After the official part of my recent German beer trip ended, I had a few days to myself before heading back across the pond. So one day, Peter Reid (who publishes Modern Brewery Age) and I took a Deutsche Bahn train to nearby Salzburg, Austria to visit the original Trumer Brauerei (more about that trip soon). On the train, I was idly paging through the train’s on-board magazine Mobil (sort of like an in-flight magazine) when I came across a multi-page ad for a toy store chain, Idee+Spiel. Based on the number of pages and locations listed, I imagine it’s something like the Toys R Us of Germany. On the page with toy trains, there were pictured accessories by a German company called, with no irony, Busch (or more properly Busch Gmbh and Co.). Two of the products shown were a Beer Garden and a Hopyard. I imagine neither of these HO-scale train accessories will ever see the light of day here in neo-prohibitionist America, but I love the idea that these scenes are so common that nobody in civilized Europe has a problem with them.
The Busch model HO-Biergarten.
The Busch model HO-Hopfen.
Visiting their website, I also discovered that Busch has a few more beer-related accessories for train layouts, and the hop field is featured on the cover of their catalog.
Busch’s 2007 catalog.
The other accessories included this barley field.
Notice the hops in the field across the road? If you look back the hopyard picture, you can now see the barley field there, too.
I love way the person on the bench is sitting. The catalog refers to him as a “happy ‘carouser.'”