For the first time on this trip we are having to plan on dealing with wet weather. Today wasn’t supposed to rain, but we ended up with some spotty rain. On top of being wet the temperatures have fallen into the 50’s again during the day, and into the high 30’s at night.
We started the day by heading into the city to check out the town square. It was another nice town square with a good representation of Baroque and Renaissance buildings that are well preserved.
We gave the square a look from all 4 quarters, and since this is not a town focused on tourism did some real shopping in the stores lining the square. Instead of the normal tourism stores and restaurants the stores here were clothes and shoe stores. Ton has been casually looking for a jacket and a pair of shoes to take home. She didn’t find anything, but enjoyed looking.
While she was shopping I popped into a bank and got a couple thousand Czech Crowns, just in case we need to pay for something in cash. Most of central Europe has not joined the Euro and having to deal with Crowns, Forints, and Zloty’s every time you change countries is a pain.
But we didn’t come to Ceske Budojovic to shop or because of its beautiful town center. We came to visit Budvar Brewery which produces a beer called Budvar Budweiser and they claim they are the true Budweiser, but a little American company called Anheuser-Busch disputes that.
Like all of these kind of things it is complicated. Ceske Budojovic has been a beer brewing town since the 1200’s, and brewing has been a mainstay of the economy here since then. The town always had a mix of Czech and German inhabitants, the Germans called the town Budweis.
In 1795 a group of German residents formed a brewery called Budweiser Burgerbrau and were successful. In a trip to Europe in the mid 1800’s Augie Busch discovered it and decided to brew a beer of a similar style in St. Louis calling it Budweiser. That business worked out well for him as all of us Americans know.
In 1897 a group of Czechs got together and formed a competitor to Budweiser Burgerbrau called Budweiser Budvar Brewery. Since then there has been a great deal of jousting in courts around the world, and in the court of public opinion over the use of the name Budweiser. To make things even more fun Anheuser-Busch acquired the former Budweiser Burgerbrau brewery in 2012 and produces a beer there called Samson. Budweiser Budvar cannot use that name in North and South America and is marketed as Czechvar in the Americas. But in Europe you will see both the American Budweiser and the Czech Budweiser Budvar on the same shelf.
While the story was complicated, the beer tour was fun and the beer is very good. We took the English language tour with a couple from Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, and a daughter and father from Hungary. So of the 10 people on the English language tour I was the only native English speaker!
When we came out of the brewery it was raining steadily so we splurged and took a Bolt (Uber equivalent) back to François to settle in for the night. Tomorrow and Saturday are supposed to rain all day so we will see how hardy we are feeling.