A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
Some daytime beers are more memorable than others, even when at first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything at all memorable about them. It probably has to do with the setting.
In the fall of 2006, my band of intrepid beercyclists spent a cool, overcast Friday morning peddling the dedicated bike routes (ah, the joys of civilization) southbound from the Czech border near Znojmo, through the pastoral region of Lower Austria called the Weinviertel. Our ultimate destination was the Danube River, where we’d join the Danube Cycle Path, a veritable superhighway of pleasurable riding.
Just after lunch, we rode into a small town with a railhead where we intended to hop a local train for the last few miles into the city of Tulln, situated on the Danube. First there was the little matter of a much needed sag, and some restorative food and beverage: A bowl of goulash, a couple of lagers and some vital post-ride commentary and analysis.
The local family-run restaurant wasn’t busy. There was a friendly waitress willing to tolerate our halting attempts at speaking German, news showing on the television, and a warm, inviting atmosphere for stew and refreshment. As we ate, three schoolchildren stopped by and went straight to the bar – for gargantuan ice cream sundaes.
No one so much as batted an eye. In America, a do-gooder would have called 9-11 or child protective services. Fortunately, we were in Europe, where sense might yet be common.
We paid and rolled down the street to check the afternoon rail schedules. Across the way was a small neighborhood tavern, ideal for idling for a few minutes more before departure. Over at Rick’s, the barflies were chatting, smoking and conversing. Sports coverage was on the tube. Two mud-caked workingmen were medicating, and while they may have been kicking back at the conclusion of a long day, I got the impression that their drinks may have constituted break time between ditch assignments.
Eventually we boarded the train, stowed the bicycles, and enjoyed the brief commute to Tulln. As it turned out, a Friday evening regional wine festival awaited our rapt patronage, as well as an inauspicious brewpub with good unfiltered “zwickelbier” and heaping platters of pork and sausages. A leisurely ride into Vienna began the following morning.
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Looking back on that day, my thoughts invariably return to lunch in the small town, and our drinks at Rick’s. It’s the little things in life that matter, and counter-intuitively, those are the days you’ll often remember – perhaps not the precise details, just the sensation of experiencing fun and authenticity sans the hype and chest-beating and retweeting that seem to accompany every sip of an adult beverage these days.
A mug of beer, a loaf of pumpernickel … and whomever you’re sharing them with, alongside a corresponding thought: How many times have I personally enjoyed such a timeless tableau in what I consider my natural habitat, the corner watering hole? There have been hundreds of communions, here and abroad. Life seldom gets better than these.
When you’re a tourist, it is a blessing to take time from your own life and experience complete detachment from normal routine; better to have a daytime beer when and where you like while observing the normal everyday routines of others. It can be participatory or voyeuristic. If the act of escape requires another beer or even three, it doesn’t matter one jot if the ensuing nap takes you through the afternoon. After all, you’re on holiday.
The point is that one is not bound by the foolish convention of only drinking beer in the evening. Rather, beer can be enjoyed in natural sunlight. According to the Bible … or it may have been WC Fields:
“When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things and devoted my attention to daytime beer drinking whenever the opportunity presented itself.”
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Later during the same trip abroad, there was a second memorable episode of daytime beers, culminating with Happy Hour in the restaurant car on the EC-22.
It began with two rainy noontime hours spent within the confines of Vienna’s Westbahnhof, enjoying a train station lunch of Weisswurst and “chili con carne” (i.e., the same goulash as always with Mexican-style seasoning) before adjourning to half-liters of fresh draft Zipfer Urtyp and a roomy place at the stand-up counters at the imbiss facing the central hall.
By the time the sun reappeared, it was 14.00 and the train was west of the city, half an hour into an eight hour journey to Frankfurt. It was a providential signal to visit the restaurant car for scenic libations and a paperback novel.
The train was making good time across the well-ordered Austrian countryside as I savored a Konig Ludwig Hefeweissbier. Mind you, wheat ale isn’t my favorite beer style, but it was a viable alternative to the pedestrian Warsteiner available in bottles or on draft. In fact, my feet rested atop a full 30-liter keg being stored beneath the high-top restaurant car tables.
The long-distance express train was scheduled to make relatively few stops during the course of its journey to terminus at Dortmund in Germany, but several of them were clustered in western Austria right around 15.45 to 17.00, prime commuting hours, and the “regulars” – mostly men – came on the train for a beer, cigarettes and conversation, then got off again further down the tracks and could be seen hopping over to adjacent platforms to switch trains and finish their trips home.
All the while the pleasant vistas swept past, magnified by the oversized windows of the restaurant car. The attendant, a man in his mid-fifties dressed in an official uniform of dark pants, white shirt and red vest, regretted to inform me that the Hefeweissbier was gone, so I gritted my teeth and sipped Warsteiner, instead.
Later, when it was dark outside and lunch a distant memory, I strolled through the six seating cars separating the restaurant (located in proximity to first class, not the bicycler’s 2nd class wagon at the rear) from my seat and settled down to an epicure’s dinner of canned herring, black bread, and apricot jam, as purchased at a supermarket earlier in the day and packed for just the occasion.
Also in the picnic basket were two cans of Stiegl lager from Salzburg. They guided me into Frankfurt, where the following morning I had but one question for the desk clerk.
“When do the bars open around here?”
Germany. Now there’s a place for daytime beers.
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