merkel has made a pact with the Russians that does not help the Ukrainians at all. Other politicians, including Trump, Putin and Obama also get their beers with labels that aren’t exactly overflowing with praise. The Obama beer was a very good dark lager, and the Trump beer was orange and tasted awful. The pub’s atmosphere was good though, so regardless of your views on said matters, I think you’ll end up having a good time.

Lviv has a boatload of places to eat and drink where the quality is high and the prices low, and it has not yet been overrun by tourism. Therefore, the contrast between Lviv and the second new country of 2019, Cyprus, was big.

Cyprus is a small island anchored at the very east end of the Mediterranean Sea. Its economy relies heavily on tourism, and the tourists come to enjoy the sunny and warm climate, I presume – in any case, I’m pretty sure they don’t come because of the beer, because the beer is not good. The main local beer brand is called Keo, which tastes of cat piss. Judging by the number of stray cats that roam the streets it would not surprise me if this assessment is more accurate than most people like to think. There’s another beer called Leon which tastes a bit better, and locally brewed Carlsberg (as far as I could tell), which is probably not the best beer in Cyprus. My advice: avoid if you can.

So, is the situation all bleak? Is there nothing for those who fancy a decent pint of beer? Those who search will find, they say, and I discovered that the trick was to go to the capital, Nicosia, and search for the local microbrewery (named "Pivo Microbrewery"), situated right on the border to North Cyprus – a border that runs right through the middle of the city almost like the Berlin Wall in the olden days. Crazy stuff, but at least it’s possible to cross over without too much hassle these days, which we did – it’s definitely worth checking out the other part of Cyprus if you can. Or bottle? I prefer bottles to cans. Check out the other part of Cyprus if you bottle!

However, it’s even worthier to check out the aforementioned microbrewery, run by some very friendly gentlemen who know what they’re doing. We happened to visit on a day where the brewery was technically shut, but since we looked thirsty and forlorn, one of the owners took pity on us and let us taste the beers in the beer garden while he continued to label bottles and whatnot. They have three beers: one Bavarian wheat beer, one Czech-style Pilsner, and one amber IPA. They were all exceptionally good and true to style – in fact, much better than most microbrewed beer I have come across. Sadly, the number of restaurants and shops that stock these excellent brews is very limited, so you have to either travel or be very lucky.

All in all, 2019 has been another good year for the beer blogger, aka me – two new countries and a few hundred new beers have been added to the log. I’ve also invented a new word – “knurgelsmack” – but I’m not yet sure what it means. We live in interesting times! Until next blog post I wish you all a happy festivity of your choice, where you can raise a glass of excellent beer of your choice, shout whatever “cheers!” is in a language of your choice, and have a really splendid time whilst doing all this.

C'est la bière

Paris is the city of love, allegedly. It is also a city of culture, fine wining and dining, history and the Metro. What Paris is definitely not known for is beer, and for this reason (as well as some minor other ones) I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the French capital. It’s definitely an interesting and, at times, a great city to explore, but I’ve also had bad experiences with insane traffic, rude people, dog turds on almost every pavement, and last, but for me definitely not least, expensive and bad beer.

My birthday gift to my lovely wife last year was a pair of tickets to a concert with the acapella group King’s Singers, who happened to be singing at a festival on the outskirts of Paris. One thing the French do better than most is trains, and they’ve been considerate enough to build an insanely fast high-speed line between Strasbourg and Paris, which makes it possible for us to travel from our home in the south of Germany to Paris in just over five hours – and so it came to pass that we headed off towards Paris on Armistice Day 2016. Naturally, my secret plan was to do some beer drinking when there was nothing else to do, which luckily was most of the time.

France’s history as a beer drinking nation is almost laughably pathetic. There are essentially two regions of this rather big country that can claim any historical beer culture at all, and both just because the beer culture of the neighbouring country accidentally or through repeated invasions spilled across the border. The north-east region, known as Flanders in English, has a solid tradition for the Saison beer, a style similar to one of the many found in neighbouring Belgium, whereas the historically contested area around Strasbourg in Alsace, which has changed hands between France and Germany more times than anyone cares to remember, unsurprisingly has a beer culture inspired by the latter. The most visible and well-known remnant of this is the enormous global beer brand Kronenbourg.

Paris, on the other hand, has nothing. If you feel like a beer in Paris, you will most likely be offered a choice of Kronenbourg on tap or some Belgian beer from the bottle – and you’ll be required to pay the best part of 10 euros, a price that only Oslo, as far as I know, comfortably beats. Either way, it’s a disaster, and since you’re likely to choke on traffic fumes, be spat at by rude waiting staff, have your wallet pickpocketed and repeatedly step in dog shit, you’d be well advised to go nowhere near this god-awful city.

Pondering the next blog post...

At least, this is what I feared. I am happy to report that things have taken a massive turn for the better in the world’s favourite French capital. First and foremost, someone has cleaned the pavements – there was hardly any turds to be seen, so instead of constantly checking where you put your shoes, you can instead look out for crazy motorists and try not to get run over. Except that even these were not as bad as they used to be – Paris now has cycle lanes everywhere, and a few roads, including a scenic one along the Seine, have been pedestrianised! Whatever next – perhaps there’s even good beer to be had?

The selection from the Guette d'Or microbrewery.

A quick bit of googling revealed three promising locations – a microbrewery called Guette d’Or and a bar called Super Coin, both not far from Gare de L’Est, as well as “Academie de Biere” or something like that a bit further away. Since the bar did not open until 5pm, we headed for the micro first, and what a wise move that turned out to be. We rolled in around 4pm to find a guy basically serving up free samples to anyone who was vaguely interested, including an older couple from Portland, Oregon – home to the greatest concentration of microbreweries in the USA (or so they claimed), so I was curious to know why they even bothered leaving home, never mind travelling halfway across the world to the beer desert that is Paris. The beers on offer were good – fairly typical for a microbrewery, with the mandatory IPA as well as a Red Ale, a Saison, and an interesting one brewed with chai that tasted a bit like old shoes in the positive sense (i.e. ones that had never stepped on a turd).

Super Coin taps.

After the tasting session, we were in the mood for somewhere warmer and cosier, and the Super Coin bar could not have been a better choice. There were three beers on tap – a Czech pilsner and two ales from France, including one that was surprisingly tart. The real treasure was the bottle collection, though – including a few red ales from local and not-so-local microbreweries at very sensible prices by Paris standards. The bar, empty when we arrived, filled up rapidly with happy Parisians clearly enjoying the opportunity to drink some good ales instead of having to force down another glass of crappy red wine. Sadly, their food selection was much more limited, so it was with heavy hearts that we had to bid adieu to this great place after a couple of hours in order to locate some food. The food selection in Paris is, of course, legendary – but do take care not to be dragged into tourist traps by sleazy men trying to cajole you into their dodgy restaurants where you’ll inevitably end up paying an arm and a leg for pretty sub-standard food. We found a great Moroccan place, always a good choice in France – and could confirm that though the food was excellent and the wine list extensive, the beer choice was either “crappy” or “none”.

Beer drinking in Paris can be a nice experience if you know where to go!

In conclusion, Paris took a big step up the list of my favourite cities starting with the letter P after this visit. It will never be a beer lover’s paradise (unlike several other cities starting with the letter P), but in some ways the treasure hunt is even more rewarding when the gems are hard to find, so in that sense I enjoyed the beer scene very much. I probably won’t be heading back there for some time, but once I do, I shall look forward to finding even more little gems hidden in obscure alleys. For those of you who plan to go there before me, I hope that this post has inspired you to go a bit out of your way when you search for good beer, and thereby increase demand – paving the way for even more little adventurous breweries and beer bars to try their luck in this winey city. C’est bien – bon voyage, et santé!