Are you local?

Scenes and voices from recent beer travels in Bohemia, Bavaria and Brussels

Very traditional interior and the beers are chalked up on a board at the side of the bar. There is a considered hush about the place, no music, just people’s voices and the hustle and bustle caused by the bartender cleaning up. A couple of friends sitting on the small table in front of me are doing selfies and drinking Rotbier. A tube above the bar presumably runs from the cellar to the serving taps. A woman sits at the corner of the bar with a dark beer nearly finished and is scrolling on her phone. A middle-aged couple sit next to her, ceramic mugs full of beer. The mugs are branded with the brewery’s name but I don’t know if they are regulars, or tourists who have bought them and want to drink out of them. (Hausbrauerei Altstadthof, Nuremberg)

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Lots of laughter, it’s almost like a boisterous hotel bar where locals go. Tales are told, of which I haven’t got a clue what they are on about, but there are plenty of laughs, jokes at someone’s expense. A trick done by the landlord with a straw, as his server said the foam looked rather sparse on the beers, so he swirled it around in the three glasses and the foam rose. Bavarian beer drinkers seem to be a critical and knowing lot. They hold up the glass to the light, they knock the glass with a metal scissor to get bubbles, they drink spirits and then toast each other. This is a very unique pub, the landlord is having one too. The bar server is constantly busy. Coke in a Dunkel!

‘You are here again and writing again!’

‘I had a book out.’

‘We remember you here before writing in your notebook, have a good night.’

He clapped his hands on my shoulder and off he went. I seem to recall that the guy who spoke to me had a roofing business. More shots of fire water are poured for locals. (Wirtshaus Hütt’n, Nuremberg)

••••

Guy on my table, talking in English to a friend about a woman who he says has been shit to him. A really strong post-split up obsession. ‘I should be quiet,’ he says, but he isn’t. Music in background, Mr Broken Heart continues, arms making a statement, then they go outside for a smoke. After a few minutes they return, ‘my mother is a fucking mess’, more family therapy going on. ‘Whenever something happens negatively in my life I look at myself — and in my head maybe this has how it has gone in my relationships,’ a pause, ‘I think I am emotionally immature, though I give a fuck about my dog’. (Dva kohouti, Prague)

••••

Four men in their 50s come in, all in black voluminous coats and beneath they wear black tops that have zips in them, two order red wine and one has possibly a gin and tonic, the other has nothing. They are silent apart from G&T man who occasionally whistles and taps his glass with a finger and looks at his phone. At the table behind them, the one nearest the front door, a man who could quite possibly be in his 70s, sits reading the papers with a glass of tea that was brought to him by the young woman behind the bar. Back to the men in black, the one nearest the window has a woollen hat on and stares straight ahead and doesn’t seem to say much. The G&T man is talking in French with the man opposite him. And then they are off, maybe they are brothers, all wear trainers, the one with the hat has a crucifix-shaped earring, they look like monks or maybe hooded crows. (Billie, Brussels)

••••

The puppet-like figures hanging over the entrance remind me of a photo I have seen of a mass hanging of Serbs by Austro-Hungarian troops in World War One. Left hanging as a warning to encourage the others. A man comes in, bald head, and says hello to various drinkers, locals presumably, and then brings me a bowl of salty snacks. Yes, I like this place. (Poechenellerkelder, Brussels)