Friday Photo Favorite: Old Steel Mill

Kuchelbauer Bier Kunst Turm 2

If you remember our Hopfenland trip last year, you'll recall our visit to the Kuchlbauer Brewery...home of the Abensberg Weissbier Dwarves.

After our tour of the brewery, our viewing of the owner's interpretation of The Last Supper, an intro into Hundertwasser's architecture, and the singing dwarves (check out the video in the previous post, if you haven't), we next went on to climb up the Bierkunstturm (Beer-Art Tower) which is the centerpiece of the brewery.  

In fact, the initial plans had the tower at twice the height it stands today.  The city of Abensburg wouldn't permit it, and Kuchlbauer is today rather relieved, as the original tower plans likely would have bankrupted the brewery. 

For the history of the tower, please see our previous post.  This one shows you the walk up the tower.  

We start form the lower level, where our tour ended, and ascend the stairs to the top.  The stairs wind in and out of the tower, and each level has a theme, mostly featuring the ingredients to beer.  But before we start up the tower....more weissbier dwarves!

So we started our trek up the beer-art tower.  

And quickly begin to reach alcoves in each landing dedicated to key weissbier brewing ingredients. First up, Hopfen (hops):

 

Next we have weizen (wheat): 

At certain parts, the stairs wind around the outside of the tower. 

We have no idea what Hefe-Zolgl actually means...Zolgl doens't appear to be a real German word. But it relates to the yeast (hefe). Perhaps it's the yeast bubbles or something like that?

 

And of course the ever critical Brauwasser (brewing water): 

And Gerste (barley):

After the landings with the brewing ingredients, there were several other decorated alcoves. There wasn't a plaque explaining this one, but the round base says something about the brewer. 

This one had a stained glass window that seemed straight out of Dr. Seuss, and a statue of a white dwarf on a barrel in a round alcove. In here, the plaque says that, the smallest little house belonging to the "white" dwarfs of Abensberg has three windows of light. The openings of light stand for modesty, tolerance, and independence.  You should stand in the light to remember these values, and to be helped to live by them. Additionally, one of the windows looks directly onto the final resting place of Leonhard Salleck, one of the brewery's ancestors. 

This was a lovely room that basically was a giant kalleidoscope - a great idea with all of the colors and textures on the walls!

 
Here we could look down into one of the alcoves below:

Finally, we reached the top.  The dome is supposed to represent Paradise (but without the dwarves!). As explained earlier in the tour, they chose the flattene ball shape to to embody the earth "which we should not destroy, since our lives would also be destroyed."  Therfore, it's the symbol for our "paradise," the Earth.

In addition to the crazy mirror mosaic tree, it continually has classical music playing (Beethoven, if I remember correctly).

After paradise the final stop on the tour is in the beergarten, where your ticket stub entitles you to a pretzel and a Kuchlbauer beer of your choice. 

What is there left to say?  This was one of the most, um, unique tours Herr J and I have experienced.
Of course, our final activity was heading to the gift shop and getting a six-pack (one of each kind)!
For a million+1 reasons, this is a great destination on any trip to non-Munich, non-Alpine Bavaria.

Starkbier Tasting

Every year in the weeks leading up to Easter, Munich holds its other beer festival - Starkbierfest. 

This one is a lot of fun, because it still involves beer, chicken, trachten, and schlager, but it's much more relaxed and less crowded than Oktoberfest. Perhaps because there are fewer tourists, or perhaps because it's spread out over multiple venues and runs 3 to 4 weeks.  Whatever the reason, it's a lot of fun!  However, this festival doesn't have all the rides and carnival games and food....no, it's all about the beer. And the beer is strong!

Starkbierfest at Paulaner am Nockherberg

The origins of Starkbierfest date back to the mid-1700s, and starkbier itself a hundred years earlier. The monks at Paulaner started brewing this "liquid bread" (flussiges Brot) and drinking it through Lent, when they had to fast.  The Bavarian rulers of course turned it into a public festival, and Starkbierfest was born. 

Today, many breweries produce a Starkbier, which basically is a doppelbock. Though the "strong" in "starkbier" refers to the wort, it is also worth noting before you head to a festival where beer is served by the liter, that it's also quite strong. Usually around 8% ABV. 

The most popular sites for Starkbierfest are Paulaner's am Nockherberg and the Löwenbräukeller.  There are others, and of course restaurants from most major breweries (Augustiner, Ayinger, Hacker Pschorr, etc) will offer their starkbier seasonally. For some reason, most starkbiers have names ending in -ator, such as Celebrator (Ayinger) or Maximator (Augustiner).

But, we rarely have a chance to compare starkbiers head-to-head. So, we brought home the four we could purchase to go. Paulaner's Salvator is the best-known and is available year round. In fact, it was a huge hit in the Schnitzelbahn Beer Tournament, going all the way to the final four before losing to the eventual champion, Andechs Weissbier. Löwenbräu's Triumphator also is available year round in stores, but Augustiner's Maximator and Hacker-Pschorr's Animator are truly seasonal beers. 

In the first round of our Beer Tournament, we did have Löwenbräu and Paulaner in the Starkbier Round.  But we weren't able to get the others then. So now we have a rematch, with a couple of other competitors. 

First up was Paulaner's Salvator vs Augustiner's Maximator. Note the difference in color? The Paulaner was much lighter than the Augustiner. 

Both were excellent, and it was a split-decision. Herr J preferred the Paulaner, with its distinctive starkbier taste and sweetness. I preferred the Augustiner, which was seemed a little more balanced to me in both hoppiness (not very) and malt flavor. It reminds me of the Traditionsbier served in the historic Oktoberfest tents the past 2 years. And that was good beer!! 

 

Then we tried the Hacker-Pschorr vs the Löwenbräu...no contest. Much to our surprise, the Hacker-Pschorr was a very smooth, malty and drinkable beer. The Löwenbräu was a little bitter and just not so good. 

 

A fun experiment for a rainy evening. We're looking forward to Starkbierfest next year!

On a side note, an American homebrewer last year decided to walk in the Paulaner monks' path (and blog about it) and fasted for Lent, having only doppelbock.  You can see his adventures at Diary of  Part-time Monk.

The Great Towel War

Probably the biggest stereotype about German tourists is the one of the German father who gets up at the crack of dawn to lay towels on the best lounge chairs by the pool for his family, then leaves for several hours of sleep, breakfast, and siteseeing.  

And it's a particularly strong stereotype among the British tourists, who have fought against the Germans for decades in The Great Towel War. Since the 1960s, this war has been fought summer after summer in Spanish resorts. 

In 2005, German attorney Ralf Höcker researched Spanish and German laws, concluding that leaving a towel on a chair was not legally binding.  Obviously this had no impact, as two years later a Welsh tour bus driver took matters into his own hands.  After two days of taking the towels off the chairs, dumping them in the pool, with the German tourists getting up even earlier to claim chairs, he set fire to the towels. 

A few years ago, German travel agency Thomas Cook came up with the brilliant idea to allow its customers to rent a lounger for €3 per day.  You can also rent your strandkorb on Sylt for the day, so I'm not really sure why more places don't do this. Seems like an easy solution to a common conflict!

Anyway... we saw this old Carling beer commercial on a German TV show last night, making fun of the stereotype.  I'm sure we could spend a week or two talking about the stereotypes about other tourists...especially Americans...but for now we'll just enjoy Carling's clever use of this one. 

Friday Photo Favorite: Streaking Sun

Maybe this happens more often over here, or maybe I'm just noticing it more now.  But for some reason, we've had a number of instances where the clouds were "just right" to let the sun streak through in rays that just look cool.

Outside my office window in Munich:

At the Stuttgart train station:

At the Munich Ostbahnhof (east train station):

Nice work, Mother Nature.  Keep it up!

Friday Photo Favorite: Sunset over the Marsh

My favorite part of coastal South Carolina? The views of the marshes. 

And with a setting winter sun, we had gorgeous golden light. 

Macro Photography in the English Garden

Frau A and I spent another morning in Munich's English Garden.  After some "regular" photos, she spotted some caterpillars in a nearby tree and we changed to macro mode for them, a small smail, and a fly.

Note:  I replaced my old Olympus E-PM2 with the newer Olympus E-M5, and have the Panasonic 45-200mm lens with the Canon 500D close-up lens for macro (also using a flash in the hot shoe).

The caterpillars here are maybe 3cm long, and the fly perhaps 1.5cm.  The experts on dpreview.com forums are right -- focusing and DOF are very challenging.  But we're having a lot of fun learning.  My best 5 shots below.

Click on the shots to get a slightly larger version.

Caterpillar hanging from a thread (I like the bokeh and how it framed):

Fly on a leaf:

Caterpillar climbing:

Caterpillar and small snail on the same leaf!

Another fly - he didn't hang around long:

I will be trying the Canon 250D close-up lens on the Panasonic 45-200mm lens to get more magnification -- so we'll see if I can learn to improve focus, lighting, etc. in the future... 

If anyone has tips for us on technique, etc., feel free to leave a comment of course.