Beer in Eastern Europe

Greetings from Budapest, Hungary!

During the last 6 days we've been in Prague and Budapest and we've been drinking a lot of beer. There are a couple of reasons for that. 1. We both started to get really tired of awkwardly asking waiters for tap water at restaurants. 2. It's dirt cheap (especially in Prague, 30 czk, which is about $1.50, wasn't uncommon for 0.5 L, and that's in restaurants). 3. I really like beer. Especially Czech beer.

Apparently the Czechs love it too, because just about every other business on any given street had a Pilsner Urquell sign out in front of it. It got to the point where I was using them to spot restaurants when we were looking for places to eat. I think pretty soon they're going to change the name of the city to 'Prague brought to you by Pilsner Urquell.' I already knew that Pilsner Urquell was good, and of course its twice as good within 50 miles of the brewery, but it was just the best known of many great pilsners that are distinctive to the Czech republic. The best one was actually called Staropramen. Karen and I actually discovered this beer at a pizzaria in Prague recommended by Zach, Sarge, and Avi (also Lonely Planet). It renewed my faith in the potential for greatness in beer. It was the most crisp, refreshing, easy to drink malted beverage to ever pass my lips. I could have done nothing but drink it and eat roasted pork with dumplings all day. And it was less than $2 per half liter.

Even if you have the best beer in the world available to you at those kind of prices, any place where people like beer is bound to have a cheap alternative, and in my quest to explore the drink of the working man throughout the continent, I discovered Gambrinus in Prague as well. In some restaurants priced thiis around $1.25/0.5 liter. And it was no keystone.

Beer in Hungary has been good too, although not so dirt cheap. The cheap beer I tried was Soproni, which I drank throughout the election, and enjoyed thoroughly.

Anyway, we're heading out to explore the wonderful world of socialist realism, so thats enough about beer for this early in the morning.