Park the Polo and hop out. It’s started raining again. Shoof, it’s chilly here too. We duck inside Bierfassl and take a gander. Busy place, doesn’t look like there’s a single table available. Very homey feeling, all wood interior with a wood stove going. Lots of campy beer hall decor and a wooden bar in the corner that it looks like a couple is just getting up to leave from. Perfect.

We take a seat and let the bartender know that we’d like a table to grub at but we’ll toss back beers while we wait. He gives us a beer menu and says we can do paddles if we want, just pick A or B. Nottingham Road Brewery. Must be the one Megan was telling us about. I like their animal themed beer names.

We get the A and B paddles and sample everything. Whistling Weasel Pale might be the winner here.

The bartender is a friendly young buck. He wants to know why we’re here in South Africa and we simply say it’s because we’ve never been here before. He tells us Sani Pass will be great right now, it will definitely be snowing up there. He also suggests we hit the Garden Route on the way to Cape Town. Pretty much everyone has told us this now so I guess we’ll be doing that too.

He looks at his watch and says that things in town may be booked up and we should try St Ives Boma. They have incredible pizza, a craft beer place and lots of rooms. “Beer, pizza, and lodging. What else could you want?”, “That’s life in a slice, right?”

He gets us the number for the place and the landline from the bar. We call them up but they are completely booked. Hmmm guess this guy was right, we’ll have to start seriously looking around for a place to crash tonight. Here we thought we could just roll up anywhere but apparently this is a popular area.

The hostess comes over to tell us that our table is ready and leads us to a covered outdoor patio area. The rain on the plastic covering is soothing. The temperature, not so much. The mustard collection is a cream dream.

We get a couple of menus and wow, this place looks fucking legit.

Sauerkraut Balls, Eisbein, Jager Schnitzel and a couple more Weasels, please.

It starts to thunder and lightning and the rain is really coming down now. We start looking around at places to stay. Things are booked up, shit. And kind of expensive too. This must be a prime vacation spot down here. We find a place called the Hawklee Lodge not too far up the road and book the very last room. Might be the last room there is in the whole area, hopefully that doesn’t reflect it’s quality.

The sauerkraut balls come out. They’re insane.

I want this mustard collection at home

We bust another beer in between the balls and the mains. When the main dishes arrive our tummy souls die and go to Austrian heaven. These plates are bonkers.

This pork hock is a triumph. Crispy outer pork rind, almost hard like a chicharrones-style, and then the juiciest, fall off the bone ham inside that must be tried with every mustard in town.

The Jager Schnitzel is no joke either. In fact these meals are so good we’ll probably have a hard time topping them even though we just started the road trip. It’s a serious amount of heavy food though, and we only get about half way through and have to box up the rest.

Well, Bierfassl definitely checks out. Great atmosphere, incredible food, local craft beer. It’s pretty near perfect.

We pay up and run through the rain back to the Polo. I’m gonna need a warmer jacket if we’re heading up to Lesotho tomorrow. It’s supposed to be below freezing here tonight too. It’s also getting a little late in the day now, we’ll have to find this Hawklee Lodge place soon or be driving muddy roads in the dark in a car with no balls.