Is This a Beer Or Not a Beer ...

©Carl-Schurz-Haus

Red Baron likes to improve his English and came across The Freiburg Writers' Group. The participants I met at the Carl-Schurz-Haus are all younger than me, mostly students; some are native English speakers, and others speak Italian, French, or German. We talk around the table, have a good time, and do homework.

 
Here is what we're working with for the 19th of May:

Write out your favorite joke (or fairy tale or poem). Then rewrite that narrative as a tragedy, as a limerick, as a haiku, as a serious academic treatise, as a breaking news story, or as the script for a music video.

German beer specialties at the Black Forest Brooklyn:
Gaffel Kölsch and Köstritzer Schwarzbier

In some places in Germany, people are proud of their local beer. A good example is the Gose, a top-fermented beer brewed in the Leipzig region. Initially, the mixed ingredients barley, hops, and water (the mash )- were left open to the surrounding air, attracting lactic acid bacteria to start the fermentation. The resulting wash eventually transforms into a beer with a slightly sour taste. Already young Wolfgang Goethe appreciated the Gose beer when he was a student at Leipzig University.

Everybody in Germany knows about the Weißwurstäquator (white sausage equator), which splits my country at the height of the Main River into a northern and southern part. However, further north, there is not only another west-east dividing line separating two beer-drinking regions, but also a beer-border triangle: Kölsch, Alt, and Pils.

In Cologne in the south, they brew and are proud of their well-known Kölsch, a top-fermented light beer the inhabitants of Cologne regard as the one and only beer in the world. 

Further north in the city of Düsseldorf, people sitting at the longest bar on earth proudly slurp their Altbier, a top-fermented beer too, but dark. 

Driving east, you will get to Essen, where, in the tradition of the former miners, men wash down the coal dust with liters of Pils, brewed in the Ruhr district as a bottom-fermented beer in the Pilsen style.


Breaking News: Native of Cologne Blows Beer Summit

This morning three men met for a beer summit in a pub located precisely at the point in the Rhineland where three "beer borders" meet. When the waiter approached their table and asked the man from Düsseldorf what he would like to drink, the expected answer was, "Bring me an Alt." 

Then the waiter turned to the former coal miner from Essen, who answered, "Gimme a Pils." 

When, however, he asked the Kölsch Jung, the man from Cologne, "What would you like to drink, Sir?" the answer was: "Serve me a Coke."

"But why don't you order a Kölsch?" the shattered waiter retorted. The answer was, "Well, when the other guys don't drink beer, I do not want a beer either."

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