967 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...: Day 30 - Nuestadt to Regensberg - Get It While It Lasts... A Big Loop Through Europe 2017

September 6, 2017

967 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...: Day 30 - Nuestadt to Regensberg

A short day today into Regensberg. We have arranged to stay with Richard Schorr, the father of a Warm Showers guest (Andreus Schorr) who we hosted in Canmore back in May. Call this Warm Showers once removed.

Today's theme, until the end, was pretty much beer.

We had another good German breakfast in Bad Grogging (about 3 km from our campsite), and then set off down the road. It was cool and overcast, and pretty soon that turned into a light rain. The previous day we had seen several tractors pulling large trailers loaded with what looked like long skinny tree branchs covered with leaves. We couldn't figure out what they were, until today.

Hops. This is Bavaria where beer is king (and far cheaper than water, soft drinks and just about anything else you would think of drinking).

We were pedaling through Hop fields which from a distance look very much like vineyards. However the vines are trained to grow to about 5 m in height, then they're cut near the bottom, loaded into trailers and taken to a central threshing barn. After a marriage with some malted barley, presided over by the yeast, and witnessed by a vat full of water, you've got beer.

This is not a new process as we were soon to find out. At around 11 we finally came to the Kloster Weltenberg Abbey ... reportedly the oldest brewery in the world (until we get to the next Bavarian town that will purport to have one even older!). First brews in 1050 ... 967 years ago! And they've perfected the art.

The Kloster and Abbey were quite beautiful, and the rain stopped just as we got there. Fortunately the relatively early hour and the rain meant the place was not too crowded. K and I had a look around, the Church was over the top in baroque décor (they wouldn't allow pictures). Good thing Trump doesn't like to travel 'cause if he saw this he'd be doing a WH makeover to top it!

We had a good and early lunch of pasta with fresh chanterelles ... and a small beer. In Bavaria beer comes in two sizes, small 1/2 litre, and normal 1 litre.

The Abbey is also the starting (or end) of the Danube gorge, a 4.5 km section of the river with more or less vertical rock walls on either side. No roads, only ferries. We booked the 12:00 ferry downstream to Kelheim. We got out just in time. The sun was now out and there was an armada of ferries (ok only 3) packed with pensioners heading to the Abbey for lunch. No joke, each boat held at least 500 people. Our pleasant sojourn at the Abbey was all down to timing. Heaven and Hell were about to meet and we escaped just in time.

We made short work of the rest of the ride into Regensberg, a very beautiful medieval city, and found RIchard's place with no trouble.

We had a great evening trading travel stories and learning more about the area with Richard. Andreus had also told us when he stayed at our place, over a few glasses of red wine, that his father had a good cellar too. And he does!

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So today's beer theme came to an end over a few glasses of very fine Austrian red. So, a no brainer for Song of the Day:

Red Red Wine - UB40 edition