Misadventures: Good German Beer?

In addition to all the usual reasons to travel to Europe, including history, culture, sightseeing and fun, there is another benefit to Americans who have yet to turn 21 – the seeming lack of any enforced drinking age.

On my first trip to Germany, I was a few weeks away from reaching that all-important milestone in my life, and I had every intention of taking advantage of legally drinking good German beer.

Oh yes, I had had beer in the States, but it had always been limited to whatever I could score at parties or convince older friends to buy for me. It was the typical mix of Budweiser, Coors and Corona – but I knew there were better beers out there. In Germany, I wanted to find them.

My first opportunity came in the town of Bacharach, which sidles up against the famous Rhine River. I had just visited a medieval tower with my family, and the climb to the top had left us all hungry, so we glanced in a few shops before finding a mom-and-pop lunch counter.

Inside, the friendly, middle-aged couple greeted us in English, and we ordered sausages and potatoes. Next to the cash register was a refrigerator with a glass door – and it was chock-full of beer.

Each shelf was devoted to a different brewery, and all the labels were in German. I was able to discern many of the words (lager, bier, braurei, wasser and hopfen). The pictures on the labels consisted of everything from country landscapes, old buildings, a monk with a stein and coats of arms.

My anticipation grew as I imagined what my first sip of true German beer would be like. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it had to be special or people wouldn’t make a big deal about it. Being 20, I was of the mindset that more is always better, so I reached in for a one-liter bottle that was only €2.50.

The woman working the counter popped the top off, and I joined my family at a small table. My first taste of the beer was sadly anticlimactic, and it didn’t taste all that different from anything I’d had before. Nevertheless, I drank the whole thing.

The two owners came over to our table to ask us how the food was, and we spoke with them a bit, and the woman asked, “Do you want moisture?”

We all stared at each other, and she repeated herself. My dad pointed to the condensation on his water glass and said, “moisture.”

The woman looked confused, then picked up a bottle of mustard.

“Mustard,” we said.

“Moo-staard!” she shouted to her husband, and he repeated it several times. Apparently a mystery of some sort had been solved.

But there was another mystery, and that was how I had just consumed a liter of beer, and was not feeling even the slightest buzz. At that time, a liter was enough to get me well on my way to intoxication, and I was really starting to wonder why this German beer, which I was told had higher alcohol content than American beers, was having no effect on me.

I examined the label a bit more closely, and read, “Clausthaler.” It sounded very German to me. Then I read the smaller print underneath the eagle logo. “Premium Alkoholfrei.”

I sat back in my chair, utterly defeated. I was 20 years old, a quarter of the way around the world, and I had just wasted a perfect chance to drink a German beer by buying something alcohol-free.

Since then, I’ve had many excellent German beers, and even sometimes fancy myself a beer snob when it suits me. I have found that there is definitely a difference between the average German beer and the watered-down stuff crowding our grocery stores like refugees over here (see – beer snob), and having a bottle of lager in Munich while the 2006 World Cup was going on made up for my first feeble foray into the world of legal drinking.

The Tower on the Rhine

I had to climb it. I’d built forts as a kid, so when I saw a real one, I had to explore it. Never mind that I’d done that for much of the past week. The Rhine River is full of towers and castles as it winds through Germany, and I wanted to see as many as I could.

I stared up at the tower, which loomed above a small park, its masonry strong, but showing its age. In the shadow of the centuries-old building, children slid down a slide and played on a swing set. The small town spread out below the hill.

The oaken door was invitingly open, and I stepped through, to the chagrin of my family, who didn’t seem to care as much as I did to climb another tower. Aware of their reluctance, I paid the entrance fee (50 cents per person) and started climbing.

The tower’s many levels were a museum of medieval weaponry and artifacts. Sets of black armor hung along a wall, pikes and halberds standing between them. Swords, daggers and crossbows were displayed in glass cases in the center of the square rooms. I think there were some butter churns and pottery and junk too, but who has time to look at that when there’s a battleaxe in the next case?

My parents and sister were softening up to this attraction not listed in any of our guidebooks, and were actually slowing me down (because they wanted to see the butter churns and pots).

On the top floor, I passed a small alcove where the curator sat, reading a magazine. He came out to talk to us, overjoyed to practice his excellent English. He asked us the usual questions – where we were from, how long we were in Germany, etc. We made some small talk, then he asked us to wait and scurried off.

When he returned, he held an old leather-bound book in his hands. He set it down on an ancient-looking table and opened it.

“I found this a few years ago when I was cleaning,” he said. It was the original guestbook from when the tower was opened in the 1920s.

“You see,” he continued, “they go all the way. There are many Americans in here.” He flipped through page after page, and there were, indeed, many Brits, Americans, Germans, French and Italians, among other nationalities.

“Then we had a problem,” he announced, turning to an entry dated 1940. It was the last entry until 2002, when they started again in earnest. It was as if the intervening years had never happened. There were new entries from Brits, Americans, Germans, French and Italians. I smiled and signed my name and the date of my visit.

The final level of the tower was its roof. I stood between two of the ramparts and took in the view. The cloudless sky was a brilliant blue, contrasting with the stark green banks of the river, which were dotted with buildings and farms, crops growing on the gentle slopes.

It was easy to see how the tower could be used to exert power. Sitting on a spit of land jutting into the river, there was no way a boat could pass without its lord’s permission. Like many of the towers along the river, this one probably served as a customs checkpoint on what was the main economic thoroughfare of the time.

It was lunchtime, so we left the tower, saying goodbye to the friendly curator, and found a restaurant.

I would love to tell people where the tower is. The only problem with that is that I have no idea. All I do know is that it is somewhere on the Rhine between Bacharach and Bingen.