Thursday, October 9, 2025 @ 7:27 PM in 2025 Oktoberfest Trip
The main focus of today was getting to the town of Plzen (Pilsen) for a tour of the world famous Pilsner Urquell brewery. The town of Pilsen is about an hour and a half train ride away, and the train we booked was set to depart the station at 10am. Since we had some time, we went out and got a cup of coffee from a place called "onesip". They had some really nice coffee, even though the place was extremely small, with only two spots to sit.
We made it to the train station with plenty of time and saw our train on the board. The problem was, there wasn't a platform number assigned to it. As it got closer and closer to our departure time, we were starting to worry about what was going on. There was another American couple next to us that were supposed to be on the same train. When the departure time passed and no train ever showed up, we thought maybe there was another bus reroute but couldn't find anything. We finally went to the information booth and they told us we can get on the next train that was set to leave at 10:35. This was cutting it a little close because our planned tour at Pilsner Urquell was for 12:15 and the new train was supposed to arrive in Pilsen at 11:58. Google was telling us it would be a 14 minute walk to get between the station and the brewery.
In talking to the American couple a little more while we were waiting for the new train, it turns out they live in Carmel, IN, the same town I grew up in and the woman went to the same school as my mom and also went to Purdue. Extremely small world. They were also set to do the Pilsner Urquell tour but had booked a 12:30 slot instead, so had a little more time to work with.
The ride was uneventful and the train got to the station on time. Fortunately it was a really easy walk over to the brewery and we got to the visitor center with plenty of time to spare. I really had to pee and all of the bathrooms on the train were locked or broken, so having a little time to go before the tour was great. The only problem was the guide who spoke English was out sick so the replacement was someone who didn't speak English. Instead of getting the info first hand, we had to download an app that acted as a virtual tourguide. It worked but would have been more fun to have the info given to us in person. Unfortunately the 12:30 tour was full or we would have switched to that one.
The first 3/4 of the tour was pretty normal with fancy marketing and some views of the bottling facility. Where it got really interesting was when we went down into the cellars and got to see where they used to ferment the beer where it was cold. They had some original barrels that they still ferment some of the beer in for quality purposes, to make sure it tastes the same as it did back in the 1800s when the brewery was founded.
The tour concluded with being served a glass of beer directly from one of the fermentation vats in the cellar. We got to drink Pilsner Urquell in its unfiltered form which is pretty unique. It was a lot more bitter and had more yeast taste, but was really good. After the tour, we were starving because it was about 1:45 and we hadn't had lunch yet. We made our way into town and found a Vietnamese place to get some food. We wanted another break from meat and dumplings and this sounded like the best choice. The food was not as good as it is back in the US, but it was vegetables and light and tasted good enough.
After that, we walked around the town of Pilsen for a little while before making our way back to the train station to catch our train back to Prague. Fortunately there weren't any issues and we were able to get in our train car with our assigned seats. Back in Prague, the sun had come out so we walked to the Astronomical Clock again. There were huge crowds of soccer fans chanting and chugging beer. There was quite a bit of police presence, so I guess those may get rowdy. We made our way over to the Charles Bridge, through some packed touristy areas, and then took some photos of the bridge from the banks of the river.
Rather than walk back through the crowds, we walked along some paths that followed the river basically back to our AirBnb. We got back here and I showered before we plan to go get dinner and meet with another brewing friend of ours who gets in late tonight from Berlin. For dinner, we're going to a meat shop around the corner that is supposed to make some fantastic sandwiches.
Teaser photos:
Posted from: Czech Republic