Travels With Nate

It's a weird time for WWE, especially for their flagship Monday night show, Raw. We have a heel "acting GM" in Baron Corbin who doesn't just make the fans hate him, but they legitimately want him to just go away and get off our screens, we have a tag team division whose best teams have been written to be laughing stocks, Ronda Rousey whose matches I'm starting to feel aren't worth watching since she's always going to win with an arm bar and never lose the title and apparently we have something called "The Universal Championship" but we rarely see that because current champ Brock Lesnar is a lazy bastard. Smackdown, however, keeps me interested week-on-week. Of course, there are some silly segments like the Miz sucking up to Shane McMahon (hang on, why has Shane suddenly reappeared every week?) and whilst the New Day's antics are fun, sometimes, like last night's USOs Vs The Bar rap battle are just baffling. We've got some good chara

It's no secret that I've been struggling to write decent content for a while. It's a shame but I don't know; most of what I try to write I end up deleting because it's too controversial and I can't deal with the debates anymore. I'm tired of it. To be honest, I've really fallen out of beer as something other than a beverage. At the end of the day, it's literally just a drink. I know for some people it's a lifestyle and their livelihood as they work in the industry, and that's cool, but that's not me anymore. When I do write, however, the content is generally about my travels as well as beer and food . I gave up on the Beats  element about music years ago as I stopped listening to so much music, and frankly, my music reviews weren't very good at all. So, I needed to replace Beats  with something and given my love for professional wrestling, why not change it to Beatdowns and write about wrestling since I watch so much of it

It's taken me a while to get round to writing this post; it's something I probably should have written two years ago, and then a year ago but having come back from Berlin a month or two ago I think it's finally time to share my craft beer experiences! I love traditional German lager and drinking in the proper locals pubs when I'm away but I also really enjoy seeking out the modern craft beer scene and Berlin certainly has a cracking one, so I'm going to tell you about some of my favourite craft beer spots in Berlin that you should visit . Brewpubs: Berlin has quite a few little brew pubs which are small and range from the traditional to the modern, all of which are pretty cool. Vagabund Brewery  - Vagabund is very modern and owned by American's I believe. It's a tiny, bright bar with a bit of street seating outside and maybe around 6 taps. You're probably not going to hear many conversations in German here! I had their American Pale Ale which was

Ah, Currywurst! A Berlin institution and indeed, if you've been to Berlin and didn't eat Currywurst whilst you were there, I'm not sure we can be friends. My first Currywurst was on my first ever trip to Berlin in August 2016 where I stumbled upon a stall at the Street Theatre Festival on Alexanderplatz; I grabbed a cheap €3 plate as well as a beer and sat in the warm sun, and fell in love. Later on that trip I visited the Currywurst museum (yes, such a thing exists) and although a novelty, I feel it was possibly the wurst (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) eleven euros I've ever spent. The premise of Currywurst, for those who don't know, is simple: It's effectively sliced boiled and fried sausage coated in a sweet curry ketchup and topped with curry powder; you'll usually find it served with chips and mayonnaise on nearly every street corner in Berlin. I'd seen the famous CurryKing brand of microwavable Currywurst in supermarkets in Germany but never did I e

When we learnt that our last trip to Nuremberg would coincide with the Nuremberg Alstadtfest - or Old Town Festival - we got the impression that it was just  a beer festival but as we discovered, it was so much more than that. The Altstadtfest which happens over 12 days every September is effectively a festival which celebrates the beautiful city of Nuremberg. It spreads across the whole of the old town and as we discovered, it was incredible. The main square is bustling full of stands selling traditional German food such as Drei Im Weggla (3 small Nuremberg Bratwurst in a bun, and for the love of god don't you fucking dare put ketchup on it) as well as various traders selling clothes and handmade items, and there's a giant stage where live music of all kinds takes place over the course of each day and evening until around midnight. If you stand on the bridge on the south bank of the river Pegnitz, if you're lucky you might catch the water jousting which is a highl

The first time we ever went to Nuremberg we were pretty unaware as to whether what we refer to as "craft beer" existed over there. Of course, we did research beforehand but I guess since it was our first trip there, we really just went to the obvious traditional restaurants, pubs and brewpubs that we'd read mostly about. It wasn't until the second time I went, with Alec, that the craft beer scene was discovered; and then the next time last September with Sammie I discovered even more of this, outside of traditional lagers. I absolutely love Nuremberg and I'd highly recommend visiting, so I just figured I'd share with you some places where you can step away from the tradition of Germany and find some delicious craft beer... Mr Kennedy  - When I first visited Mr Kennedy, it was a tiny dark and dingy little bar on what seemed like quite a sketchy and dark street just behind the city walls, and then they moved location to a bigger dark and dingy bar in the o