For me, one of the delights of working at Rick Steves’ Europe is the way my staff mixes fun, creativity, talent, and hard work. Each year we brew a holiday beer as a staff event, and our art department comes up with our own beer bottle label. Here’s a review of a decade of Rick Steves’ Europe-produced beers. I wish you could taste them, but at least you can enjoy the creative talent of our art department.
“Mona Drinks” is a reference to our beloved Mona Winks guidebook, which was filled with self-guided tours of Europe’s top museums (now out of print, but resurrected as the audio tours in our free Rick Steves’ Audio Europe™ App):
“Mona’s Back,” from 2002, was a statement in the year after 9/11 that we were traveling on:
The “Immaculate Consumption” was built on sketchy archaeological evidence that there may have been beer at the manger on that first Christmas:
“Ale 70 Shows” refers to our anthology of TV shows that has grown every two years — from 36, to 43, to 56, to 70, and so on. We’re at “over 100” now, but at the time, “All 70 Shows” seemed like quite a pinnacle”:
The “Eyjafjallajökull Steam Ale” from 2010 commemorated the Icelandic volcano commonly known as E-15 (for the number of letters that followed the first letter in its unpronounceable-to-most name):
And 2013 saw the first appearance of Santa Steves:
Anyway…here’s to a wonderful Christmas and happy holidays to all.