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    Friday 16 May 2008

    A Little Bit Of Bamberg In England


    One of my readers, Hughie, lives in Bedford, which is just over 20 miles from where I live, but, I must admit, is a place I rarely visit. As of yesterday, though, I'm quite jealous of Hughie because I found out that Bedford's twin town is Bamberg, possibly the finest beer town in the World.

    I don't think various rauchbiers are available in your average corner shop in town, but the spring festival certainly appears to be an occasion where the beer flows freely if the pictures in the article are anything to go by.

    I'm not sure why Bedford is the chosen twin town of our beer loving cousins from Germany. I would imagine Bamberg should be able to do much, much better than choose the home of Charles Wells. Burton-on-Trent would surely have been a better choice.

    Actually in a delicious twist of irony I read that one of Burton's twin towns is called Rochefort, but is no relation to the Belgian monastery. It's a funny Old World.

    7 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Well, I admit that Bedford is no Bamberg with its Heller-Trum and Mahrs Brau breweries, but we do have Wells AND Youngs nowadays. And B&T just down the road. Plus a pretty decent beer festival (8th-11th October this year if anyone's interested)and, in the Wellington Arms, we have the best scooping pub in the East Midlands.

    Hughie, proud of Bedford

    Boak said...

    That even looks like a German beer garden!

    I'm always impressed by the German love of twinning. In Berlin a few years back we noted that the Charlottenburg district was twinned with Lewisham, a rather down-home suburb of London where Bailey was living at the time. Can't say we'd ever noticed the twinning when we were in Lewisham!

    Mark Edwards said...

    Hughie - I am aiming to be at Bedford BF this year. But I'm not sure about you being in the East Midlands?

    Boak - That picture is actually Bamberg. Prettier than any pub garden in Bedford I'm quite sure!

    Anonymous said...

    Yes, historically the Midlands starts at the Great Ouse.

    So I'm in the Midlands by about a hundred yards.

    Boak said...

    I should have twigged.

    Anonymous said...

    From a linguistic point of view, both Bedfordshire and, indeed, Hertfordshire are in the South Midlands dialect area ...

    Ron Pattinson said...

    Maybe the towns were twinned because the names both have seven letters starting with a "B".