Linz and Beer

Last Thursday, frustrated by Vienna's rainy persistence, a group of us ventured out to Linz on our first real (albeit brief) trip. Our goal: The Thor Bräu Brewery in Ottensheim. The train out took about 2 hours and we were too late to secure a compartment. Unfortunate. Wandering around Linz, we located a store called Vom Fass that specialized in fine oils and whiskys. We couldn't help but stop in...

A number of small casks of various fine whiskys. Very exciting.

My favorite

After leaving the store we wandered over to the large plaza nearby and talked to a tourist info office about how to get to the brewery. Pictures ensued.

Plaza

Fun bit of graffiti

Then after a close call with a bus that almost took us completely out of the city, followed by a nice walk through town, we got to the brewery

This is just happy captured in picture form

It's a fairly small operation, but the beer was really good. And cheap! They were rather surprised to see us there, apparently they get few tourists. An old, rather eccentric gentleman took interest in us and started talking about how he had been to California and how they want Austrians to take Schwarzenegger back (he's ours now, dammit). He bought us a round, which we were happy to accept.

Sorry about the quality, the guy who took the picture for us, while quite nice, didn't have the necessary skills

Ottensheim at dusk

After we finished off our beers and food, we headed out to find that we had missed our bus back to the train station. Damn. When calling for a cab failed, two (awesome) people from the bar drove us to the station where we just barely made the next train back to Linz (we'll pay next time, promise). Thanks, random bar dudes. We caught our train back to Vienna, and enjoyed a nice post-brewery nap on the way. Waking up, we realized that it was still raining in Vienna. Damn. Oh well, at least I had some fantastic beer and got myself a rather tasty souvenir: