Thursday, 26 March 2009: Neu-Ulm, Ulm, and Freising
Yesterday: Berg and Ehingen/Donau
(The complete Google Earth map of this week's adventures is available here.)
Paris knew that her meeting would run late today, so rather than take the train to Munich and arrive around midnight, she decided we should rent a car and drive there. So this morning Choo and I picked up a Volkswagen Polo — with a handy TomTom navigation device — at the nearby Budget office and headed for Neu-Ulm.
Fine German Engineering
We zipped up the B30 to Neu-Ulm and found Brauerei-Gasthof Schlössle. The beers were excellent, the food was satisfying, and the coffee was necessary.
Brauerei-Gasthof Schlössle, Neu-Ulm
After lunch, Christoph the "Lerner-Brauer" kindly gave us a tour of the "new" (2005) brewhouse.
Scenes from Schlössle
Not far from Schlössle is Brauhaus Barfüßer Neu-Ulm. It's one member of a small brewpub chain; the other two locations are in Ulm and Heilbronn.
Brauhaus Barfüßer, Neu-Ulm
Barfüßer Weiße, the highest-scoring beer on the trip!
Barfüßer's grounds abut the Danube River.
Ulm, from Neu-Ulm
Choo dips the Donau
With several hours to kill, we drove into the heart of Ulm and wandered around a while.
This monument stands on the site of Albert Einstein's birthplace, which was destroyed in the firebombing of 1944. The Albert Einstein Memorial McDonald's is visible in the background.
We encountered the former Brauhaus Drei Kannen, which is now a Gasthaus and Biergarten. They commission a beer from Gold Ochsen that's served under the Drei Kannen name.
Historisches Brauhaus Drei Kannen, Ulm
The B30 took us back to Biberach, where we picked up Paris around 7:00pm, then we were off to Freising. Most of the trip was on the Autobahn. For most Americans, Autobahn driving is exhilarating, the closest we'll come to driving a race car. It requires a great deal of attention and even more driving skill than on our freeways, and it's great fun. I got our VW Polo up to 180 km/h (110 mph), but the front end started feeling a little light, so I backed off to 160 km/h (100 mph) for most of the trip. We arrived at our hotel just after 9:00pm.
After checking in, we decided to visit one last brewery, the famous Brauerei Weihenstephan, just a couple of kilometers from the hotel. The oldest brewery in the world, founded in 1040, brews some of the best beer in the world. And the food here is pretty damn good too.
Bräustüberl Weihenstephan, Freising
A brief history of Weihenstephan
Weihenstephaner Tradition Dunkel
Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier
Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dunkel
Tomorrow:The trip home, uneventful, unworthy of an article
3 comments:
omg
despite a week of being dragged around all over in the rain and sleet and hail and snow 20 of the 24 hours in the day and being fed nothing but beer, potatoes, (and that one delicious dish that god wasn't supposed to see) -
i had the greatest greatest greatest time with my gak and his lovely wife paris.
i do say if you are going to germany to drink beer, there is absolutely no one better to do it with !
nope- no one.
love you kids-
thanks fer the memories, eh?
(ps- i like how you use "the front end was feeling a little light" as code for "we were about to get airborne")
So you'll be ready to go back the last week of June, eh? It'll be either Biberach again, or Ingelheim am Rhein.
oh
hell
yes
(but i will need four big jobs between then and now to make it happen . . .)
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