Food, Glorious Food!

Ritter Sport Candy Sculpture

Sculpture in a train station isn’t particularly surprising, but a sculpture to chocolate? Oh my, yes. And the actual chocolate was inexpensive, mouth-watering and plentiful. Not only did this sculpture provide a great meeting place, but it set the stage for the sub-text of this trip ~ food!

Coffee and tea are available everywhere, as was the ubiquitous Starbucks; the locals drink bottled water, although the water from the tap is quite good. But Bohemia is famous for its beers and wines. Evidently (I know next to nothing about beer) there are two kinds of beer: Ales and Lagers. The difference is where the fermentation takes place; ales are made from top fermentation yeasts, while lagers are from bottom fermentation yeasts. In either case, the beer was unlike what I’ve tasted previously. The best pale beer I sampled was mild, bubbly and tart without being bitter; the best dark beer reminded me of a cola beverage. Both were yummy with the foods we were sampling. The wines were a bit of a surprise. I prefer sweet to moderately sweet white wines and had expected to be in Riesling heaven with a bit of Gewürztraminer, Spätlese, Auslese and, if I were very lucky, Eiswein available. At the first

Beer, wine & hot chocolate

restaurant we visited the waiter told me that he did have a nice fruity red I might like, but ‘real Germans’ don’t drink sweet wines, particularly in the Stuttgart region. Well fine. So throughout the trip I tried to prove him wrong, and failed. The Rieslings, while a bit better than OK didn’t have the floral nose, fruity flavor, crisp finish nor pizzazz that I had expected based on the German imports I’d tasted. Remarkably, not a single bottle provided in any restaurant was marked ‘Qualitätswein mit Prädikat’ (quality wine with specific attributes), nor could I find any in the grocery stores or wine shops. I also never saw on a menu or in a shop a Spätlese, Auslese or Eiswein; one of our group did get a Gewürztraminer and pronounced it unremarkable. The best find was at the Grand Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary (Casino Royale was filmed there). They served cups of hot chocolate; but not just chocolate. You could get milk or dark chocolate, chocolate with caramel, white chocolate, and a number of other combinations (I stopped reading at ‘dark chocolate’). The waiter brought a large cup of steaming hot milk, and a huge chunk of chocolate on a stick. You dunk the chocolate in the milk and swirl it around until it is completely melted. Amazingly good. It wasn’t uncommon to find several of our group relaxing with this concoction and a piece of cake at the end of the day.