Since I am in Europe, I wanted to take the opportunity to go visit some friends who had moved to Germany a few years ago. I met Nick Chambers through my work at Link Transit and my electric trolley project. Nick was a freelance journalist at the time who specialized in Electric Vehicle technology and actually lived right in Wenatchee. He wrote a fabulous story about our project for Scientific American (on-line version) and actually make me sound pretty intelligent with his editing. Thank you Nick!
Nick is married to a German wife and has 2 children. They decided to move back to Germany, mostly to take advantage of the country’s policy of providing a FREE college education to their citizens. What a concept. Anyway, they live outside of Augsburg in Bavaria and I went to visit them.
My trip trip started with the always exciting trip on the Bullet high speed train to Augsburg. I stayed in Augsburg, but made arrangements to meet the Chambers the next day. My visit happened to coincide with Augsburg’s local version of Oktoberfest so that is where we went! Not nearly as big as the huge festival in Munich, but very enjoyable. The weather was a little rainy so that kept the crowds down which as OK with us.
We did what you are supposed to do at Oktoberfest, the celebration of beer making….We drank beer, and ate pretzels too. Nick also explained to me the German Beer Purity Law of 1516. This states that beer can only be made with water, malt, barley and hops. Other than that, it cannot be called “Beer”. So Germans just call other variations something other than “Beer”. A “Shandy” is beer and lemonade. A “Diesel” is beer mixed with Coca-cola. That sounds rather disgusting, but we tried it and it was actually pretty good.
Next, we went to the Riegele Wirtshaus for some authentic German cuisine and more beer! Nick said the the Riegele Wirtshaus was the last brewery in Augsburg that had not been bought by corporation and was still family owned since 1884. Good all the way around.
Lastly, we went to the Chambers house to see where thy lived. It was on the outskirts of Augsburg in the country. Very nice. The visit was too short, I was hopping on the train the next day, but it was great to have seen them and know that they are doing well.