DAY TWENTY: BEER COUNTRY

Day Nineteen (Vienna to Bratislava) Daily Distance: 84.20 kms

Day Twenty (Bratislava to Györ) Daily Distance: 93.31 kms

Total Distance: 1876.38 kms

Yesterday, as we rode through the old abandoned border buildings separating Austria and Slovakia I knew that we were entering true beer country. They say that more beer was consumed in former Czechoslovakia than any other country in the world, at something like 150L per person per year, although to be fair the Slovakian figures have dropped dramatically since their 1993 split from the Czech Republic given how much the Czechs drink! In Slovakia, there are a huge number of beers to try, including all the imports you could imagine, Czech favourites like Pilsner Urquell and Budvar, plus local Slovak beers like Zlaty Bazant, Corgon, Saris, Smadny mnich and Topvar. So for obvious reasons we were excited for a Friday night in its capital, Bratislava.

It seems a good time to mention that for the entire trip so far, we have been keeping a detailed Beer Scoring Record (BSR). It involves a simple score out of 10 from each of us for each beer that we try, totalled to give a score out of 40. As you will see in the full BSR presented below, Jim started the trip by giving every single beer a nine, because apparently his Dad told him “there’s no such thing as a bad beer!” and it was only when we reached Rothenburg that he was convinced that the BSR is serious enough for it to demand his careful and sincere consideration.

I also must mention that it took us many days to perfect the BSR: at first, there were discrepancies between the exact time at which we rated the beer, which is problematic since there is a big difference between rating a beer after the first big gulp at the conclusion of a 130km riding day, and after the last small sip of the fifth beer, say (“not that we’ve ever had as many as five beers, dear wives...”). In addition, there is significant response bias likely to be seen if I rate a beer after hearing my three fellow cyclists rate it first. Plus, on which characteristics or qualities do we rate the beer? Taste? Body? Aroma? Ability to refresh? You get the point. (I demanded that we conduct a proper Randomised Controlled Trial but that suggestion was promptly rejected by the panel on that grounds that it would reduce beer drinking time.)

ANYWAY, given that we have now reached Beer Country, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the Pilsner Urquell we had last night in Bratislava is the highest scoring beer so far, although I must clarify that it is in fact a Czech – and not Slovak – beer. It was so outstanding, it demanded a picture in the blog:

Please notice Alan's near-empty beer - I clarify that he was still on his first, us our second! ;)

Second place so far is a tie between the Stiegl in Vienna, and my personal favourite, Heineken in Haarsteeg at Serva’s house. Definitely not high on the list is the Gaffel Kolsch that we had in Cologne – it wasn’t that terrible a beer, but it suffered horribly on the BSR since I only gave it a two – one point for every 100mls of it that I was allowed per serving (see DAY SIX: GOOD WEATHER, SHIT BEERS).

Enough about beer, I should pretend that this trip is about more than that. The scenery on morning Nineteen was by far the least inspiring of the trip to date. Nothing against Austria, it was just that we rode through chemical works to start off with, but only after we took a slight ‘detour’ in the morning and had to ask for directions from four proper bums who were drunk off their faces at nine in the morning (no, we had not stumbled across a large mirror...). Those lads certainly knew they were in beer country, although I suspect they didn’t know where they were, if you know what I mean. Oops, how did I get back to beer again? Sorry. So once we found our way, we rode down the longest, straightest gravel road with scenery that only belonged in the ‘OK’ category ... for nearly two hours! It looked exactly like this for the whole morning:

It would have been the least exhilarating morning of riding except it was on this ride that I discovered a new musical artist: Michael Kiwanuka. I had my iPod on shuffle when a song of his came up, and although I didn’t even know who it was, I thought “hmm this sounds nice”. I recalled that his name was recommended to me months ago and I must have acquired his album at that stage, so I then played the whole album while riding along that stretch, TWICE! And it was a wonderful morning as a result.

When that road finally took a turn, it suddenly revealed a very small cafe in which we had our standard morning coffee and only minutes after our departure, Alan had his second puncture within two days. This was best summed up by a local who rode past us minutes later and said but one word: ”sheisser!”. I can’t imagine what he would have said if he passed us again an hour or so later, just outside Hainburg, when Alan again suffered the same fate even though he’d gone to all the trouble of cleaning out the tyre and inserting a brand new inner tube the first time! Luckily we found a bike shop and he got a whole new tyre which seems to have fixed the problem.

We rode into the capital on horrible roads full of potholes and glass, with no bike lanes, and cars unwilling to share the roads. Thankfully, I knew the city well enough to direct us straight to our hotel, a rather plush Mercure that I had managed to book online for about a third of the rack rate. We headed into the city for dinner and the previously mentioned trip-best beers, before we had some lovely red at a local wine bar, and then a few more beers at a rowdy pub. It was a Friday night after all, and believe me when I say that despite what EuroTrip may make you believe, Bratislava is not a bad place to be at that time of week...

During the night I ran into the paparazzi. Maybe this is the guy that photography the Princess last week??

Today, Day Twenty, we continued through Slovakia following the Danube for the morning, although it looked distinctly different to normal. First it became extremely wide, so that the far bank was barely visible, and then it became like a huge lake filled with islands. Just after lunch with the locals (no English anymore), we absolutely flew down a path by the side of the river with a HUGE wind at our backs, meaning it was no trouble for me to cruise for 45 minutes at 30 to 40 km/hr! We then left the river and hopped from one country town to another, before reaching the point at which we had to cross from left bank to right, and therefore from Slovakia to Hungary given the river marks that border.

Upon entry into Hungary we realised that its roads are much less bike friendly than Slovakia’s, which now seemed highly developed in comparison. We passed no less than 20 “no cyclists” signs on the road into Györ, but we had no choice as it was the only road that existed from the border! After checking into the hotel, we went straight into town where we stumbled across a beer festival in the centre of the city, which had drawn an enormous crowd of thousands in the main square, with tents surrounding the square selling a huge variety of (presumably) local beers.

This seemed ever so appropriate given the last few days, so you can imagine how our night unfolded..! Well actually, we somehow avoided getting sucked in and instead enjoyed lovely Hungarian food in HUGE portions at a nearby restaurant. I guess we aren't that predictable after all!

But it was a stark reminder to us that we are indeed still deep in beer country, and how thankful we are for that.

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BEER SCORING RECORD

		DAN	JIM	ALAN	PARRI	TOTAL
TIMOTHY TAYLORS	HULL	7	7	7	6	27
STELLA ARTOIS	FERRY	3	9*	6	4	17
HEINEKEN	HAARSTEEG	6	9*	6	9	28
BRAND	VENLO	5	9*	8	7	27
LINDEBOOM		5	9*	6	5	21
BAVARIA		6	9*	7	7	27
GAFFEL KŐLSCH	COLOGNE	7	9*	5	2	19
BITTBURGER	KOBLENZ	4	9*	8	4	21
BITTBURGER2	MAINZ	6	9*	8	6	27
TUCHER	ROTHENBURG	5	7	4	3	19
LŐWENBRAU	PASSAU	6	5	5	6	22
OTTOKRINGER	LINZ	5	4	6	5	20
STIEGL	VIENNA	8	6	7	7	28
PILSNER URQUELL	BRATISLAVA	8	8	7	7	30

*Scores invalid; replaced by average of other three.