Beck's has for many years been brewed under license in Namibia, which prior to World War I was a German colony. It is also today brewed in Bulgaria, Australia, Ukraine, Serbia, Montenegro, China, Nigeria, Romania, Turkey and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Beck & Co. has always been a strong exporter, and the beer thus has a taste more akin to other internationally marketed brands than to mainstream German beers. After 1842, the way beer was brewed changed drastically with the advent of the brewing style perfected in the Bohemian city of Pilsen. Beck's birthplace is Bremen, lying on the North German plain connected to the sea by the Weser river.