Pilsen – This Could be Heaven or This Could be Hell

Be careful what goals you pursue because you might eventually get them. Pilsner was completely different from Prague, and as such, I should have loved it. I was able to arrive in Pilsen after a short train ride by 9 o”clock in the morning. I would have a full day to explore the city without rushing from place to place as I did in Prague. More importantly, the streets were almost completely empty of people as I exited the Pilsen train station. This emptiness extended through out the city as I wandered about Pilsen through out the day. I saw only two buses unload its tourist cargo in Pilsen and that wasn’t until 5:30 in the afternoon.I never saw any of these people again. Somehow the small city managed to swallow them up. The only other tourists I saw all day were a few small gaggles of young men entering or leaving drinking establishments, and even smaller groups of older men who seemed to be looking for the same places.

Otherwise the atmosphere on the streets was one of empty stasis.

Outside the train station I was gratified to see a large map of the city. I knew my hotel’s address, but hadn’t determined specifically where it sat in the city. This was going to be easy! (It turned out that Pilsen was one of the few Eastern European cities where I found such maps). I studied the map carefully. Noted the street where my hotel was located. Noted on the map where the map was located, and saw a river on my left which seemed to match a river on the map. Then, and only then, I….proceeded to walk in the exact opposite direction of my hotel. (I think if the map had been turned around to face the grass rather than the sidewalk I would have understood it better).:-)

I then walked for about 20 minutes. Since on the map, my hotel was only 6 blocks away, I developed a vague notion that something was going wrong. I looked around for someone who I could ask for directions, but the streets were completely empty in this part of town. I kept walking since the most primal part of my brain was telling me, “When in doubt, press on.” Finally, I saw an old man walking under an umbrella. I asked him if I was close to the address I was seeking. He looked at me with a kind of surprised terror. He couldn’t speak English. I continued to ply him with questions he clearly could not understand. All I accomplished was making this poor soul extremely uncomfortable. At one point I mentioned the Courtyard Hotel. His eyes lit up a bit. “Kurtyart Hotl” He pointed back over my shoulder. He made pushing signs with his hands over my shoulder. “Kurtyart Hotl” he repeated three times. Then, and only then it finally sank in. I had to retrace my steps. I walked back to the map. I tried to make like my arms were the hands of a compass, but really, I had no idea of North from South. Then a secular miracle occurred. I saw two uniformed policemen crossing a side street about a block away. Now knowing that “Courtyard Hotel” were the enchanted words that led to instant comprehension, I intoned them solemnly while raising my eyebrows when I caught up with the policemen. The older policeman smiled and said nothing, while the younger policeman, speaking excellent English provided me with a rather detailed description of the least complicated way to arrive at my hotel by going over or under the various streets. (Have I already mentioned elsewhere that you should rely on young people rather than old people when asking for accurate directions in Eastern Europe?)

I found my hotel and began to explore the city. I soon learned that it was all pretty much empty. The main square? Empty. The shops? Open but empty. Occasionally I’d hear some traffic in the distance.

It was quiet. Perhaps too quiet. In Prague I would have considered the absence of people and the resulting stillness to be heaven sent. Standing in the middle of it, however, I felt something very different. For a moment I thought I had stepped into the lowest depths of Dante’s Inferno. Yes, the upper reaches of the Inferno are crowded, hot and noisy, but at the very bottom of Hell Satan and the worst sinners are frozen in ice, with the only sound coming from the soft beating of Satan’s wings as he futilely tries to escape his icy prison. Dante can not interview the sinners there because, unlike Satan they are completely encased in ice. Only Dante and Virgil can speak, and they don’t linger here very long. I now knew how they felt.

I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. Oh good, people! Two middle aged men were entering a side door of an old stone building. It was the Pilsen Beer Museum.

Pilsen was allegedly the birthplace of Pilsner beer, and the home of what some believe to be the best Pilsner beer in the world, Pilsner Urquell. The museum seemed like a good place to start my research into the city’s history. While it was filled with all the old beer making equipment you would expect in such a museum, I was a little surprised by what the museum told me about Pilsen’s reputation for making great beer.

Beer had been made in Pilsen since the Middle Ages, but the beer was top fermented ale rather than Pilsner beer. Sometimes the brewing of beer was restricted to only a handful of individuals, but by 1800 anybody could make beer in their homes and sell it in Pilsen. Human greed being what it is, many brewers watered down their beer or made it with potato peels and other suspect materials. Pilsen became notorious for creating lousy beer. The city’s shame became so well known that in 1838 the city fathers dumped 36 barrels of the local swill in the town square, and passed legislation that banned all home breweries in Pilsen. In their place they set up a town brewery which utilized clean, new equipment, and followed stringent quality controls. At about the same time, Joseph Groll arrived in town with a new method for making beer that fit in well with the clean, new equipment. He brewed beer with bottom fermenting yeast that required cooler than room temperatures to do its work. The unwanted microbes that previously infected top fermenting ales were more easily avoided with the new method and equipment, and the resulting beer was consistently clean, light, and clear. Pilsner beer quickly became a world wide success. Three or four town breweries were soon established in Pilsen and operated during the rest of the 1800’s. Capitalism being what it is, these town breweries began to absorb each other, and today there is one large brewery making Pilsner beer in Pilsen, “Pilsner Urquell”.

What do you do in a town where the only action appears to be the local brewery tour? You go to the brewery.

Unfortunately, when I arrived at the brewery I learned that the next tour in English wouldn’t happen for another two hours. I have taken a number of brewery tours in the past, and have a clear idea how beer is made, so, rather than spend two hours sitting around, I circumvented the brewery tour and walked across a little plaza to the brewery’s pub where I expected the brewery would be providing free samples. The pub’s tables were filled with people, who after hearing them speak, I guessed were from a half dozen different countries. A young guy and girl were busy washing out used glasses and pouring small 8 ounce glasses glasses of pale yellow beer. I picked up the beer and was about to turn away when the bartender held out his hand. I was supposed to pay for the brewery’s “sample”. I paid and looked around to see how the rest of the crowd was taking this turn of events. Everyone seemed to be glowingly happy. One man was holding his beer up to the light in order to admire its bubbles. Another was holding his tiny glass with two hands. People were drinking their beer and nodding appreciatively. They had traveled from all over Europe to taste this beer fresh from its source. For them they were drinking beer ambrosia, the nectar of the barley gods. I thought to myself that this beer must be pretty damned good. I had spent part of the prior spring and summer exploring the Capital Region’s Craft Beverage Trail, and after getting my beer passport stamped by 37 different locations felt that I would know a good beer when I tasted it. I raised the glass to my lips, and took a quick sniff. Not much odor. I swallowed about half of the small glass and….and …Holy Cripes!! It tasted a lot like Budweiser, or Coors, or even Pabst Blue Ribbon. This wasn’t a unique craft beer. It was mainstream boredom. OK it didn’t taste exactly like Budweiser, but close enough for me to find out if they sold anything else. The brewery did make a dark beer and that was all I drank for the rest of my stay in Pilsen. I guess I shouldn’t have been as surprised by the conventionality of this brewery’s beer since nearly all North American mainstream beer is made using the same Pilsner method. When I walked out of the pub, I decided that one day in Pilsen was enough for me. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking for something interesting to photograph. There were some sadly underutilized parks, and I stumbled onto someone’s birthday party, but it certainly wasn’t enough for me to want to extend my stay, and I was happy to hop on a train to Kalovy Vary, (Carlsbad) the next morning.

Karlovy Vary turned out to be a very different story!