The next several posts are a daily account of my recent trip to Germany with my friends Karol and Adam. The trip spanned nine days (March 24 – April 1), and in those nine days we visited Munich, Füssen (day-trip), and Berlin. These posts are an elaboration of the notes I jotted down by hand each day.
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My plane landed in Munich at around noon on Tuesday, March 24. Unfortunately, I have a really hard time falling asleep on airplanes (yes, Karol and I hit the bar before departure) so I only got maybe 45 minutes of naptime in on the 8.5 hour overnight flight. I was tired but I wasn’t too worried, because hey – I’m in Germany afterall! After Karol and I met up with Adam near the entrance of our terminal, our first priority was to find food. Being the adventurers we are, we turned to the first thing we saw upon stepping out of Terminal 2′s door: Burger King. I know, I know… but we had a train ride ahead of us and didn’t feel like waiting any longer. Unfortunately for Karol, who is vegan, BK probably wasn’t the most attractive of choices. Seeing as how we spent over half of this trip in Bavaria where the staples are meat and potatoes soaked in meat-derived sauces, Karol pretty consistently got the shaft when it came to dining choices.
Anyway, we pulled some Euros out of the ATM (“Geldautomat”) and jumped on a train headed to Munich’s central train station, Hauptbahnhof – conveniently located less than a block from our hostel.
We emerged from the train station completely disoriented, so Adam flagged down a couple walking by and asked them where we needed to go. They courteously laughed at us, and then pointed us back in the direction from which we came.
We made it to the hostel and checked in. Next, the plan was to drop our stuff off and head out for beers. Adam was assigned to a different room than Karol and me, and when he met us in the lobby, he had a Japanese kid named “Shu” with him. Shu was only in Munich for the night and was alone so we decided it was in his best interests to come out and get sloppy drunk with us, despite his warnings that Japanese people typically can’t handle mass quantities of alcohol as well as us white folks. Right then and there I knew this was going to get ugly.
The first stop was the Augustiner Bier Hall. Not sure if the etiquette was to wait to be seated or not, we hovered near the door for a few minutes. It became apparent that no one was going to seat us so we plopped down at a table along one of the walls. First order of business: One delicious LITER of Helles (Lagerbier Hell).
Karol went with the same, I think, and Adam opted for the Dunkel. Shu scaled it back a notch and went with a half-liter of helles. Though I wasn’t really that hungry, I eventually started eating some of the food we had coming to our table in waves. This included a bunch of soft pretzels w/ mustard, bratwurst-style sausages, some sort of sliced white sausage in a vinegar/oil sauce w/ onions, and a pork dish that had a tasty potato dumpling on the side (which we referred to exclusively as “potato ball” for the remainder of the trip).
Though Shu said he couldn’t drink very much, he made up for it in his eating abilities. That kid devoured everything that came within three feet of his mouth. Of course we had to talk about the Japanese competitive eater who set the hot dog eating record all those years in a row, which Shu thought was pretty funny.
After a few more liters, we noticed that none of us had seen Shu in at least 20 minutes. The possibility of a colossal dine-and-dash was ruled out when we saw that his bag was still on the bench next to Adam. Uh oh. A few minutes later, he emerged from the direction of the bathrooms with that unmistakable “I just puked” look on his face. I don’t know if it was the food or the beer (or both) but Shu had just spent the last half hour giving back some of Munich’s finest food and beer to Augustiner via its toilets. This, of course, didn’t stop him from ordering more food (and eating it all) and beer. I think he made a total of three bathroom trips to perform what the competitive eating scene calls a “Reversal of Fortune”.
Once we squared up, it was on to the Hofbrauhaus. Not as cozy as Augustiner, Hofbrau is probably the biggest tourist trap of all of Munich’s major beer halls. We didn’t stay there long, but it was long enough for the liters we previously drank at Augustiner to catch up with Karol and Shu. Still not looking so hot, Shu bowed out and we never saw him again. Karol went into a zone where he didn’t say much and just kind of stared around the room. Once my beer and Adam’s Jager-Coke were gone, we decided to check out an English-style pub a few streets over. I don’t remember how we knew to go to this place. It’s possible that alcohol affects short term memory. Karol was adamant about finishing his beer at Hofbrauhaus, so we agreed that he would meet us at the next place when he was finished.
Inside the pub it was dark and quiet. They had a specialty drink that had a bunch of tropical stuff (I think?) and nutmeg. Pretty tasty, actually. After Karol got there, we hung around for another 15-20 minutes and then made our way back to the hostel.
It turns out that the bar in our hostel is a pretty happening place among Munich’s younger nightlife crowd. The bar was packed when we got back. We ended up staying there for the rest of the night and closed down the bar at 4am.
Day 1 in the books!
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The day after Thanksgiving, I took advantage of some great Internet deals and got myself a new unibody Macbook Pro. I opted for one with only 2GB of RAM and also ordered two 2GB sticks of Crucial RAM from Newegg, since it’s much cheaper to buy and install them yourself as opposed to buying a Mac with 4GB already installed.
