First picture here shows the gate to the brewery, which can also be seen on the seal of every bottle of Pilsner Urquell for sale.
Third shows a vending-machine I would very much like to have at home.
Fourth and fifth shows have chess is done the Plzen way. Not very practical, but seeing a few people actually playing a round, it looked amusing indeed.
Next up shows the huge tanks used for making beer these days. Not sure how much beer they can make a day, but the bottling facility handles around 60,000 bottles an hour. That is mighty impressive.
Next one shows the way to the deep, underground cellar where the beer used to be kept for storage. However since 2004 they have modernized the facility so these cellars are no longer used. However they do span around 32,000 square meters exclusively for beer-storage. Pretty big.
Next up you can see one of the huge barrels used for storing beers. They had around 6300 of those down there.
Ofcourse the highlight of the tour was being able to taste unfiltered and unpasteurised Urquell, but I have no picture of that. Too busy sampling :)
As for the train there, that was the train used on the exclusive track to the Austrian emperor. He liked Pilsner Urquell so much they built a railroad between the brewery and the imperial Austrain court, just for beer-delivery. It ran two times a month, winter and summer, with appropriate heating or cooling to make sure the beer stayed fine.
Next picture shows us all stranded in Horovicé on our way back to Prague. Trains may not be as premium here in Central Europe as in Norway, but it was a rather relaxed atmosphere none the less :)
Last one shows the Pilsner Urquell emergency motorcycle with a small beer-barrel in front used when locals are in desperate need of a fix. Or simply a marketing ploy. Regardless it looks cool and I want one of those.