Ok, it wasn't Oktoberfest, but a couple of weekends ago, with our friend @chocosquirrel in tow, we embarked on a day of beer discovery in our newly adopted city: the 14th International Berlin Beer Festival. The night before we had indulged in too many espresso martinis, sangria, and paella and we all thought a few beers and some pork would set us right.
We made our way to the festivities and started exploring. Our first stop was the festival stall where we purchased our souvenir mugs and a map of the mile. We saw people walking around with nifty lanyards which they attached their mugs to, so as not to lose them. If you didn't buy a souvenir mug, the stalls would simply take a deposit of 2 euros for the glass. But if you did have a souvenir mug then most of the stalls were selling 200ml of their beer for 1.50 to 2 euro a glass. Not a bad deal at all!
To get things rolling, and to attack the hangovers we had the obligatory rostbratwurst, slathered with senf (mustard) and a glass of Kormbacher Pils. We buy this all the time from our local shop and it was a gentle introduction into the other delights to come.
I'm sorry to say i wasn't organised enough on the day to record everything we sampled. But between the three of us we did pretty good. Here's a list of all the featured brewers. There were some outstanding choices and it all became a bit of a blur.
In between drinking we of course ate....immense gherkins, gorgeous beer-batter fried fish with remoulade sauce, and as a takeaway treat we bought Haxe which was pig knuckles cooked in a big cauldron -- the smell was unbelievable.
The well-named motto of this year's festival was beer makes us friends.
„Bier macht uns zu Freunden“
We had a chance encounter with some well groomed gentelmen....
The mile was really well organised, with plenty of seating, a great map to locate the participating brewers, and a good variety of food. By the time we made it to the end and started wending our way back to where we started, the entertainment was kicking in. There were brass bands, country-western singers, and pop/rock bands.
All in all it was a fabulous day, and we'll definitely be back next year!
