Plzn

We made a day trip to Plzn, Czech Republic for the Pilsner Urquell brewery tour. Driving in we saw many industrial buildings on the edge of the city. Surprisingly Plzn is a small town with what seemed like one tourist attraction, beer. The town itself wasn’t very special, sadly. Once there we parked in the brewery’s parking area and took the 2 hour tour. Our guide’s English wasn’t very good therefore he often stopped mid sentence to think about the rest of his point. Although the guide wasn’t very good, the tour was. We highly recommend visiting this brewery, if in the area. The man that started the brewery was from Bavaria and to this day the same recipe is used. So we drove to CZ for really good Bavarian beer we get in our neighborhood.

Joking aside, it was a fun day trip and worth it if you have a car. We bought two cases of Czech beer at Tesco (a UK grocery chain) to bring back. A funny experience at the store was trying to communicate with the employees and have them understand we didn’t want to buy the beer case (the actual case for the bottles). (In Germany (and Czech as well as some other EU countries), beer cases come with a deposit so people take them back for the money refund.) They spoke amongst themselves and decided to give it to us for free. We couldn’t believe how friendly these women were and their desire to help, especially with lots of hand gestures and miming. Sometimes it just takes going over the border for friendly customer service.