That’s the original Budweiser, not the American Bud, the stuff commonly known in the UK as Budvar. This trip involved being up almost as early as we’d get up for work, as they only do unreserved tours at 2pm each day and the train to get us there in time left Prague at 9.15am, yes a lovely 2 hours 40 minutes into Southern Bohemia to visit a brewery.
I will admit it is a lovely train ride on an old fashioned style of train with compartments, instead of enormous carriages, riding through stunning countryside, especially with all the autumnal colours.
When we arrived at České Budějovice train station at 12pm, there was no information about how to get to the brewery, or any sort of tourist information, maps etc so we had to rely on the shambles that is Apple Maps, which tried to get us killed (by giving walking directions down the hard shoulder of a motorway, yes really). Luckily the ability to still use google maps for written directions helped out abit better and shortly before 1pm we arrived, sweaty and tired and bought out entry tickets. We then popped to the Budweiser pub next door for a swift half before the tour started.
The approx 1 hour tour (done in Czech & English, us being the only English in the group) takes you through every step of the brewing process from the malt going in, mashing, adding yeast, fermenting.. we even got to try a sample of beer that wasn’t yet pasteurised, very fizzy it was, then the bottling was very exciting to watch and very noisy. It was all over too soon, we stopped by the gift shop to pick up some nice glasses then back into the Brewery Pub next door for another beer and some very nice food.
This was to fire us up for the long walk back to the station, approx 1.6miles (as the 2 bus option sounded too complicated to handle when tired and non czech speaking). The train journey home felt longer, even though we spent most of it asleep, looking forward to the lie in tomorrow.
Culturenator 