Avin a bubble

I was briefly in Athens for work last week but I did manage to fit in a bit of freelance beer nerdery too. Unlike Bavaria or Prague there's no handy beer guide to download so I had to settle for seeing what Ratebeer recommended.

The two hour time difference screwed my plans somewhat though, so rather than call in at the hotel first I went straight into town. After a bit of wandering aimlessly psychogeography I manged to find one bar on my list: The Pulp bar. It's close to the Acropolis museum so can be found even with only a print out from google maps.

It was dark and dingy with rock music playing, so my kind of place really. It even had heart warming graffiti in the bogs. 

ζήτω η αναρχία

I managed to get a locally produced craft beer here.The bar man enthusiastically explained to me that the brewery was so small it was practically home brewed. I managed to fix a grin on my face and consoled myself that at least I'd found something local.

No idea about the brewery name but I managed the beer name OK

The beer turned out to be pleasant enough, though of course murky. I do feel a bit sorry for countries without much of a beer tradition as they seem to think any non-industrial beer has to be murky. Though come to think of it the bar seemed to be selling more bottles of Fullers beer than anything else so maybe they're learning.

As the greeks have their own alphabet I was a bit concerned I'd have language problems but English worked just fine. Though British and American imperialism may have killed tens of millions of people it's not entirely without benefits to monoglots like myself. And a lot of greek doesn't seem half as foreign when it's written using the latin alphabet:

Though some is best left in greek:

I think this shop sold lottery tickets

I also got in what I assume was industrial filth as it didn't taste of grapefruit, but I don't know the breweries production and share ownership so can't be certain.

Fix Hellas seemed rather fittingly to be in the helles style i.e. rubbish. Fix Dark was a little better:

But not much.

Bergina beer was more like it though, having enough hops to overcome the inherent handicaps of brewing with under kilned malt and feckless lager yeast.

There's also lots of historical stuff going on in Athens that I got a chance to wander round.

And philistine that I am I did even get a bit of poetry going round my head. It was Shelly mind:

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"