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Monday, October 19

Four people took three different ICE trains to get to Bamberg. Marg and Hector were there first. Well, I suppose Dr Stan was. He was in London overlapping with the author the previous Saturday. A night in Koln was followed by a Sunday arrival at Bamberg. Hector re-acquainted Marg with the Altstadt and more importantly, the location of Schlenkerla.

After the first goulash soup of the trip, Marg was abandoned and Hector met up with Dr Stan who had just ordered a small lunch at Faessla (Oberkonigstrasse).
Howard was nowhere to be seen. Steve, expected last, was next arriving and quickly insisted that Herr Kalb change his room to a less smelly, non-smoking one.
We went to Schlenkerla, Howard was sitting in the first table as one enters...we couldn’t miss him.

Ah, the Urbock! The king of the rauchbiers!

This was part of the reason why we were here. The first time I had this at source was pure chance. It was Marg who spotted the sign on the wall the last time the October school break was this late.

Then we met the hairy chap from Leipzig whose English was as good as my Deutsch! We bonded. It came to pass that Can remain his favourite band of all time… a very intelligent chap! Then we discovered that we also had grown up listening to all the German bands that nobody else, including the Germans, really bothered about. Novalis, whose Konzerte album is finally out on CD, Grobschnitt, Jane, Tangerine Dream, Neu, Michael Rother et al…

How many to have? Was the Bock on at Keesmann? There was no point crossing the town to find there was none. The Blackberry was called into use. Hector phoned Keesmann. After “we did the litre” at Schlenkerla there was a taxi across Bamberg. Hector’s foot was still an issue. Indeed how many words precede this and no mention of the injured foot?

Keesmann Bock. It is cold and it is beautiful. It’s colour is very fine. If there is a better bier than this then heaven help us all when we find it. However, Dr Stan insists that the Urbock is better and so the search for the perfect pint must continue. Keesmann Bock is well above 6%. It drinks like 5%. This is why we were here. Was Hector last out? He may have been...by that time he was sending deliberate gibberish to the fans across the continent exclaiming the virtues of THE Bock. Even Bernard fell for: “Stan walked to Keesman, what did he finf?”

“He finf ein pfand!”