Power comes in many forms, and with newfound approaches to solar, the industry is setting the pace for the climate tech sector. A recent visit to Oslo for the region-defining event of the year — Oslo Innovation Week, powered by Oslo Business Region — found me on top of Norway’s national soccer stadium. Over Easy Solar founder and CEO Trygve Mongstad sat down to discuss an unlikely journey from researcher to entrepreneur, headlining the vertical solar panel revolution.

Dr. Rod Berger: The entrepreneurial path is often as unique as the person behind the solo pursuit. Please share your transition from research to Over Easy Solar. 

Trygve Mongstad: I spent many years as a physicist, and about a decade ago, I was more comfortable in a lab with my dreadlocks. The transition wasn’t immediate, but I was drawn to challenges outside my comfort zone. I realized I wanted to do something impactful and saw an opportunity in solar energy that few had explored. The move was driven by a growing confidence and the supportive societal framework in Norway, which encourages taking risks.

Berger: When you were growing up, were you creative? Would you say you had an innovative spirit early on?

Mongstad: Growing up in Norway with educators as parents made my life quite typical. However, even as a child, I was fascinated by innovation. I remember sketching floating wind turbines at the age of ten. While I was a quiet and shy boy, the idea of creating solutions for environmental challenges was always there.

Berger: You have been public about the impact of your time In Malawi on the work you are doing today. How does the Norwegian ecosystem of support compare with your time overseas?

Mongstad: My experience in Malawi was transformative. It’s one of the poorest economies in the world, yet the enthusiasm and positivity of the people is incredible. I learned a lot about happiness and community values, which differ from Norway’s more structured support system.

Berger: Let’s talk about sustainability and its role in your path forward as a company.

Mongstad: Sustainability has been at the core of my mission from the very start. It’s not just about creating a product; it’s about contributing to a better world. In Norway, sustainability is part of the everyday conversation, and I hope to embody it in my company.

Berger: What challenges have been the most daunting for you as a CEO?

Mongstad: Coming from the research sector, understanding the language of investors has been a challenge for me. The financial climate is tough, and while there’s recognition of the need for sustainable solutions, bridging the gap between innovation and investment remains a daily endeavor. I am encouraged, though, by the increased awareness among investors about the long-term benefits of supporting sustainability-focused ventures.

Berger: How have you navigated the pressures of entrepreneurship while maintaining your stated mission?

Mongstad: It’s about perspective. I regularly reflect on our progress, which helps me appreciate the journey. While many might scoff, I enjoy writing monthly investor reports because they allow me to see our tangible progress. It’s a balancing act, but the drive to create meaningful impact keeps me motivated and focused on the bigger picture.

Mongstad’s understated presentation shouldn’t dissuade onlookers from honing in on Over Easy Solar’s rapid ascent. There is a quiet and engaging confidence about Mongstad that reminds us that it isn’t always the bluster of an entrepreneur that reigns supreme but rather the belief in oneself to constantly churn against convention and comfort toward a common goal.

[I have edited and condensed this interview for clarity.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Sir Demis Hassabis discovered he had won the Nobel Prize in chemistry this week when his wife — also a scientific researcher — received several calls on Skype to urgently request his phone number.

“My mind was completely frazzled, which hardly ever happens. It was . . . almost like an out-of-body experience,” said Hassabis, co-founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind, the artificial intelligence division of the Silicon Valley search giant.

The chemistry Nobel, which Hassabis shared with his colleague John Jumper and US biochemist David Baker, was won for unlocking an impossible problem in biology that had remained unsolved for 50 years: predicting the structure of every protein known to humanity, using an AI software known as AlphaFold.

Having cracked that long-standing challenge, with widespread implications in science and medicine, Hassabis has his sights set on climate change and healthcare. “I want us to help solve some diseases,” he told the Financial Times.

His team is working on six drug development programmes with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novartis, which focus on disease areas such as cancers and Alzheimer’s. Hassabis said he expects to have a drug candidate in clinical trials within two years.

His other big areas of focus are using AI to model the climate more accurately, and to cross the ultimate frontier in AI research: invent machine intelligence at par with human intelligence.

“When we look back in 10 years, I hope [AI] will have heralded a new golden era of scientific discovery in all these different domains,” said Hassabis, who was formerly a neuroscientist and video game designer. “That’s what got me into AI in the first place. I see it as the ultimate tool in accelerating scientific research.”

The DeepMind duo was recognised on Wednesday, a day after former Google colleague and veteran AI scientist Geoffrey Hinton won the physics prize alongside physicist John Hopfield for their work on neural networks, the foundational technology for modern AI systems that underpin healthcare, social media, self-driving cars — and AlphaFold itself.

The recognition of AI breakthroughs highlights a new era in research, emphasising the importance of computing tools and data science in cracking complex scientific problems at far shorter timescales, in everything from physics to mathematics, chemistry and biology.

“It’s obviously interesting that the [Nobel] committee has decided to make a statement like this by having the two together,” Hassabis said.

The awards also encapsulate AI’s promises and potential pitfalls.

Hopfield and Hinton were pioneers in the discipline in the early 1980s. Hinton, who is 76 and left Google last year, said he didn’t plan to do further research. He instead intends to advocate for work on the safety of AI systems, and for governments to facilitate it.

By contrast, the DeepMind pair won for work unveiled mainly in the past five years, and remain extremely optimistic about its societal impact.

“The impact of [AI] in particular on science but also on the modern world more broadly is now very, very clear,” said Maneesh Sahani, director of the Gatsby unit at University College London, a research institute focused on machine learning and theoretical neuroscience. Hinton was the Gatsby’s founding director in 1998, while Hassabis worked as a postdoctoral researcher there in 2009, eventually spinning out DeepMind from the UCL institute in 2010.

“Machine learning is showing up all over the place, from people analysing ancient text in forgotten languages, to radiographs and other medical imaging. There is a toolkit that we now have that will push science and academic disciplines forward in all sorts of different directions,” said Sahani, who is also a neuroscience professor. 

AlphaFold’s recent iterations have “ramifications across all of medicine, biology and many other areas” because they are so fundamental to living organisms, said Charlotte Deane, a professor of structural bioinformatics at Oxford university.

“Many were sceptical when they started, but very quickly their program outperformed all other programs to predict protein structures,” said Venki Ramakrishnan, a biologist who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2009 for his work related to protein synthesis. “It really dramatically changed the field.”

AlphaFold has been used by more than 2mn scientists to, among other things, analyse the malarial parasite to develop a vaccine, improve plant resistance to climate change, and to study the structure of the nuclear pore — one of the largest protein complexes in the human body.

Rosalyn Moran, a neuroscience professor at King’s College London, and chief executive of AI start-up Stanhope AI said: “Tool building is blue collar scientific work . . . they are often the unsung heroes of science. For me that was the most exciting part of the award.”

AlphaFold still has shortcomings as reported by its creators earlier this year, including “hallucinations” of “spurious structural order” in cell regions that are in fact disordered. Another challenge facing the use of AI for scientific research is that some important fields of investigation may be less rich than protein analysis in experimental data.

In the physics Nobel, Hinton and Hopfield’s work used fundamental concepts from physics and neuroscience to develop AI tools that can process patterns in large information networks.

The Boltzmann machine, which Hinton invented, was able to learn from specific examples rather than instructions. The machine was then able to recognise new examples of categories it had been trained on, such as images of cats.

This type of learning software, known as neural networks, now form the basis of most AI applications, such as facial recognition software and large language models, the technique that underpins ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. One of Hinton’s former students, Ilya Sutskever, was co-founder and chief scientist of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. 

“I would say I am someone who doesn’t really know what field he’s in but would like to understand how the brain works,” said Hinton, a computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, during a press conference this week. “And in my attempts to understand how the brain works, I’ve helped to create a technology that works surprisingly well.”

The AI prizes have also brought to the fore the interconnected nature of scientific discoveries, and the need for sharing of data and expertise — an increasingly rare phenomenon in AI research occurring inside commercial outfits such as OpenAI and Google.

Neuroscience and physics principles were used to develop the AI models of today, while the data generated by biologists helped invent the AlphaFold software.

“Scientists like me have traditionally solved protein shapes using laborious experimental methods which can take years,” said Rivka Isaacson, professor of molecular biophysics at King’s College London, who was an early beta tester of AlphaFold. “It was however these solved structures, which the experimental world deposits for public use, that were used to train AlphaFold.”

She added that the AI technique had allowed scientists like her to “skip ahead to probe deeper into protein function and dynamics, asking different questions and potentially opening up whole new areas of research”.

Ultimately, AI — like electron microscopy or X-ray crystallography — remains an analytical tool, not an independent agent conducting original research. Hassabis insists the technology cannot replace the work of scientists.

“The human ingenuity comes in — asking the question, the conjecture, the hypothesis, our systems can’t do any of that,” he said. “[AI] just analyses data right now.” 

NEIGHBOURS are at war over a “Grand Designs”-style home which is said to be an “eyesore” and has been compared to a pile of “shipping containers”.

The property – in a historic stockbroker town in the Home Counties – was constructed on a road where homes sell for more than £1million.

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Plans to build the home were initially approved in 2017 but the landowner made it two metres too high, located it in the wrong place on the plot of land and clad it in a plastic material rather than natural stone and oak.

After an outcry from residents, last year the local council imposed a demolition order on the house.

However, the Independent Planning Inspector, as part of the appeals process, instructed the landowner to make modifications to the building, but they were different to the originally approved planning permission.

Developer Peter Strange was given permission by Waverley Borough Council to build the home in Farnham, Surrey, seven years ago.

The original planning permission was for an “innovative cantilever design”, which would nestle into the woodland backdrop of the steep hillside plot.

The house is positioned just up the road from the Bourne Woods – a location used for the filming of blockbusters such as Napoleon, Gladiator and Harry Potter.

However, the finished building – which appears to be currently unoccupied – was out of line with the submitted plans.

The house was built six metres further to the south than planned, rotated approximately ten degrees from the consented dwelling, and was two metres higher than planned.

And, despite natural stone and oak cladding used in the plans – neighbours said a plastic material was used instead which “radically” changed the appearance.

After the landowner was threatened with enforcement action, Mr Strange – who bought the land in March 2018 for £450,000 – applied for retrospective planning permission for the new home.

This application received over 170 objections from locals who cited a variety of complaints.

One objector, Kevin Lester, wrote that it was an “ugly building” which is “far too big” and “imposing”.

“As it is, it looks like a number of Grey Shipping Containers have just been dumped on site, stacked and bolted together,” he said.

The application was not approved and an appeal was later dismissed with an enforcement order for demolition issued.

Last year, Mr Strange sought permission for the “erection of a dwelling with associated works following demolition of original dwelling”.

This application attracted further objection from residents who questioned why they were having to protest the plans again.

Nearby resident Paul Webb branded the situation a “carbuncle” and said the house was “completely out of character” when compared to the neighbouring properties.

As it is, it looks like a number of Grey Shipping Containers have just been dumped on site, stacked and bolted together

Kevin Lester

“The dreadful abuse then carried out by the developers, flouting the Council’s permission and attempting to foist the ‘shipping container’ house in our beautiful area of Farnham was rightly reversed with the demolition order, and it is impossible to believe that the miscreants even have a right of appeal?”

Mr Webb stated the planning process “risks falling into farce” unless the council sends a “clear signal” to developers that “they must abide by the law”.

Despite further push back from neighbours, the council have upheld part of the landowner’s appeal, meaning the property can stay up as long as changes are made in the next 12 months.

Noel Moss chairs the Bourne Conservation group and has lived in Farnham for 10 years.

‘BLOT ON THE LANDSCAPE’

The 88-year-old said the property is a “blot on the landscape”, adding: “What was built there, as an architectural design, is completely out of keeping with other buildings in the area – for example, the nice cottage opposite.

“With my conservation hat on, it is also taking up character of the very nice green space which faces you as you drive into Farnham from the South – that was always a very nice view.”

Mr Moss, who served in the Army for 30 years, said the site was also a ‘very important foraging area for bats”.

“What I think none of us can understand, is how the planning authority – who would also be aware of the character of the area – allowed such a design to go through, and secondly, didn’t check what was being built,” he continued.

“I don’t think the planning authority at Waverley are exempt from criticism on this matter.”

On the update to the plans, he said: “No one, including the planning committee, understands the present situation.

“My view, and the view of other neighbours I talk to, is that they can’t understand if it needs to be demolished.”

Everyone has to stick to the planning law

Louisa Bristow

Jewellery designer Louisa Bristow also lives near the house and admitted she didn’t “mind” what it looked like as it was “a little bit different”, which she welcomed.

But, the 46-year-old said “everyone has to stick to the planning law”, adding: “The rules are they for a reason and we need to follow them.

“Most people live and left live, some people are very vocal – we just don’t want people to take the mick.”

Jamie Dobse, 52, also lives near the property – and admitted he quite liked the “modern” appearance of it.

“I think it’s a shame it’s not occupied now,” he said of the property, “It wasn’t built as it was designed. I think as it was being built, it seemed quite obvious that it wasn’t how it was agreed.

“It seemed quite obviously different to the proposal.”

Mr Dobse, who works as a designer, said it would be “incredibly wasteful” to demolish the “contemporary” house.

“We need more housing,” he added.

Upholding part of the appeal, the planning inspector said: “As revised, the dwelling would nestle comfortably in the woodland setting in local views, retaining the informal rural character and well-wooded appearance of the locality.

“Owing to its greater overall height the permitted dwelling would have been a more visible built feature, even though set back further into the wooded hillside at a slightly different angle.

“Consequently, the revised dwelling would not appear as a prominent built feature in the surroundings, the immediate setting being largely dominated by maturing trees consistent with the visual qualities of the Arcadian Area.”

A Waverley Borough Council spokesperson told The Sun Online: “We need planning laws to protect our local environment and it is vitally important that they are followed.

“The landowner of 17 Frensham Road did not stick to the agreed plans for their development, and the council issued them with an enforcement notice requiring the demolition of the building.

“The landowner appealed the council’s ruling, and an independent planning inspector has given them until 16 August 2025 to modify the building.

“Various changes are required, including the removal of an external staircase, lowering the roofline and the use of timber cladding, otherwise the building will need to be demolished.”

The Sun Online has attempted to track down Mr Strange for comment.

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Warning: This post contains spoilers for We Live in Time.

We Live in Time ends like it begins—with one crucial difference. Eggs just collected from the coop are being cracked into glass bowls on their way to becoming breakfast. Only this time, instead of a woman named Almut cooking for her sleeping partner Tobias, it’s Tobias cooking with their daughter, Ella. He teaches the young pupil how to crack the eggs on a flat surface just as Almut, a celebrated chef, taught him during an early date. Another key difference: an adorably scruffy dog stands at their feet. It’s a callback to a conversation the couple had, after learning that Almut’s ovarian cancer had recurred and was incurable, about how dogs can help children heal from loss. 

It’s a poignant bookend that speaks to the ways we keep our loved ones with us even after they’re gone. Almut had been terrified that she’d be forgotten, or that her kid would think of her as nothing more than a dead mom. The scene telegraphs Tobias’ commitment to showing Ella that her mom had a life outside of their world. 

But it’s the penultimate scene that begs further dissection. And it’s one that a lot of people might be about to dissect as We Live in Time begins to play in theaters on Oct. 11: Since the movie’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the A24 weepie from Brooklyn director John Crowley has garnered mostly positive reviews. In a cinematic landscape that has seen movies aimed largely at female audiences racking up box-office wins, and with a beloved and respected leading duo in Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, it’s clear that the appetite for a tear-jerking romance has hardly waned in the half century since Ryan O’Neal held Ali MacGraw on her deathbed in Love Story.

Read more: We Live in Time Asks Too Much of Us

But unlike that iconic film, We Live in Time does not take us to Almut’s death bed. It handles her death metaphorically, clearly alluding to it while keeping her final breaths offscreen and leaving the flatlining monitors to the imagination. It’s hardly novel in doing so—in fact, it harkens back to a long tradition of off-screen expirations, particularly in romantic and family dramas. And, perhaps counterintuitively, this figurative approach ends up being more sob-worthy than its more literal alternative.

In this scene, Pugh’s Almut, now quite ill, is in Italy for a major European cooking competition when she comes upon an ice skating rink. It’s a made-for-the-movies coincidence: Al had been a competitive skater as a teenager until the death of her skating-enthusiast dad made it too painful to continue. After completing a recipe, she abruptly walks off the competition floor—taking off her chef’s hat like she knows it’s for the last time, because it is, walking up to her family in the stands, moving toward a glowing light that signifies the impending peaceful transition to the other side—we cut to their little family at the rink. She’s demonstrating her skills for the novice Ella (Grace Delaney), as Tobias looks on proudly. Then we see her on the opposite side of the rink. Dad and daughter wave to mom from afar, and she waves back, smiling beatifically. They are saying goodbye. There is a sense of acceptance. No one is sobbing. The scene ends, and we understand in a figurative sense that she is dead.

One one level, this is the stuff of extreme cheese. It left me rolling my eyes even as tears trickled out of them. And yet, on another: thank the lord almighty for sparing us from having to watch Al’s jagged last breath, taken between hollowed-out cheeks and Hollywood’s best not-quite-a-corpse makeup—and having to watch her loved ones watch it happen. We are even spared the immediate aftermath: the coffin being lowered into the earth, the child alone in a corner while well wishers three heads taller schmooze and nosh, the widower donating sweaters to Goodwill.

The movie has, until this point, been rather forthright about the pain of advanced cancer and the treatment that ravages a body in trying to stave off death. Hair loss, nausea, exhaustion, bruising, random bloody noses, the interruption to intimacy. It’s all so awful that Almut considers forgoing treatment altogether so that she can try to really live for six months rather than suffer for 12. It’s about the indignities, too. In one scene, she looks on as another chemo patient nods off to sleep during an infusion, her red wig moving out of place as her head falls toward her shoulder. A nurse comes by and tenderly moves it back into place: the woman doesn’t need to be embarrassed on top of everything else, the nurse knows; her job goes beyond the purely physical.

But We Live in Time stops short of bearing witness to death. It’s in good company in screenwriter Nick Payne’s choice to opt for metaphorical subtlety, especially when it comes to young moms and cancer. Any millennial pop-culture enthusiast worth their salt sobbed over the ending of Stepmom (1998), when Susan Sarandon’s dying mother insists on taking a family photo that includes the young stepmother (Julia Roberts) she’s given grief to throughout the movie. The two women hold hands as the Nikon flashes, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” prompts the viewer to cry and smile simultaneously and the photo fades to black, signifying her death, the family moving on but holding her memory dear. In the 1988 tear duct obliterator Beaches, Barbara Hershey’s Hillary sits in an Adirondack chair in the salty air. She hugs her young daughter then returns to watching a yellow sun sink against a mauve sky. Her BFF C.C. (Bette Midler) smiles in her direction, “The Wind Beneath My Wings” triggers the lacrimal glands, and someone literally rides off into the sunset on a white horse. Cut to black funeral limos. In Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (1994), we see Alfre Woodard’s Carolyn weak in a hospital bed receiving her final farewell kisses from daughter Troy (Zelda Harris) shortly before we see Troy in her PJs, refusing to dress for the funeral.

Other films take the tack of film-it-or-it-didn’t-happen. Terms of Endearment (1983) shows us the death of Debra Winger’s cancer-stricken but still very pretty mother of three: her hand falls limp beside her hospital bed, the camera panning up to the faces of her mother (Shirley MacLaine) and estranged husband (Jeff Daniels), taking in the loss. In 2016’s Other People, Molly Shannon’s matriarch dies 49 seconds into the movie—the screen is black and we can only hear the sounds of her family members, pig-piled on the bed around her, sobbing; we don’t see the moment of her death but the millisecond after. In last year’s Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein embraces Carey Mulligan’s pale, weak, headscarf-wearing Felicia Montealegre as she flutters her eyelids and groans quietly; the camera cuts to the window overlooking the verdant green lawn and the sea. Moments later, he’s running onto that same lawn to embrace his children in their grief.

There is no one right way to depict death on screen. Movies are about life, and death is a part of life. If you’ve lost a loved one to cancer or something like it, then the movies are either a perpetual trigger, or inexpensive therapy, or both. If you can’t bring yourself to access that grief without an external prompt, you can knowingly sit yourself down for a film that promises to demagnetize them through sheer will and swooning violins. There is a thin line between gratuitous and tasteful, maudlin and real, and that line is not located in the same place for every viewer. A wet cheek competition between Beaches and Terms of Endearment is bound to be too close to call.

But in the case of We Live in Time, I felt simultaneously spared the retraumatization of reliving painful memories shot for shot, and invited to access those same memories to fill in the movie’s intentional gaps. One might argue the scene lacks the gut-punch of Winger or Shannon or Mulligan fading away before our eyes; it is a PG moment in an R-rated movie. The film has given us sex and childbirth, why stop short of death? 

But for a movie defined by grief and loss, whose trailer promises to lift you up, tear you to shreds, then expel you from the theater a little more wizened to the way life giveth and then taketh away, this channeling of Tara Lipinski at death’s door ultimately works. It continues in the long cornball tradition of “did you ever know that you’re my hero,” of Marvin and Tammy dancing playfully on Ms. Sarandon’s grave. A reprieve without sacrificing a release. The memories get folded into the mundane like eggs into pancake batter. Life goes on. It has to.

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STARING at the gigantic copper cauldron where the King of England used to bathe, I kick myself for ­forgetting my swimmers.

It’s not often you get the chance to share the same hot tub as the supreme ruler of the British Empire.

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I’m in a spa town deep in a Bohemian forest, unearthing areas of the Czech Republic I’d never heard of.

For three exciting days I would be exploring this beautiful central European country entirely by rail.

My journey begins in Prague. The beautiful capital city on the Vltava River is packed with history.

Climbing the hill up to Prague castle is a must.

The fortress is the largest castle complex in the world. Inside its towering walls are historical buildings and museums including the Old Royal Palace and the city’s gothic temple, St Vitus Cathedral.

That evening I catch a train west.

Unlike those in the UK, trains in Czechia run smoothly and are dirt cheap.

Prague is soon far behind as the IC 558 train trundles along, following the Berounka river’s meandering path through the countryside.

I catch snapshots through the window.

Paddle boarders punt down the river.

Giggling kids tumble down a giant inflatable slide at a village fete.

As the sun sets the train pulls into the serene spa town of Marianske Lazne in the deep Bohemian forest.

Since local monks discovered the mineral-rich springs in the early 19th century, people have been coming here to drink, bathe in, and even inject the healing water and gases that bubble out of the ground.

The town’s heyday was in the Victorian era when spa treatments were popular among high society.

One such spa obsessive was King Edward VII, who visited Marianske Lanze nine times for weight-loss treatments in a purpose-built room at the Nové Lázně spa.

The hotel is still there and for a hefty price, guests can book a session in the large copper bath he used.

My own treatment takes place at the Falkensteiner hotel and spa, a five-star resort with a 2,500sq metre spa complex, 162 rooms, heated pool, excellent restaurant and stylish bar.

After a buffet breakfast, I’m ushered into a dimly lit wood-panelled room where a bath of warm water the colour of milky tea is waiting.

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The slightly sparkling mineral-rich water is pumped directly from the hotel’s own Alexandra Spring, 800 metres away.

The treatment is said to widen blood vessels, lowering blood pressure and improving circulation to relax the mind and body.

The health benefits of spa treatments like this are taken seriously.
Drinking fountains dotted around the town deliver water from the local springs.

Iron-rich and metallic- tasting it is believed to help alleviate inflammation. I hope it does, because it tastes revolting.

Staying at the spa resort hotels is pricey.

But there are plenty of cheaper hotels in the town and treatments at the spa complexes are available for walk-in customers too.

Czechs are the world’s most prolific beer drinkers, consuming 184.1 litres of it each every year.

Nowhere is this obsession more obvious than in my next stop, the city of Pilsen.

It’s just over an hour away by rail and my train ticket costs the equivalent of £6.

Home of the world-famous Pilsner beer, the town is swimming in the stuff and by the end of the day, I will be too — literally.

Among the most popular brews is the famous Pilsner Urquell. The first ever pilsner beer, it has been brewed here since 1842.

A tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery is fascinating.

The 90-minute walk-through shows the original brewing method and vats from the early 19th century.

Then, the modern, vastly scaled-up operation, where staggering amounts are brewed, bottled then shipped worldwide.

The tour ends in the miles of subterranean tunnels where the beer was once stored.

Here, brewmasters keep the traditional method alive, brewing the Pilsner in oak barrels.

Comparisons are regularly made to the modern method to ensure it tastes authentic.

And you can judge for yourself, with a glass of cold Pilsner poured straight from the barrel at the end.

I head off to soak up some more beer, this time through my pores.

On the outskirts of Pilsen, at the Purkmistr Brewery, an interesting mash-up has spawned the “beer spa” — a big wooden bathtub full of warm, hoppy lager, minus the alcohol (it dries out the skin).

Submerged up to my neck in barley, hops and yeast with a large keg of pilsner within arm’s reach and Oasis’s Wonderwall playing over the complex’s sound system, I feel I have achieved lager-nirvana.

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