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For those of you that were wondering what brought us to the small towns on the itinerary this week, we have one word for you. BREWERIES. Now, as Wisconsin girls, it's not like any of us actually need to learn about the process of brewing beer. But, these towns hold some pretty historic and famous breweries, so we had to go! Freising is the home of the Weihenstephan brewery, and if you've been to the Stube with us, or any other German beer hall, you've most definitely had these beers as an option.
After a not too long but very hot uphill walk, we arrived at the brewery just in time to find out we'd be joining about 40 South Koreans on this tour. Fortunately, they were quite sweet and not the loud, pushy tour groups you can so often run into in Europe. Most of them seemed most interested in the tasting at the end, but let's face it. That's 90% of brewery tour participants the world over!
The tour was a little less than an hour and was mostly about beer making, which most Wisconsin natives could give a speech on, so there wasn't anything too new there. But Weihenstephan does claim to be the oldest brewery in the world, so I'll believe them!! At the end of the tour, we returned to the tasting room and everyone got a small weißbier glass and then bottles of the Helles, Hefeweizen and Vitus started making appearances. They just used .5 liter bottles for the tasting, so the four of us were handed about 2.5 liters total. Plenty, thank you! They also gave us big pretzels. Which all American breweries should do. Hint, hint, American breweries.
After a short stop in the gift shop type area, we went back to the biergarten that the other three had found the day before and had one more beer. At this point, the beer and the heat had us wiped out, so we headed back to the hotel for a siesta, or whatever the German equivalent of that would be.
Once we were a little more rested, we hopped on the city bus and headed over the the Dom, or the local cathedral. If you've seen any in Europe, you know. They're all beautiful. Being personally used to the ones in Spain, which are typically ornate inside and out, it was very interesting to me how plain the outside of German cathedrals have tended to be, while the inside is still quite ornate. We walked around in there for a while, and then headed across town to a restaurant we had been told was good and had pizza.
I have to admit I was the first to be beered out, followed quickly by Steph. My body just doesn't handle German beer this many days in a row!! So, she and I got some wine, while Erica and mom soldiered through with the beer with our pizza. Mom almost got us kicked out of Germany by asking for ice with her beer (I really thought the young man who was waiting on us was going to rip his soul out in front of us to see how she'd killed it!), but we're still here. :) The pizza was AWESOME, and basically we were wiped out again, so we headed back to the hotel to pack up a little and get another good night of sleep. As we were not really in town, it was nice and quiet. Tomorrow, off to Kelheim!
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