A group of about 24 people made a visit to the local brewery here in Darmstadt, the trip was organised by Ed from EUMETSAT.
The tour around the brewery was very interesting and we all gained an insight into the world of beir making. The tour guide did a great job considering she did not speak much english, but luckily one of the group stepped forward and translated for us – a big thanks to the translator. We were shown how the beir is produced (bottom fermentation as opposed to top fermentation process – its all in the yeast), followed by a walk around the bottling plant. Darmstädter brewery produces around 50,000HL of beer a year, that is a lot of beir but compared to the other main local brewery (Pfungstädter produces circa 300,000 HL) is a small amount. Some smaller breweries bring there beir in tankers to this brewery to make use of the bottling plant, Darmstädter brewery has special equipment for cleaning and filling flip-top bottles.
No trip is complete without a bit of “tasting” as the tour guide called it, we were led into a small room with 3 rows of tables and served a plate of wurst mit brotchen (cold suasage with bread rolls). To help us digest the food we were plied with several glasses of beir, well you have to try all the different types …. Pils, Zwickel, Maerzen (Dark beir) and Dunkel Weizen (wheat beir).
A big thank you to Ed for organising a very impressive tour!
Once again crates (20×0,5l) of Oktoberfest bier can be found in the Getränkemarkt (drink shops), this year I was especially pleased to find the local Profi Getränkemarkt was selling Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Märzen bier.
I may not be able to get down to Munich for the real fest, but here in Haus Richards we are doing our best to enjoy the bier !
This section will have information on future projects that the family will be undertaking.
One project currently in the planning is looking for a cheap run-down house with land that we can do up, we started looking in France where old property is very cheap but have since turned our attention to the east of Germany where there are many properties with circa 2000sqm of land going cheap.
Watch this space for further developments.
Finally the 2009/2010 Rugby season has started, no more talk of football.
Last night I watched the first game from the Magners League live on Scum V, Cardiff Blues v Edinburgh at the new Cardiff City Stadium home. . An average game with Cardiff making lots of mistakes, they struggled in the first half but managed a last minute try, missed the conversion and ended losing 21 – 22.
I was really hoping to watch the Ospreys play against Connacht, I will just have to wait for the highlights from Scrum V on Sunday. Reading the reviews the Ospreys had a great game winning 12 – 19.
Most of our holidays have been in Europe, this summer we went to the Ziller Taller region of Austria.
In October 2007 we traveled by night train down to Livorno in Italy for the week, we managed to visit Pisa and spent a day conquering Rome by foot!
Summer 2008 we had a wonderful camping trip to Normandy, staying just outside of Mont St Michel – well worth a visit. Then we moved on to the UK and on the last night our tent was destroyed in the night by a major storm that blew along the south coast. In the early hours of the morning we were sat in the car laughing our heads off ! Not sure why but the whole thing seemed hilarious, at least none of the family was hurt.
Who knows where we will be going next year ?
Since moving to Germany the family have been doing many sport activities, these include Rollerblading, Cycling and winter Skiing.
Last year I went to watch an old-boys Rugby tournament and enjoyed it very much, I got chatting to one of the players and was invited to join them for training.
One year on and I have played in several games and go training regular.
Our youngest son, Mark, has also been getting involved in the Rugby training and in August 2009 started training with Frankfurt SC 1880 U18s. Looking forward to watching him in his first game!
Now that we have a dog the main activity will be walking.
We moved to Germany in April 1998, we only intended to be here for a couple of years but have now been here for 11 years !!
Our three children have been going to the local German school instead of an international school and have learned German, there English is pretty good as this is the language used at home. Sometimes it has been difficult as the kids have argued with each other in German as they know we cannot keep up with them.
On Saturday 22nd August 2009 we visited a Tierheim in Frankfurt that had advertised several Cocker-Spaniel mix puppies for sale.
My daughter and Debbie chose one the Tierheim had named “Honey”.
- You guessed it his coat was honey colored with slightly darker random patches.
Cocker-Spaniel mix
Thursday 27th August 2009 is the day we gained a new member of the family, he was 8 weeks old and very scared but he soon settled into his new home.
Debs has decided to call him “Sam”.
Welcome to Dave’s World, my place for family news and other interesting stuff.
A group of about 24 people made a visit to the local brewery here in Darmstadt, the trip was organised by Ed from EUMETSAT.
