Two beers

One of the luxuries of travelling alone and being quite disorganised is that rapid and frequent changes of itinerary aren’t particularly problematic. A fortnight ago, I was hellbent for Odessa. Last week, it was all about Albania. I’ve now realised that it would be folly not to detour to see my Pilsen contact for the first time in a couple of years. To get to Pilsen, near the German border of the Czech Republic, I need to go to Prague and to get to Prague from Budapest on the train, well, there’s Bratislava or Vienna. I’ve been thrilled by the new on many occasions but on this one, the lure of all that imperial regalia and secessionist art and gluhwein and late nineteenth century intellectual angst and goulash is impossible to resist. So Vienna it is, and from thence to Pilsen, home of pilsener beer, and onwards to Ukrania.

Treading this path, I am aware, will require some fortitude. My Pilsen host is a beer connoisseur of note and all of his emails have ended with some reference to the beers that will be consumed on our reunion. I need to toughen up so it’s goodbye, bellinis and champagne and martini bianco, hello, beers of Mitteleuropa.

Exhibit A
Lasko of Lasko
Union (pronounced ooo-nion) is the beer that is brewed in Ljubljana but I vastly preferred the Lasko, brewed in the wee town of Lasko. I randomly met a woman from Melbourne and even more randomly wound up carousing till the small hours with her newly discovered Slovenian cousins in Ljubljana and they all agreed, Lasko is far superior.

Exhibit B
Dreher of Budapest
One of the reasons Budapest is called the Paris of the East is, I suspect, because of the proliferation of long and endless boulevards which invite endless strolling. Just one more block. Just until we reach that square up there. No, let's keep going to the next one. (That's my internal monologue keeping me company there.) Not too many blocks away from where I’m staying is a fine establishment called the Zappa Caffe and there they serve all manner of drinks, including Dreher Classic, brewed in Budapest.
I drank this surrounded by airbrushed portraits of Frank Zappa, listening to De La Soul. I didn’t actually realise that these glasses hold half a litre of beer until I had drunk two of them and ordered another one and a Zappa salad. Gosh. I wondered, could there be anything more psychedelic than a Zappa salad? A salad with paprika! Hot Rats!


In France, you can order a gallopin of beer, which is a 100ml glass which would actually look quite like a thimble next to a Hungarian glass. Here, I haven't seen beer served in any vessel smaller than 500ml. Hmmm.