Chris Bettini joins me from PubCultureBeerCations.COM

These are such amazing trips, I wanted to talk to Chris long form to really get the feel for how special these vacations are!  

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Lucy Chapman, and thanks so much for joining me
for Here's more and I certainly have so much more
that I don't know this. Just sit down, get yourself comfortable.
This podcast might take a while because you're going to
want to know some of this stuff. I've got Chris
Battini in the studio with me, Chris of pubculturebeercations dot com.

(00:21):
I'm going on a trip with Pubculturebercations, but we're going
to talk about it. Chris, tell me, first of all, welcome,
thanks for joining me. You tell me about pub Culturebercations
and if you want, how did it get started?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
So that's kind of a fun story. So I started
working in two thousand and six here in Omaha at
a pretty well known craft beer bar, the Crescent Moon
Naal House. And I actually got a job there because
I hung out and had a beer one night too
often and they needed somebody that could work in every
other Wednesday night shift. Is it really Yeah, I just
had one beer too often, and so I started working.

(00:57):
And as time going on, we have that German beer
hall in the basement called the Huber House, and the
owner Bill decided, you know, it'd be kind of fun
is to do a trip to Germany that people who
were customers and staff or whatever could sign up and
go along on. And I had never had a passport,
I had never gone anywhere. It's two thousand and eight

(01:18):
and I go for my very first trip. And to
say that, you know, the rest is history, is kind
of the rest is history because from there I went
back with that same group. He thought it was going
to be a one and done type of a holiday,
but everyone had so much fun. We did it again
in two thousand and nine, twenty ten, twenty twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Wow, I really liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
It just keeps going. And then there was an online
contest that was dealing with some Belgian beer and being
that we had just opened at that time our Belgian
beer bar called Max and Joe's Belgian Tavern Rip, it's
now just our party room because Belgian beer's not as
exciting everybody as all the new American craft beers, which
is sad in its own way. Different story, and so

(02:04):
I win this free trip to go over. It was
an online contest. I was named the US ambassador for
Goulden Droch beer in Belgium. So me and a friend
and then the guy who was the World Ambassador who
actually that year came out of Chile and his friend.
We spent a week hanging out with the owner and
sixth generation brewer of Browrie wen Steinberg and Ghent, Belgium.

(02:27):
And this is kind of when I'm like this traveling
and beer travel is kinda kind of cool. And so
I started looking at my beer bucket list of things
I wanted to do, and I had a calendar that
would just have awesome European beer events, whether it was
october Fest or the mickel Er Beer Festival in Copenhagen,

(02:49):
or the Tour Dagoose in Belgium, all these different festivals.
And then I would just watch airfare, and if I
saw some really cheap prices somewhere, I would look at
my calendar and say, ugh, this overlaps, we should do that.
And I would just start traveling on my own and
I would throw it out on my Facebook page. Hey guys,

(03:11):
I found this really great airfare price. I'm going to
go these days to these cities. If you're interested in
joining me, let me know, and there'd be three or
four people. We'd rent a car. I would calculate out
the price for the car rental, divide it get the hotels.
I would plan some stops and by using my Delta
AMEX or my United Visa card to pay for as

(03:32):
much as I could, I was racking up some extra
points and I would use that to try to get
my airfare for a little less. It was a nice
trade on a travel hobby to go see the world
and drink some beer and then lo and behold. I've
made some really good friends, mostly through the Netherlands, which
if anyone heard on kvab Emory just went with me

(03:53):
to the Netherlands. That's an area where I've really made
some great friends. And I've actually brewed four of my
my own recipes in the Netherlands with breweries. I've never
brewed a beer of my own recipe anywhere else but
in the Netherlands. I've gotten a note. I got in
on the front side of the craft beer scene when
there weren't a lot of American tourists and the Dutch are,

(04:16):
per capita, the tallest people on the planet and I'm not.
And so the short American guy showing up at beer
events randomly, in beer bars and in places around the Netherlands.
I kind of started to get known, and I know
it's kind of funny. And even if you go with
me into the anywhere, to the Netherlands. Ever, and this
happens everywhere Czech Republic, Germany. Now half the beer bars

(04:38):
are breweries I walk into. There's generally more than just
a handshake. There's hugs, there's a lot of laughing, there's
a lot of good friendships, and it's just you pick
up where you left off the last stop. So I
create a couple of beer recipes. The first one was
with a brewery in Amsterdam, the second one was with
the brewery in Harlem. The third one was another brewery
in Harlem. And it's called Browry, Alcha and Alcha in Dutch.

(05:02):
The tje is diminutive, so ool is an owl and
alcha is a small owl. And Robert is You're not
going to but it's kind of a It goes all
with the story. Robert's last name is Ulman. He's mister
Owl or Owlman, and their logo, unbeknownst to them, looks
a heck of a lot like the Tutsi pop owl

(05:22):
from the seventies. Mister owl, how many licks does it
take to get to the center of a Tutsie pop
and they didn't know it. They didn't know it, And
I've for several years kept telling Robert, we should make
a beer with Tutsi pops. Hey, Robert, we should make
a beer with Tutsi pops. Finally, when those overlapping dates,
me and my good beer traveling buddy Brady, we're hanging
out in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the Mickeler Beer Festival, and

(05:46):
we're hanging out with mostly the guys from Alcha and Yopen,
the Harlem breweries there there. We know them. And after
the festival we've got to the beer bars. We're still
hanging out and I'm like, Robert, we need it, and
He's like, Chris, what the is the Tutsie pop? The
candy never made it to the Netherlands. They had no
clue what I was talking about. So all this time
he's just like, yeah, yeah, Chris, Yeah, yeah Chris. So

(06:06):
instantly I pull out my phone. I show him the
commercial mister owl, how many licks it take to get
to the center. Oh my gosh, Now it makes sense.
So that was in April of seventeen. In October of seventeen,
I packed thirty five pounds I'm sorry. That's thirty five
kilos eighty five pounds of Toutsi pops between two suitcases.

(06:27):
One of them was a straight fifty pound suitcase of
Tutsi pops. I asked TSA if this is gonna be okay.
They said, we've seen weirder, that's fine. And that made
me worry a little bit. And so I take these
over and we brewed a Belgian style triple. Well because
A one, A two, A three, A free. And we
took out the liquid candy sugar. It's like it's kind

(06:49):
of like a brown sugar syrup. They used to the
center of the right, but they used this liquid, this
liquid Belgian candy sugar to give more for mentables. That's
how you get your higher alcohol Belgian beer. Oh, I see,
and that's where your triples come from. But I had
the idea with Robert to replace the liquid candy sugar
with three times the amount of sugar in the form

(07:11):
of Tutsi pops. So we put Tutsi pops into these
mesh bags. We throw it into the boil. It melts
all the way down. There's just a bag of some
chocolate goo that didn't melt as much. And all the
sticks that were still in there because they're in the
center of the candy and everything, And we made a
lollipop triple. And I put on my Facebook that fall,
I'm going back in the spring to brew my beer.

(07:31):
Who wants to go or to taste my beer? Who
wants to go back with? And instead of three or
four people, I had twenty people wanted to go. So
now I'm renting a bus, I'm booking hotels, I'm making
plans for walking tour guides. I'm doing all this extra
leg work. But I'm also looking at this income coming
into my personal checking account, and I kind of got
a little worried that Uncle Sam might want to know

(07:53):
where that all showed up from. So I went ahead
and I filed and got my LLC, I got my
tour operators insurance, and out of necessity love of beer
traveling whatever pub culture beercations was born. The name kind
of comes from a saying a lot that I would
with my friend Brady and I We had always talked

(08:14):
about pubculture. It's what you see when you travel. It's
different than just going to the tourist locations. It's different
than just going to out of the way places. When
you walk into any good beer bar in the world,
and I know there's whiskey bars, and there's cocktail bars,
and there's wine bars. But as opposed to those beverages,

(08:37):
beer is the common man's beverage. It's affordable, it's kind
of that working class mentality. It's that everyday beverage. So
when you walk into any good quality beer bar, beer
hall in the world, and you belly up to that bar,
sit down at a big table with newfound friends or whatever,
and the person to the left of you could make
ten times as much money as you make, and the
person to the right of you could make ten times less.

(08:59):
But for the price of that pint, that half liter
of beer, you're now equal for the next thirty minutes.
That's how fast you drink, but thirty minutes. And as
you sit there and talk with your newfound beer friends,
you start to realize the world's not that different. We
all complain about the same things, road construction, garbage pick up,
never you understanding what the weather's going to do. Why

(09:21):
people want to be politicians. Although I try to keep
political talk out of my beer drinking. It never ends
well usually, but you start to realize, no matter where
you are in the world, we're all the same. And
I kind of got the idea that if we could
travel and hang out a little bit more with the
locals and the real people, the everyday guy, and see
that world from a different perspective, maybe we can make

(09:43):
it a little bit better over a couple pints of beer.
And if I can encourage people to travel and open
their minds and open themselves to new ways of thinking
and just new ideas and at the same time realize
that we're not that different and we can make the
world a little bit smaller, why not. And that's kind
of the philosophy behind pub culture murcations is to travel

(10:07):
and see things, but to do it with a little
bit more of that common, everyday person's point of view.
And as you do that, you really do get to
see the world from a different perspective. And like I say,
explore the world one pint at a time, because as
you do that, you're gonna see things from a different
point of view.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
You know, Chris, as I'm listening to you talk, one
of the things that I love about pub culture burications,
and you know I do because I'm teaming up we're
gonna go on a trip.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
We're going.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
So what I'm hearing you say is that you've got
all of these other vacation groups, tours, trips that you
can take. But the difference, the real difference, what stands
out about pub culture bercations as opposed to anything else
is that it's it's I don't want to say there's

(10:55):
a mission, because it's not an actual laid out mission,
but there's a full lot. There is a feeling behind this,
and you're taking this trip and we're going to talk
about some of the things while you're on a trip.
You're taking this trip and you're meeting not just the regulars,
but you're interacting with the guides, with people who work
at the hotels, with people who drive the bus. Is

(11:17):
you are actually a part of that community while you're there.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yes, very much so. And when you go in a
lot of these other companies that.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Are out there and and.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
I'm not either, and you can look at there's there's
kind of three camps of group travel. You've got the
what I like to call an a la carte. You're
pretty much paying for the bus and the hotels, and
they'll have tour guides every morning, or I should say
tour leaders every morning in the lobby of the hotel,
and you can say, well, I'd really like to go
to this museum or do that, and it's all you

(11:47):
pay separately for those events. So you leave thinking you're
paying one price, but you may come home having paid
more than you expected because you piecemealed everything. You also
have the very high end, all inclusive every meal. You
don't touch your suitcases. Everything's portered.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
We're gonna have to arrange that for you know what
I do.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Some of those porters don't worry. There's times when I
use them, but I don't think people want to have
me hold their hand from eight o'clock in the morning
till nine o'clock at night. And he're going here, and
then you're going to go into this area where it's lunch.
This is the recommended restaurant, but you're on your own.
The guide is getting a kickback, their meals free. They
might hand them some cash. There's a lot of back

(12:30):
and forth on those type of tours. And then one
of my biggest inspirations is everyone may have if you
like to travel. Heard of Rick Steves. Rick Steves, so
he had his Europe, Rick Steve's Europe TV show. He
has his books, travel books. His famous book to put
him on the map was called Europe through the back Door.
And in the seventies, I'm sure you could say that

(12:51):
a little differently than you can today, But that whole
book was how to travel and not get stuck in
the tourist traps? How did not end up standing in
a massive line just waiting to find out that the
museum was already sold out of tickets that day, or
where to go that you're not at the restaurant that
the menu was printed already in English. It's the same

(13:12):
menu seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five
days a year, and they're going to tell you it's
the best food in town. But it's really a tourist trap.
How do you go to the places where the locals
and the real people that you're trying to learn about
and learn from and experience go about their day to
day life. And that was really a Rick Steves philosophy,

(13:32):
And so from his point of view, I looked at
his tours. There's a Rick Steve's Travel company out there
and they do a lot of travels year round, and
what's included, what's not included? How much free time do
you get? And I started to kind of build my
trips around that type of philosophy. So it's in between.
It's not completely all inclusive, but there's plenty of things included.

(13:54):
So for example, it may be a day where it's
get up in the morning, go to the breakfast room,
where breakfast is included at every hotel we stay at,
and then we're going to have a walking tour, or
maybe if it's a nice flat city, a bicycle tour,
maybe we're going to take a canal cruise or a
boat ride or something, and then we'll have lunch, and
then the rest of the afternoon is free, and there
might be an optional meet up in the evening to

(14:16):
go to like three or four bars or pubs or
beer halls, ones that I know that if the entire
group walked in, we would fit, or I can make
it a reservation for us. There's other times where I
use digital Google Maps and I make my own maps,
and I hand everybody these maps every morning in the
links on the chats and things, And that's to encourage

(14:36):
you to break up into smaller groups. Because some of
the best pubs are the little ones that you're not
going to take a full group, And my tour's max
at thirty two and a minimum usually of around sixteen.
Sometimes there's a few less, depending on the tour itself
and how I can manipulate it and manage it without
the sixteen minimum people. But if I can give people

(14:57):
enough tools that they can go down the little side street,
stumble into a little cafe or bar and have those
conversations like I mentioned at first with those locals and
start to hear that the world's not that big, they're
going to walk away with a much more meaningful experience,
a much more meaningful and a memorable experience, and it's

(15:18):
going to change the way they think of things. And
you can't do that always as a giant group, which
a lot of other tours do. So part of what
I do is make sure that there's enough free time
in every day. So maybe it's a free morning and
now we're going to do something in the afternoon after
you've had lunch on your own, but it gives you
that time to customize. So you're an art you're an

(15:38):
art fan, you want to go stumble through an art
museum for several hours somebody else could care less, but
they want to go to a World War II history
museum or the museum of Natural History in that area,
and somebody else wouldn't like that. Maybe you just want
to do a little shopping, or you want to sit
on a terrace and watch the world go by and
people watch for a couple hours. But I have to

(16:01):
be able to allow people to customize their trips that way,
because that's what makes that trip yours. And so I
do plan, and I do give you a lot of
itinerary guidance every day. But part of the key philosophy
or the key planning that I do, is to make
sure that you also have the ability to customize what
you like to do, to make it fully your own experience.

(16:25):
And so that's kind of how it's grown into what
it has. And the first year was a trip in
twenty eighteen to the Netherlands. Then the next year I
did again back to the Netherlands. We did a trip
to the Czech Republic in August of that year. There's
a reason why those two are my most popular is
because there are places that I've gone to the most.
And then that fall I did a trip that was

(16:48):
a little bit of Belgium, Cologne and Dusseldorf, Germany, and
then back into Amsterdam. Now that was the fall of
twenty nineteen. I had four tours planned for twenty twenty.
In fact, I was supposed to get on an airplane
on March eighteenth, and March sixteenth is when they told
us there's no Saint Patrick's Day this year. And so
for two years it was a travelers sad. But in

(17:10):
that time a lot of my contacts, my brewery friends,
my tour guides, I was missing things. So I would
email them and say, hey, that dish at your restaurant.
I think I got it close, but it doesn't taste right.
And for example, there's a brewery in Bomberg, Germany. It's
called Schlenkerlet's the heller Trum Brewery. Schlenkerla is a smoked beer.

(17:34):
The brewery has been around since fourteen oh seven, oh wow,
fourteen os okay. I emailed the owner through Facebook and
I said to Matthias, I said, I'm trying to make
the Bomberger's Bible. It's a think of a kind of
a big sweet onion, like a vidalia, but a little different.
They hollow it out, They stuff it full of sausage,

(17:54):
they bake it, they put this wonderful smoked bacon on top,
and it served with a great or a sauce made
from the smoked beer and mashed potatoes, and it's a
heavenly little with a glass of smoked beer. It's great.
And I was missing and I couldn't get it to
taste r I was making them at home, and all
I get back is one message from Matthias. It says
try majoram and that made the difference. But I also

(18:19):
now when I go to Bomberg, they don't do a
lot of private tours. I get a tour whenever I
show up if I bring a group and we go
to Schlangerla. The last time we were there in the
summer of twenty twenty four, we had a private tour
from the former head brewer of forty years who had
just retired, and he gave us the behind the scenes tour.

(18:42):
We got to see the smokers that smoke the malt themselves,
We got to go down into the cellar. He poured
beer off of tanks into glasses for us. And it's
not something that everybody gets to do. But I've made
those friendships and those relationships, and now I get to
share those with other people, and that's what makes what
I do even more fun.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
And you've done that with your guides too, Yes, when
you turn the group over to the experts.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes. So for me, I can learn a lot about
a city and a country and a place. But I'm
traveling to so many places now with my groups. Netherlands,
you know, Czech Republic, Italy, Ireland, Germany. That goes on
and on. In fact, I'm leaving here this week to
take a group that'll be in Lubiano, Slovenia, Zagreb, Croatia,

(19:28):
and Budapest, Hungary during the Budapest Beer Week. If I
was to try to be the knowledgeable tour guide that
could tell you about the history and the museums and
what was going on, I don't know if I could
keep it all straight and do it. And also I'm
trying to keep everything planned and organize and arrange. That's
just one more level of doing things, the best thing

(19:49):
I can do. And I don't think everyone wants to
listen to me talk the entire day either. So if
I can find locals that are wonderful people and who
fit my kind of concept of tours, I like to
turn her over to them. So, for example, one of
my favorite tour guides that I've worked with in Prague

(20:09):
is Eva. And Eva was nineteen years old during the
Velvet Revolution, her and her twin sister. There's photos of
them of her standing on the front line at Wenceslaus
Square protesting communism. She was actively part of the fall
of communism. And now she's a tour guide.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
You don't get more authentic, No.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
You don't. She's an artist, she knows paintings, she likes
to have a good beer with us. She is the
Czech Republic, she is Prague, and so for her to
be able to share that with us. And those people
make me they almost they make you almost gotta choke
up when you hear their stories because they're so important
to the world, the fabric of culture and history and

(20:51):
what we do. It's those people that make my tours better.
And they don't just they don't just show up and
you their walking tour and take off, come to dinners
with us, They hang out with the group. Eva loves
to take people and go do more after the tour
is done. There was a group of women that were
talking about cookbooks in English on one of the trips.
So we get done with the walking tour, what does

(21:12):
she do? She walked them over to a bookstore. She
helped them find all the cookbooks. She helped them with
what the came back, hung out with us at the
hotel lobby bar, had a couple of beers with everybody,
and still told more stories. They want to share their city,
They want to share their passion for tourism and history
and culture. And when you find that right person, and

(21:34):
it's not just tour guides. My bus drivers are repeat
bus drivers. When you find a good bus driver, you
hold onto that bus driver. When you find a hotel
with a certain front desk staff or management staff, and
you build that relationship, you keep those relationships. And so
for me and for pub culture bucations, those are every
bit as important as the route that I create and

(21:57):
the places we go and why we go. There's also
those people who live there and it's their city, it's
their history and culture that they grew up and lived
and are walking away with and for them to be
able to share that with the group, that's what makes
what I do just as much fun because I can
sit back I've heard the stories several times, but every

(22:18):
time there's different questions from different people on the group,
or you can see how it relates to other people
and that group dynamic as you watch that form on
every tour. That's really really something.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
You know, while you were talking, I was thinking about
anybody who says they're at an age. You know, I've
thought about traveling, going over to Europe, or going to
the Netherlands, or going any place overseas, and I think
I could probably just do this myself. Well, I'm going
to tell you something, and I'm sure you've got a
lot to say about this too, But just as a

(22:51):
as a regular guy on the street that said I
can just do this myself, my husband and I did that.
We went to Paris and we had a lovely time.
We had a wonderful time, but the hotel was not right.
We made it work. They ended up putting us. We
ended up being in a pretty far away from Paris,

(23:12):
in another city, and we were going to Paris. We
wanted to go to Normandy. That was the one thing
we wanted to do, and we almost made it. We
almost made it so being able to say I really
want to travel, but this isn't this is something that
I want to plan. I want to do right, Let

(23:32):
you do it. You already know all of those.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Most of these places, I've already gone to them. I
found out that that hotel isn't the best hotel. I've
already found out that that town, while the tour books
make it sound amazing, it's better for a four hour
day trip than to spend the night.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
You know, maybe everything rolls up at eight o'clock at
night and there's just not much to do, and so
for that purpose alone, So what I've done allows me
to relieve a lot of that pressure for you. I'm
watching airfare. Now airfare is not included in the tours,
but I'm watching prices. I'm helping people plan, making sure
they look at is that a long enough layover? Is

(24:12):
that happening? I also give you that, Like I mentioned
the digital maps, I give you enough. Or if there's
something you want to do, all you have to do
is look in the town we're in and say, hey,
we've got a free afternoon, or we've got I want
to plan this one thing. I want to plan this
dinner and this symphony, or I want to go to

(24:33):
the zoo in this city because they've got a unique
animal and I love these type of It allows you
to focus on a few things to improve upon or
to enhance what I've already put together for you. But
also if you just wanted to sit back and relax,
I've probably thought of a lot of things that you haven't.

(24:56):
And I've traveled enough times that there's other things that
I mean, I roll with a full on, like five
hundred piece first aid kit. I've got slings and ankle braces,
and nobody really travels with that. But you know what
if you step off a curb at eleven o'clock at
night and you don't even know where to find a pharmacy,
what do you do? I have those kind of things

(25:16):
ready to help people while we're traveling. And it's those
little things, those above and beyond the stuff that you
don't think about. That's what I tell people. You think
about enjoying this place. Let me worry about the mundane
details that occupy so much of your time when you're
planning a trip, the little things, how are we going

(25:37):
to get from? Which subway do I take? What do
my itineries? If we're taking public transportation, are going to
tell you walk four minutes to this stop. Take the
number fourteen with the directional name on it of this
take it five stops, get off here walk If you
miss the first one, the next one is in fourteen

(25:57):
minutes or in six minutes or whatever. I give you
all of that. I want to give you enough information
and enough tools that you feel confident and comfortable and
ready to tackle.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Wherever we're at, explore and enjoy.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
And exactly so, let me take care of the boring details,
and then you can think about all the amazing food
you're gonna eat in Italy and you're gonna walk through
the Colisseum, and you're gonna go to the Vatican, or
you're gonna be in the Czech Republic and you're gonna
go to Prague Castle, the largest castle in Europe. And
then you're gonna walk across Charles Bridge because it's part
of our walking tour. And then you know all the

(26:33):
little things that you want to think about. You can
I want to look up my ancestry. I'd love to
know about my genealogy. I'd like you can think about
those enhancements while I think about the logistics.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
I had that conversation last night with my husband, I said,
check the Czeck with Probab Republic would be really cool
because I know for sure I'm at least twenty five
percent check. My grandmother was one hundred percent check. So
I want I could go and I could look up
some of our genieology. And he looked at me and
he said, why would.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
You do that?

Speaker 1 (27:03):
I said, well, I think it would be cool. And
he said it would be in a language you can't read. Well,
that's true, and I thought, wait a minute, that's true.
Then what would I do is But I know you've
got something an answer for that.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
There is, First of all, it's amazing today on the
Internet what translators can do.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
True, So you can read a lot of things very
easily using a Google Translate or stuff like that. So
there are some of those. There's also a lot of
groups and things out there that can help. But for example,
my tour guide Eva, one of the things she does
for people is she does genealogy research. So I can
put you in touch with Eva before we go to

(27:45):
the Czech Republic next August, and she can take some
basic information and she might be able to say more
than likely unless you know the city that your ancestors
came from. You came from this region, probably from this town.
And in fact, there was one gentleman on one of
our trips, in fact the very first check trip, and

(28:08):
he knew a lot of his genealogy and just in
excitement for the tour, passing back and forth information some
information to me. He happened to share the house where
his great great grandfather left from. Well, I just kind
of looked at where the bus was going six minutes

(28:29):
from that house down a highway, So I did. And
he'd made this joke that if I ever make it
to that house, I'm gonna do my best Pope impersonation.
I'm gonna kneel down and I'm gonna kiss the ground
of those front steps. So about a month before we
were leaving, I said, Bob, you better practice your genuflexing
because we're stopping at the house. So I pull up

(28:50):
this fifty five passenger bus with thirty six people on it.
We had some celebrity guides kind of like you going
with us. Some people in Omaha might know, uh, Jeff
Caturba and Tom Beca.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
I have heard of them.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, yeah, So they were on and actually Bob is
Jeff's cousin, so this was part of Jeff's genealogy as well.
And so we pull up. Everyone's getting off the bus.
There's some of their other cousins and things. They all
and I mean to hear Bob and his brother. I've
looked at this on Google Maps so many times. I
feel like I've been here before. And we're standing out
front taking pictures. He kisses the ground, and all of

(29:24):
a sudden, the local neighborhood watch or basically the lady
who lives there, is looking through the curtain trying to
figure out what's going on in front of her house
with all these people. So she opens a door. One
of the people on the trip spoke a little check,
very broken, but she did. She was living over there
and studying for a bit. They went and got their
their nephew who lived up the road. In a few

(29:44):
moments in conversation, we start to let them know that
this house it's been in her family since it was
in his family when they left. Then he had a
little jar of and he wanted to take some dirt
from the front, but that was the road dirt. She
without even speaking English, she kind of brushed his hand,
grabbed the jar, walked over and pulled back the multch

(30:04):
by her roses and took Now, if you're a gardener
like i am, that's the dirt, that's the heart, right,
that's right, this is my garden dirt. And this is
where I've put all of my blood, sweat and tears,
and with roses, there's probably some blood. Yeah. And she
filled that jar with that dirt and she gave it
to him, and there was like everyone's tear and everyone's
It was a beautiful moment because no communication was really

(30:27):
being able to do. It was all just done through
understanding and love and passion of this moment of this
house and what it was to two families. Bob went
back the next year on another one of those trips,
and we decided that we were going to stop because
he wanted to give her a photo of the moment
when they were there together. So we get there, we
knock on the door, she opens it again slowly, and
all she goes is America. She knew who we were. Again.

(30:51):
Those kind of things can only happen through giving people
enough time to be able to do those little bit
of researches for the trip and let me take care
of the details.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
And just so we're clear that was not because it
was Jeff and because it was Tom. You do this for.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
All of your lies. If I know somebody has a
little bit of history that they know and I can
point it in the right way, If I know that
we can make a stop somewhere that's easy enough to
do without completely deviating from the planned itinerary. Why wouldn't
we any One of those people on that trip who
had check ancestry could have done the legwork in the
research and found out their history and known those things.

(31:31):
But not all of us were, Bob, Not all of
us had done that research yet. But we got to
all experience that moment together. We got to see kind
of how that goes together, and so whether or not
that was your ancestral family home or not. To see
that relationship between somebody whose family used to live there,
somebody whose family still lives there now, and how that

(31:54):
all broke down. It's one of my favorite moments of
going on a beer tour. It stands out so vic
it In fact, when it pops up in memories, somebody
from the tour, even from twenty nineteen, is sharing that
moment because it was so meaningful for everybody to be parts.
Because it is only one person on the tour that
can can make something like that happen, it benefits the

(32:17):
entire group and it makes it happen.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
You know why. I absolutely believe that, because you're a
big softy. You love that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's great, you know, it just it
it makes you feel good. It's kind of like that
Disney movie moment. You know. It's like sometimes something that
makes you happy without knowing it's making you happy. It's
something that makes you feel It makes you realize again
the world's not so big. And it's those moments that

(32:45):
just make everything I get to do all that much
more meaningful.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Chris, tell me about some of the troops.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
So so far, the rest of twenty twenty five, we've
got in September, so we've got July. We've got a
seven day going to Ireland. It's actually got some kfab
listeners on board already. That one's for We call it
my Best of Ireland. It's a seven day so if
you can only take a week off work, it starts
on a Sunday, it ends on a Sunday. You can

(33:12):
fly out on a Saturday, show up a little tired
on Sunday morning, hit the ground running, fly home on Sunday,
and go back to work tired on Monday if you
had to. But it's a great way to save you
Ireland in seven days in September, there are two. I've
got a couple of new guides that are helping me.
They are people who have been on multiple tours with me.
Courtney will be taking a group over to Ireland for
an emerald Asle Big abercation in September. She's already been

(33:36):
to Ireland twice. She's been to the Zech Republic, She's
been in New Orleans, She's done several she studied abroad
for part of college, and then I'm going to the
Czech Republic this September with a group. In October, we're
heading down to New Orleans. So far my only US tour.
I've tried to do a few other ones in the US.
It's real easy to plan and go somewhere there's no
language barriers. You can jump in your car and drive.

(33:56):
You can get there. But New Orleans. There's something about
New Orleans that makes people want to go, whether it's
the music, the food, the craziness. But we do one
day for craft beer, one day all about cocktails, one
day all about dive bars. We go out to a
delligator swamp. We do a lot of spooky history and
haunted because it's one of the most haunted cities in
the United States. And then the crews that do Marti Gras,

(34:19):
they also do a Halloween parade and it's all the
wild floats and all the craziness that happens at Marti Gras,
but it's a more family friendly environment and everyone's in
costumes and it's a really fun way to get to
be part of that New Orleans parade scene, but not
the overdone insanity of Marty Gras.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
So you could kind of get into pub culture beercations
if you just wanted to test the waters a little bit.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
A little five dayer this October down to New Orleans
and that's my smallest My US trips are only twenty
people max. So it's a smaller group because you're doing
a lot of it just in one town. You're not
changing hotels, you don't have a coach bus. When you've
got that fifty five passenger bus. Thirty two is kind
of my magic number. But in this I go with
twenty people. Then in November back to Italy. Did that

(35:07):
last year, the first time I took a group to Italy.
Probably one of the most fun trips to get to
put together because there is something on a walking tour
and your tour guide tells you go ahead and grab
a seat, and you look around and it's a fallen
over column that's five thousand years old. I'm sitting on it,
I'm touching it, I'm walking through. It's on the grounds

(35:28):
where the Roman Forum and towards the coliseum was and
it's just all these crumbled pieces and yeah, you're walking
through and you're standing on them, and it's amazing. Went
through Pompeii, actually used the recommended Rick Steve's tour guides
contacted them so had high caliber. As we did a
guided tour through Pompeii. Blew my mind away. I mean,

(35:49):
this was not what I expected. It was literally a
full city that had just been buried and uncovered, houses,
building streets, bathhouses, everything. Blew me away. To go to
the Vatican, to go to the Coliseum to see the
statue of David, and then have a walking food tour
rather than just a group dinner. We would go through

(36:11):
the town and hear things and you would take a
bite of a traditional food here, and have a little
glass of wine there, and have a beer here. It's
such a foody type culture. We actually for one of
our lunches in Italy do a pasta cooking class. I
just watched Nice, Nice, and everyone right now is excited
about Italy because Tucci's got his show where he's walking

(36:33):
around Italy and doing food and stuff. So Italy is great.
That's this November and then in December Christmas markets and
that'll be Munich Salzburg for the Krompus. Not so if
you've ever seen Germany's and Austria's love of the night
before Christmas December sixth, when Saint Nicholas comes for them,
not the twenty fifth like us. The night before is

(36:53):
Crompus and it's very fun. We'll be in Prague, we'll
be in Dresden, we'll be in Nuremberg. But it's a
fun to see the Christmas markets and then getting ready
to launch twenty twenty six and twenty twenty six is
going to be a really fun year. We've got Northern
Ireland in the spring. In March, we've got let's see
if I can do it all in my head off

(37:15):
the top. In April, back to the Netherlands for another
Tulips in King's Day and all of that, and we're
going back to Slovenia Zagreb in Croatia in May. In June,
we've got and was also in May, one of my guides, Jeremy,
is doing a Bavarian spring break. There's a festival on
the Octoberfest grounds, as big and fun as Octoberfest, but

(37:35):
instead of seventeen tenths, there's only two, and instead of
five hundred thousand people a day, mostly international tourists, they're
mostly locals. And you get a more authentic feel of
Octoberfest with all the later hosen and the rides and
the tents and the mugs of beer. But you're not
sitting down with everyone from everywhere else in the world.
You're actually hanging out with locals. Better way of going

(37:55):
in my opinion. And then Courtney'll be taking a group
at that time to the Czech Republic. And then we've
got July, we've got stuff going back to Germany. We've
got Ireland, we've got in August a trip to the
Czech Republic with you doing a nice eleven days across
the Czech Republic. Yeah, which we're gonna have to drink

(38:18):
a check beer here. Shortly I brought some with me
and then in September I have an Ultimate Belgian beer
Fest or beer CAAs. Belgium is fun. It's a very
unique culture with beer. They had a prohibition way earlier
than we did, and they outlawed everything but beer because
at that time water was unsafe to drink, so beer

(38:40):
was good. Well, all the monasteries started making these stronger
and stronger, almost wine strength beers, and it's a very
beer and food paired culture, but it's also a very
history rich culture. We will do World War one and
World War two things. We will stop at flanders Field,
we will go to the Tynekot Cemetery. We should be
able to stop at Dunkirk, France and actually walk out

(39:02):
on the harbor where Dunkirk. We will go to battle
the bulch in Bastone, where I always check it with
Henri every so often. Henri was seven years old when
the SS soldiers kicked in their front door and made
the kids sleep on the floor and take over the
house during the battle, so you get a first hand
experience and stories and history of Bastone during Battle of

(39:26):
the Bulge. Henri then eventually joined the Belgian military became historian.
Now he does in his eighties these walking tours around Bastone.
He has a key from the museum there and he
gets to unlock a section of the of the woods
and we walk into a fenced off area. There are
still the remnant fox holes from Easy Company, the Band

(39:46):
of Brothers on the Road to Foy. They're only about
shin deep now because of all the time and forest
leaves and everything, but it is and when you walk
out the edge of the forest, if you've ever watched
the HBO Band of Brothers Road to Foy episode, there's
a white farmhouse that they see as they clear it's
still there. And you know, I'm not gonna say it
was a bad student in school, but I wasn't the

(40:06):
greatest student in school. But when you can stand in
a battlefield and all of those history books and teachers
told you that all makes a different sense when you
see it in real life and you realize it wasn't
just a battle like we think about a battle happening
miles away from each other. These people were hundreds of
feet away sometimes and it just puts it in a

(40:27):
different perspective. So we'll do Belgium in September. In October
we have a new Ireland route. This was Courtney, one
of my tour guides came up with. This is a
soloeen the Celtic Druid origins of Halloween, and so we
are going to be there over Halloween and we'll be

(40:48):
in Ireland doing a whole bunch of Celtic and Druid
and parades and the Broms Stroker events in Dublin, and
so it's a very Halloween e very spooky for all
those kind of folks. In November, try to remember everything
now it's getting out to look at my website, there's
nineteen of them. And then we finish off with some

(41:09):
more Christmas market tours as well next year. So lots
of things happening in the next year or so, a
lot of opportunities, so doubt if you if you have
time to go this year, I'd love to have you
join us. You can go to pubculturebeercations dot com and
see all this year's tours and all of the twenty
twenty six stuff. There's an email coming out to my
followers and then they'll be all on the website very
very soon.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
And you don't have to love beer, no, no, get beercations.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
No, not at all. I mean, first of all, I
have people who go who are not I've had people
go who aren't drinkers at all, and they'll take a sip,
they'll try it. Sure you know the way this tastes like,
you know, But it's not a requirement, and I don't
want people to think that it's all we do is
get up every day and start cracking a beer at
nine o'clock in the morning. And not that there's anything
wrong with that. There are people who get on our bus.

(41:53):
My buses are loaded, judge me. The buses are loaded
with complimentary water, soft drinks and beer. So there is
always somebody who gets on first thing in the morning
and decides, you know what, we're driving down the countryside
and I think I want to crack again. It's why
I look out the window of the Irish scenery and
usually once the first one goes, not far after the
second and third happened. But it's not a requirement. You

(42:13):
do not have to be a beer fan, but what
you will find out is how beer changed the world.
There is actually, and this is where my nerdy side
of being at the Crescent Moon for almost twenty years,
there are actually anthropologists who believe because of beer, were
no longer nomads. Once they learned that they needed grain
to brew beer. They had to stay in one place

(42:34):
long enough to harvest that grain to make beer. Beer
became a beverage you could drink because the water was unsafe.
By boiling the water with some extra ingredients and that
little bit of alcohol back then about three percent was
all it had kept the water safe so you wouldn't
get buggy and gross and water could kill you back then.
We have refrigeration thanks to the German brewers. We have

(42:56):
pasteurization thanks to Louis Pasture and the beer industry. It
was the dairy industry really. He was actually hired by
the beer industry to figure out how to make the
beer more shelf stable and be able to make it
so it can travel further. Now, we don't tell third
graders that because you can't tell third graders that it
was all about beer. And it does work for the
dairy industry, but it was actually Louis past year who

(43:17):
figured out what yeast was. We didn't even know what
yeast was until then. They knew it made the beer work.
They thought it was an act of God. If you
were a good person, things would happen, your beer would ferment.
But it was thanks to Louis that we have the
modern brewing technology. There's so many things that beer has
done over the years that that's the kind of fun
part where I get to say, you don't have to

(43:39):
be a beer drinker to see how this affected the
entire world. And so it's really fun that way.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Check it out online pubculturebeercations dot com. You can see
all of the vacations that are planned for twenty twenty five. Sure, certainly,
but also twenty twenty six. Chris, I cannot tell you
how this has been such a wonderful podcast. I have learned.
I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew everything

(44:05):
about your company.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
I've learned. I've learned a lot. But but but yeah,
we're gonna have a lot of fun and I'm really
looking forward to showing you the Czech Republic. It's become
one of my favorite places to travel. It's very affordable,
the average price of a half liter of beer in Prague,
which is the big city, it's about two fifty US. Wow.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah, we get in some of the different than here.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
We get some of the smaller towns, and it could
be buck eighty bucks seventy five for seventeen ounces of
a good beer. And uh and in fact, uh it's
it's one of the most affordable tours I can take
you on and uh, you'll have an amazing time. So
I'm looking forward to going with you and your listeners
and your and everyone from KVAB and KGr that signs

(44:46):
up and in fact, here I'm gonna hands you one
of these. This is a little bit of a small
Czech craft brewery from Prague. It's a logger called start
me Up Now do I.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
It's got a night head on it.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Part of that, yeah, So part of that is just
because it's an it's well crafted, that's the signs of
protein from the hops and things. Just drink through it. Yeah. Yeah,
it's a nice flavorful beer.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Oh that's really nice.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
That beer in my refrigerator has been stateside for about
eight months, so you can imagine when you're drinking those
extremely fresh how nice that'll be.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
It's got a little Chris fruity.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yes, a little bit from the hops, from the malts.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
You raise bees too, don't you.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, I do keep honey bees as well. I'm a
strange guy.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
So you are you gonna start making some honey beer
some meat?

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Actually you can do it. Actually, there is a honey beer.
It's called a bragget, and it's a beer where it's
half malted barley and half honey for the sugar. It
comes from the UK. So I could do a bragget,
but I don't want to be a braggart. And and
the other thing. I could make meat, but I actually generally,
when I have enough extra honey, I'll harvest it and

(46:04):
I'll sell it to people just as honey. And uh,
because you need about five to ten gallons of honey
to make me okay, and that would just wipe out
my whole stock. Because I only keep four little hives
in my backyard. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
So yeah, wow, you are a well rounded guy.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
So and beer can make me extra round it. But
I try to walk a lot and I try to
go to the gym, so I'm not that rounded.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Chris Patiti with pub culture beer, cass, pub cultures, pubculturebeercations
dot com altogether. Yes, and that's where you can find
out everything. Sign up right there at I look forward
to traveling with you and if you have questions, yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Emails there, yep. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram,
shoot me a message. Uh. You know, I if I
don't get back to you right away, it's probably because
I'm a different time zone. But that's okay. I'll get
back to here as quickly as I can.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Now you're off to.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Tomorrow, to Zagreb, Croatia.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
You're off to Croatia tomorrow. That's another one. I want
to see that. That's beautiful there.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
We have a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
You're welcome. Thank you, Lucy. Good chatting