We're Famous, Teil Zwei

Well I've been home for an hour and I've already managed to find and download the video shown on TVO. It's nice to type on an English keyboard, and I even had a crack at some German there. I didn't look it up so sorry if it's inaccurate!

Enjoy the video.

"Good luck with our new terminal"

These were the last words of our well humoured captain before a nerve racking stroll through T5. In actual fact, the experience wasn't bad. We got our luggage within 15 minutes and there was no queue for passport control. We're now on the 490 home - it's like a personal shuttle for me; walked 50 yards from customs to get the bus, drops me 50 yards from home. 90p. Bargain. We were up at 4.30 (European) and I haven't slept at all. Will need a quick recharge before doing anything else. Toodles!

Terminal Five is... Well, it's closed.

We made it to the last brewery in Munich, met Jan and had a beer before making it to the Airport with plenty of time to spare. Our flight was cancelled along with a few others. So British Airways (or BAA depending on how you look at it) have put us up in a hotel near the airport for a 7am flight tomorrow. Naturally we're in the bar working a tab. Already shown the barman one new drink. Anyway, early start tomorrow!

The last day, but not the last post

Well it's day 18 of our trip. Yesterday wasn't all as successful as we would have hoped though. We set out for the infamous Aufseß around noon only to be informed that there are only two buses a day there. So over-equipped and under-prepared we had to cancel our trip to several breweries. Instead we took it easy as our trip to Buttenheim was an unexpected success! The beer was great and we quickly became locals of the pub by the railway. When we got back to Bamberg we squeezed in another two breweries, the first nearly resulted in meeting the owner (but she didn't show). The next brewery had run out of beer, but that didn't stop two locals accosting us at the bar and buying us schnapps all evening! We stayed in for quite a while before stumbling 2 miles back home! The hangovers didn't help the Aufseß cause! We're just packing the last of our things before heading back to Munich for our evening flight home. Hopefully Terminal 5 won't swallow our luggage! Oh, we still have one brewery left!

We're famous!

There's no appropriate photo to go with this post, but I think there's some film. We ended up staying up late last night drinking Jager in the hostel with one of the housemates. I think Chris and I made her cry, hopefully with laughter and not boredom. We knew we had to be up early as Lilly, the girl who owns the hostel, had asked us to greet a camera crew who were doing a piece on the hostel. So this morning we waited for the camera crew and continued our fast as we hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day. When they arrived we spent the next three hours being interviewed, directed and told to act out various daily tasks. The crew were interested in our expedition and rushed us in to town to film us visiting breweries! It took ages and we're now a little behind, but we're now in Buttenheim!

Brewery 30 - At last!

It's been a panic, but we made it to the 30th brewery of our trip. Still another two to see today. We may even have an extra companion but we'll see!

Monday has been cancelled

We went on a bit of a bender yesterday, resulting in the first hangover of the trip. The picture was taken in a dive called Pelican. The Lonely Planet guide suggested it as a young and happening boozer. It was in fact where people go for there to feel 10 years younger, you know, when they were 30. By this point we were drinking whiskey. The night wound up in a blues bar run by a scouser (forgotten his name). Chris and I propped up the bar and drank with the owner, the musician, the bouncer and any one else. Drank so much Whiskey that we lost count so the owner just bought all our drinks. Got lost on the way home. Woke up at 2pm. So Monday has been cancelled!

Another town, another love story

We're in Bamberg, Keesmann was closed so we're already down one. We've checked in to our lovely hostel and been to two breweries today and have a lot to go! Above is lesson one: Pilsner on the left, Weissbier on the right. Bit late for lessons but you have to start somewhere.

Gone and jynxed it

Apparently, it's some religious holiday today, and apparently that means Germany is closed. This means that despite our plans, we are not going to Bamberg today. There is only one hostel in Bamberg, and they don't like answering their phone at all. So we have extended our stay here at the "let 'em sleep", hence a proper post on a proper German keyboard.

We headed out to town this morning after checking out, and found the place deserted. We were the only people in town and everything except McDonalds and Pizza Hut was closed. So after taking some footage of the ghost town we returned to the hostel, hungry and cold. We were also unable to find stamps for the Dürer postcards we bought for our loved ones (and families).

Our plan is to go back to Landbierparadise later this afternoon and finish the available beers. Tomorrow we will have to try and get to Bamberg and hopefully find a place to stay depending on the tourist office there (as they don't like working either).

Hopefully I will get a better nights sleep tonight, sharing with eleven people is pretty difficult!

Oh, and have a gander at the impressive list to your right! It'll expand depending on whether we find 'proper' computers! The asterisks signify breweries that we have sampled at the brewey tap it's self.

Bye for now.

Right, that's the touristy bit done...

We went out in the snow this morning to in and see some museums etc. and got as far as the old town before Chris remarked "nads to this, let's go to a brewery!". So we went for lunch in a tiny front room pub to escape the cold. After that we went to the Albrecht Dürer museum. There was an audio tour given from the point of view of his bitter and twisted wife. The ticket also got us in to the toy museum. Basically it was full of doll's houses and tin cars, but there was an almighty train set which was a big attraction (for me). Any way that was the tourist stuff. It's now 5.30 and we're in a bar to try a tonne of beers! It's what we do best.

This travelling is getting easy...

not to put a jynx on this, but we've had a lot of luck with this whole travelling lark. We're now in Nurenburg, in a nice hostel called "Let 'em sleep" (at least that is the way I read it). We arrived today after a heavy night of drinking. Pretty much scoured all the bars around Regensburg, drinking whiskey and annoying the owners. We got a good nights sleep (slept in till 10am) and had a hassle free journey all the way here.

Hey look, carriage returns; luxery. So we arrived here this morning (we haven't had a hang over so far, as German beer is that good apparently) and made our way straight to this huge hostel. We hadn't booked ahead as usual but managed to get two beds in seperate rooms. Chris is staying in a room called Ratzplaza or something and I'm sharing room with 15 other people. If my brothers sleepinmg bag goes missing I'll go nuts.

We did three brewerys today, so that keeps us above average. In celebration we have decided to take tomorrow "off" and just see museums instead. So it's probably worth mentioning that we have visited 20 breweries in the last 9 days, and we have also had beers from seven other bereweries. Every beer has tasting notes; including name, colour, volume, aroma, taste and finish. A lot of times we have kept "video notes", which means we have recorded our tasting sessions on camera. You'll have to bear in mind that we have had a good couple of beers per brewey so it's no walk in the park. I'm looking forward to my day off tomorrow!!

Must dash, toilet calls!

Another day, another photo...

Well we decided to sneak in a quick brewery whilst our drying in the laundrette was finishing And found ourselves in regensburg weissbräuhaus where once again we were treated to a beautiful they of the brewery's working coppers. We explained to the waitress in broken German that we were touring breweries so she went off to get something to help. We assumed they had a load of English literature or a €10 Dvd explaining why wheat beers smell like banana. Imagine our surprise when the brewer turned up! He showed us the whole process they used. He took us to see the fermentation tanks and told us all about the beer. Really nice surprise! Any way, must dash! Lots to see!

Already in Regensburg!

We arrived here in Regensburg before midday due to the Pasau hostel's sadistic 9am check out time. The city here (again) is beautiful, but almost for different reasons. The architecture and history is evident pretty much every where we go. I couldn't decide on a photo so settled on these amazing coppers which are behind the brewery tap in which we are currently sampling. Incidentally this is our third brewery of today (in the last 4 hours actually!). *** We're staying in a great hostel run by a brilliant character. I'm sure he'll be mentioned again! As soon as I trust someone enough to use my phone to take a picture of us two, i'll post one. Oh, big thanks to Ed Drummond and his radio show on skfm.com - go listen!

Missed a day!

We took a long train journey from Munich, we arrived at Pasau yesterday in the early afternoon. We were greeted by a closed tourist office which directed up to another closed tourist office. Undetered we relied on our proven map skills and ascended the huge hill in the picture un where we believed there would be a hostel. After an epic climb, weighted by our kit and self loathing, we made it to the youth hostel. Apparently they have some sort of membership thing we weren't aware of as it is a 'youth' hostel. Rather than hang around outside a converted fortress for some kids to sign up in, we lied about Chris' age and scored a room. We're still waiting to see if the other three beds will be filled. Yesterday evening we went to Innstadt brewery where we promptly fell in love with the the waitresses. We were very disappointed with the next brewery, Peschl. This morning we got up late and walked in to town for breakfast. It's worth mentioning that Pasau is really beautiful. We'll have plenty of pictures later!

Across the woods and in to Andechser!

We took a train from the centre of Munich, then took an hour walk through some woods to andechser which is a monestry town by a large lake. We came here in search of smoked fish and beer so far we've only seen roast pork. The beer is really good but the 'service' doesn't quite fill up with hope that we're going to get our smoked fish!

A proper post, on a weird keyboard

Whilst my accomplice stinks out the rest of the foyer; I am trying to write a post on this crazy keyboard. The ü key is right of the p, the y and z have been swapped and never mind the extra characters.

So what have we been up to? We arrived on Tuesday and made it straight in to Airbräu where wequickly learned that the concept of a 'half' doesnot exist in these here parts. So it has been and will remain to be pints from now on ("Pray for MoJo"). We met up with Jan, a cousin of Chris' who courageously, magnanimously and gracefully put us up (read: put up with us) for the last two nights. On the first night after we dropped off our bags, he took us to Löwenbräu, a large brewery near to Thresienstraße (where Jan lives, near to the centre of Munich). This is where we first had roast pork. And for me, maybe the last for a while. This 'pork knuckle' was the size of a melon! After that, I have been wary of pork products. The other disadvantage to a all 'pork and cabbage diet' is... well... you can imagine that the Munich air is tainted.

Well I only have a few minutes left so I'll skip to the end. Tomorrow we hit Andechs, South of Munich for the Andechser Brewery. We'll be taking a walk through the woods so we'll be sure to get some good footage, and probably get attacked by a bear, which have been said to roam these parts.

Oh, and we'll be getting some pictures of ourselves up on the blog as soon as possible.

For the record, here are the breweries we've made so far!

Airbräu
Löwenbräu
Paulaner
Hacker-Pschorr
Hofbräu
Schneider-Weisse
Augustiner
Unionsbräu

Augustiner!

We've just been to our new hostel and found it is right next to our next brewery, augustiner.we'll have a quick look in to the tap house and sample the wares!

Down but not out

As any good trip will start... I've fallen ill. Probably because of the stupid amount of pork I have consumed. After checking out the next brewery after Paulena, i became increasingly ill. Till the point I had to leave Chris to meet his friend in the next bar - whilst I got a tube home. I'm sweating, shaking and basically feeling the worst I have in ages. And it's not because of the beer! Hopefully tomorrow i'll be ready for action.

Paulaner!

After walking all day, and starting to feel the effects ne consuming so much pork, we make it half way across Munich to Paulaner. This is our first brewery for today. Time to make some video notes ne their offerings!

Löwenbraeu

Next brewery!

Landed!

After a really delayed flight (we took off after we should have landed) we finally make it to Germany! We found the airport brewery, airbrau (where the hell is the umlaut key?). Just about to try out two of their beers. Filming has already started.

Waiting for departure

We're in the concourse waiting for BA to announce the gate. We bought loads of berocca! It was 3 for 2 so they must have seen up coming! Oh and they sell Rockstar here so I've got myself a can of that in preparation of my trip to USA in april!

off to Bavaria

All packed and waiting for the bus. They're not very regular unfortunately! Chris' bag is ridiculously large.

In good preperation

Today is the last full day in England before our frankly optimistic journey in to the heart of German beer. For me this means a lot of shopping; as I still have to buy a bivi-bag, a dozen pairs of socks, a wash kit and even some shoes amongst other things!

We're flying out tomorrow morning from Heathrow - a bright and early start. I still have no idea what we'll be doing when we land in Munich...

-Kevin