I'm afraid this entry won't have the zing of others. It is almost midnight of Heather and I's first full day in Vienna and we feel like we've walked all over kingdome come. In Prague things appear far away on maps but in reality they are quite close. In Vienna I think things are almost twice as far as they appear on maps! The natives get past this by being the most bike friendly city I have ever seen in the entire world! Their very wide sidewalks are split evenly between pedestrian and bike lanes and the streets are wide enough for two car lanes...so as you can imagine it takes forever to cross a lot of the streets. Get to a major artery and you can add trollys to the list of obstacles. We were stuck midway through one of those intersections! Vienna has a city wide bike rental system tha I want to try in which you put in a card at a kiosk and pick a simple bicycle. The first hour is free and subsequent hours are a euro or two. Bikes can be returned to any kiosk in the city. It's like Austin's Yellow Bike Program taken the the Nth degree.
So Plzen! The day started with a thrill ride on the super steep escalator I mentioned in a previous post and a 90 minute train ride to the birthplace of Pilsner Beer. The train is a little more expensive than the bus but we chose it because the stop in Plzen is 5 minutes from the brewery vs. 30, the train goes through beautiful country side, and it has a bathroom for the return trip!
The brewery is quite impressive but we both felt a bit slighted by the tour. We took the English tour and while the girl did speak quite well, her voice was kind of hard to hear and her speech was rushed like a 5th grader reciting something they were forced to memorize. As a result our time in certain areas was cut short and a 90 minute tour turned into 75. They brew and bottle all of their beers (Urquell, Gambrinus, Kozel, & each brands various versions) there and the bottling plant is massive! We got a quick few minutes about the system and were then lead up to an observation deck. At this point it was too loud to hear anything else she might have said. The place was humid as Houston in August and smelled of hot beer. Visually Heather and I felt we had walked into the opening sequence of Lavern & Shirley! :) Saddly this part went no further. There was a large and well protected "cat walk" that bisected the production floor and would have given us an amazing view of the shipping oppuration too, but the gate never was opened and our guide walked right passed it twice. We could see massive plastic wrapping machines and other interesting things that we would have liked to have seen but no go :( A few minutes later we were on the country's largest elevator. To accommodate groups of 68 people the elevator was build to hold 77! And it looked as if one could park 4 cars side to side inside it. A quick video about the ingredients and then a walk through an interactive explanation had us in the brew rooms. The first was the original room with 8-12 giant copper tanks set in pristine white tile on two levels bathed in natural light. I was in heaven and anxious to take a few pictures but our guide barely stopped long enough to explain what these were before leading us into the new room featuring less tanks in a sterile modern environment. Still quite impressive but I felt we'd been rushed for no reason again. My feeling of loss was soon subsided in the tasting room where we were treated to large cups of unfiltered Pilsner Urquell straight from a giant wooden cask. At this point Pilsner Urquell is no longer brewed in casks except in small batches for tours like ours. In short: it was awesome! Heather, the non-beer drinker, loved it and I was pleased to find it (the unfiltered) for sale in the restaurant after our tour. Side note, the restaurant is also the largest in Czech seating 505 people! The tour ended shortly after the tasting. If you plan to come, and I do recommend it despite the negatives I've described, wear shoes that have good traction on slippery wet rocks. I was not wearing such shoes and almost hit the floor multiple times (before the beer!).
Trains run every hour, so we took some time to walk Plzen and see it's impressive church and square. It is a cute town with lots of charm and I could see spending more time there.
On the way home we stopped at a subway stop that held artwork remnant of Soviet occupation and found a few bronze murals. Pictures are on flickr.
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