I’m a big fan of layovers when there’s a worthwhile escape. If you find yourself in the Munich airport on a layover, or have time to kill before a flight, don’t waste time at the gate: head to the world’s only full-scale brewery and beer garden, watch the sports analysts diagnose the latest football game while sipping back martinis at a gin bar, or surf a wave instead of wifi.

Read more

When my tour guide in Erfurt met me at the hotel, I thought about sending him away. He was dressed, he said, in the typical habiliments of the beer crier, the man once employed to wander the town and announce which breweries were serving beer that week. I used to know a guy in college who was a beer crier and I didn’t like his company much, but I guess his beer crying over his girlfriend was a different sort of thing. The beer crier of Erfurt was an important profession from the 15th to 17th century when, at the peak of things, there were 583 breweries in the city, but only thirty, at any one time, would be selling beer. (It’s important to note that Facebook was not yet invented, hence a man on the street alerting others to the location of the party.) Read more