Snow + Plzen

We had plans to go to Plzen, a city about an hour west of Prague, on Saturday to visit the Pilsner Urquell factory. There were about 14 of us going on the English tour but we split into smaller groups to make traveling there easier. On Saturday morning, after waking up to see it snowing outside, John, Danielle, Kyle, Paul and myself took our time leaving to get to the bus station since our tour did not start until 4:00pm and it only took an hour to get there. We got to the station at noon trying to catch the noon bus but it was sold out so we bought tickets for the 1:00pm bus, grabbed some lunch, and then jumped on the bus and were in Plzen by 2:00. We were dropped off at the opposite end of the city from the brewery which worked out because we had two hours to walk through town before the tour. We bought our tickets for the return journey to Prague and planned on leaving Plzen on the 6:00 bus at a station closer to the brewery.

The town was really pretty and it was nice to be outside because it was snowing on and off, even though it was really cold. We walked by the second biggest synagogue in Europe which was awesome because now I have now seen #1 and #2 after seeing the biggest one in Budapest! Of course it was Saturday so we could not check out the inside but the outside was pretty nice. From there we headed towards the brewery and came upon St. Bartholomew Cathedral which was in the middle of a really large square. We went into the church and also climbed the stairs up the church tower. From the top we could see all of Plzen with snow on the rooftops and we spotted the brewery where we were headed. After coming down, we headed to the brewery and arrived there to find the jubilee gate at the entrance, the symbol of the factory. We were a little early so we roamed around the gift shop and also got some hot chocolate at the huge restaurant that was downstairs; apparently it is the biggest restaurant in the Czech Republic.

The tour started at 4:15 and we were not allowed to take pictures unless we paid for a photo pass so I don't have any pictures from inside. Our tour guide took us to the bottling factory first where we saw several assembly lines that washed recycled bottles, moved bottle caps, examined bottles, filled bottles, and we also saw the workers down below making sure everything ran smoothly. From here we watched a video about the beginning of the Pilsner Urquell brewery and how the founder of the brewery invented the pilsner style of beer. We learned about the hops, barley, and malts that go into the beer and saw the old factory where the beer used to be made. At this factory they make Pilsner Urquell, Gambrinus, Kozel, and the non alcoholic beer Radegast. He then took us to the factory where they currently make the beer and we saw the huge copper vats where the beer is heated and stirred. From here we walked through part of a huge network of cellars that used to house the kegs of beer before they were ready to be sold. This is where we got to taste some of the Pilsner Urquell beer before it is filtered. The beer was pretty good and this concluded the tour. At this point we realized that it was 5:45 and our bus was picking us up at 6:05 at a bus stop that we weren't quite sure the location of and we still wanted to go to the gift shop. We quickly scanned the gift shop and picked some things out and gave ourselves about 10 minutes to run through the snow to find the bus stop. We are getting pretty good at frantically running to catch buses so John, Danielle, Kyle, Paul, and I ran through the streets for about 10 minutes in the direction we were pretty sure was right and finally arrived at the bus stop to see the bus coming our way. The ride home was just long enough to take a short nap and they also gave us hot chocolate.

We got back to Prague at 7:00 and decided to get some food at a Mexican place at St. Wenceslas Square. The food was really good and when we came out of the restaurant it was snowing pretty hard and there was a lot of snow on the ground, much more than I am used to in North Carolina. We threw snow balls all the way home to the pension.