Eurotrip, Part 3A: Sieg Heil, Mother Fuckers.
7:00am, Friday, May 27, Munich, Germany. We arrive at the train station, and are IMMEDIATELY greeted by strawberry tarts, some kind of strawberry gelatinish thing that looks GREAT, bratwurst, and hamburgers. And not fast food McDonalds hamburgers, but real beef burgers that are cooked in front of you.
In other words, Germany is starting off on the right foot.
We get some much needed water--and, of course, a strawberry tart--and then IMMEDIATELY head to the ticket counter to book our trains to Paris (me) and Italy (them). Sam and Jared get a sleeper car. Even though I'm returning to Paris on a Monday night at 9:00pm--not exactly peak times--the sleeper cars are already sold out.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
I seriously said that to her. I didn't mean to, it just kind of slipped out. Remember, I've had a rough night. Fortunately, she either didn't hear me, didn't speak enough English, or didn't care, because she didn't really react at all. I paid for my train, and left.
So we walk outside the train station, and are amazed. It looks kind of like we're in America. I mean, not exactly like it. But it was a very welcome feeling to see an architecture style that you recognize. It was strange, because I immediately understood what I was looking at: the US had rebuilt Munich 40 years earlier, as part of the Marshall Plan. So it was a very weird feeling to see that. My first real, kind of physical touch with something I'd studied so well, World War II.
Well, as we're standing there, an American walked up to us and started talking to us. There's a little strip mall right as you leave the train station, and the first two shops are bike tours. Both bike tours have guys out front handing out fliers. The guy gives us a flier, we chat for a moment, and move on. The next guy hands us a flier, and we chat with him.
Now at this point I should point out a bit of our situation here in Munich. We came to Paris with hostel reservations, a decent grasp of the language, and with me having done a lot of research on Paris. Also, Jared has spent about a month in Paris two years ago. In other words, we came fairly prepared.
In Munich, we were supposed to meet with Bob's (middle brother) best friend. We'll call him "Ed", since his name is Ed. He's stationed in Munich. Well, Ed was supposed to meet us in Munich. Yep, you guessed it. Ed didn't meet us in Munich.
Now my grandfather speaks German, and I know a couple of phrases in German. Unfortunately, I was having a REALLY hard time going from English to French to German. I had tried reading and picking up some of the language on the train, and I just couldn't pick up German the way I had been picking up French. It was too soon, and it was too different a language, and plus I didn't want to just dump my French, as I was returning to France.
In other words, I was worried we were going to be in some shit.
But no! We asked the guy handing out bike fliers where we should stay. First, the hostels were literally right across the street. Awesome. Second, he recommended which one to go to. Third, next to the two bike shops was a Tourism Office. We picked up some city maps there, though unfortunately we weren't helped by the smoking hot girl who worked there.
We proceeded to the first hostel, the Euroyouth.
God damit, I just wrote about three paragraphs and the page crashed. Son of a...
Anyway, back to the Euroyouth. It's an older building, but the guy and girl behind the desk are Brits and are cool. They have a room to leave your bags that is video monitored, there's a couple cute girls checking in, and there is a bar on the first floor.
Unfortunately, they are booked for Friday night. However, we get to make reservations for Saturday and Sunday, and we don't have to pay to make the reservations. We will now go to buildings over to the brand new hostel, the Wombat (the guide told us about the new Wombat, but said he liked the Euroyouth better, and that it was cheaper).
Now I know what you're thinking. The way things have gone so far on the trip--especially when it comes to lodging--you're ready for a long tale of woe. I mean, for God sake, we're going to a hostel named after an Australian rat. You're probably ready for me to tell you about how we ended up sleeping in a bench across the street at the trainstation Friday night.
Well, my friends, there is no need to fear for our well being. For Fortune's beautiful face was shining upon us our entire time in Munich, and we bathed in her dazzling countenance.
We walk into the Wombat, which we find from our Aussie and Brit employees is barely a year old. The cost for the same type of room as at the Euroyouth? A whopping $1. That's right. One more euro. They give you clean sheets every morning for your bed. They also have a room to lock your shit up in, and they have private lockers in each room. AND they have showers in each room! No group showers! AND in the building of the Wombat is the Wombar! AND you get coupons for three free drinks at the Wombar when you check in! AND THERE IS HAPPY HOUR FROM 6-8 EVERY FRICKING DAY WITH $1 BEERS!!!!!!!
Eh. It'll do for a night.
We check in and go up to our room, which is very clean and very nice. There are 6 beds in a room: 3 bunk beds. Duh Duh!
Now, of course, the bunk beds are maybe 6'3" long. To be honest, I'm probably being generous here. So I must have the top bunk in order to fit in these beds. Now, the beds--which are brand new--are basically IKEA beds, which we all know what that means: they look and feel like they are going to collapse at any minute. Every time I climbed in or out of bed, I was sure it was going to collapse and kill me. So Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, don't worry: (nevermind the fact that were was 4 other men in my room, one of whom was my baby brother) there was no way I was having sex on this bed. Just not happening. Sam actually did a really funny impression of someone doing that when he hopped in his bunk, and I seriously was afraid the first time that that would be enough to do the bed in. However, the beds were very comfortable; much better than we'd been expecting.
So we get situated, and there is one thing I really want to do: go work out. At this point, between Ryan's wedding (which was the weekend before we left) and the trip, it's been a full week since I've lifted. We ask our good friends at the Wombat if there is a place, and they know of none. We then go back to the Euroyouth and ask them, and the cute girl at the counter points us to a Beer Garden.
Now at this point I think it's fairly safe to say we've hit some sort of language barrier (even though she spoke very good English). However, it's also at this point that I'm thinking two things: 1) It's Germany; surely if we just walk around, I'll see a gym. This is the land of Hanz and Franz, for God's sake! (They might have been Austrian, but whatever, it's close enough.) 2) The lifting thing isn't going to happen, so we might as well get out and see the city.
1:00pm. It's off to the Augustiner Beer Garden we go. It's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day; not a cloud in the sky, 75 degreesish. Surprise surprise, there's no weight lifting at the beer garden, but we got to check it out and now know where one is. We then just walk back to the hostel by taking a different route to see some more of the city, and stop by an AWESOME internet cafe that is a block away from the hostel. Props to the German keyboards: the only difference between those and American keyboards are the y and z are juxtaposed. Don't even get me started on the French keyboards. I didn't even try to type by touch; it was all hunting and pecking there.
Anyway, it's now time to start on my second quest of the day: finding a cardboard tube. Now fans of the Cardboard Tube Samurai (keep hitting next to see the exciting conclusion) are probably afraid that I have marked someone for death. But you have nothing to fear; I'd bought several AWESOME paintings/sketches in Paris that I wanted to roll and keep in there.
First, I go to a copy center (Jared and Sam have left to go see a church we spotted). No dice. Next, I go to the post office. Surely I will meet with success here! Unfortunately, no. How a post office doesn't have cardboard tubes I don't know, but apparently the Germans only use them as weapons, and God knows the last thing we want to do is hand German Postal Employees weapons. However, at the post office I find one of my most valuable pieces of information: Hertie.
Hertie is Munich's largest department store, and is located right next to the post office. I couldn't make this up guys; EVERYTHING we needed was a 5 minute walk from us. Unbelievable. Anyway, I digress. So I go into Hertie, which is just like an American department store. Think Sears, except even bigger. So I acquire my cardboard tube, and then an epiphany strikes me: I should ask the guys in sporting goods if they know where a gym is. So I travel to sporting goods, and the gentlemen up there is kind enough to point me in the direction of where he thinks a gym is. Okay, I'm thinking. That'll do. I then go check out their clothes to see if they have a bunch of Dirk stuff. It is here that I find a pair of authentic TEAM USA Olympic basketball shorts for $27 Euro. In America, these would go for about $80. And as we remember, I left all my athletic shorts at home, which is especially traumatic for me, since all I wear when I'm not dressed up is basketball shorts.
I told you, Fortune was smiling upon us.
I'm so excited about my find, I'm practically giddy. I go down to where the guy suggested I look, and there's nothing there. It's actually a huge shopping area, but really cooly done. It's in a lot of older buildings that looked like they survived the war but had been renovated during the Marshall Plan. Cool place to stroll around.
It's not about 3:00pm, and I'm supposed to meet Sam and Jared back to the hostel. So back I go!
3:00pm. Meet up with Sam and Jared. Now, Jared's nickname is "Grandpa", because apparently he can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. So Jared takes a nap, and Sam and I decide to explore South of the hostel (all of spelunking--okay, there were no caves involved, but I love that word--has thus far been north of the hostel). So we're running around a street south of the hostel, and find--you guessed it--a fricking gym. I have to pay $15, and there's no AC, but I get a really good workout in.
One problem with the gym: ummmm...how do I put this? Let's just say there were no women in there. Now, there were only about ten people in there while I was there. But none of them were women. And one of the dudes was wearing one of those skintight spandex workout suits that has straps over your shoulders and is cut out from the chest area. You know, the thing you see in movies where Americans are making fun of Europeans, and you laugh and think, "My God, no one in the world would ever really where that." Well, unfortunately for the rest of us, we thought wrong.
But whatever. Finally got a good workout in. I was happy. One other funny thing about the gym was the music they were playing, which held true of our entire trip to Europe. They love American music over there, but the most recent stuff they have is AT LEAST 5 years old. For instance, I heard Dre's song, The Next Episode, which came out in October 2000. Seriously. And that was the most recent song. I lifted weights to Jennifer Lopez (She's still Jenny from the block, in case you were wondering), Depeche Mode (this didn't bother me; I would have been surprised to NOT hear Depeche Mode over there), Madonna (and I'm talking classic Madonna, from the 80s), and Cyndi Lauper (that's right: girls do just wanna have fun). Quite a collection there. And they really like JLo over there. Nothing would crack me up more than when some guy in a nice BMW or Benz (which everyone drives) would roll up with his windows down, BLASTING JLo. Wow. Stay hard, buddy.
So I head back to the hostel, catch a shower (btw, as there is no AC in Europe, the only way to stay cool is cold showers. A cold shower had never felt so good.) Anyway, get done with that, and grab a quick nap.
It's almost time for Happy Hour.
6:45pm. We oversleep, and cover it up with "we want to be fashionably late" to happy hour. We head downstairs, and something very dramatic happens: I pop my beer cherry.
That's right. Up to this point, I had tried, but never finished, a beer in my life. Of course, we're talking about American beers, which I seriously don't understand how anyone could drink that. I just don't get it guys. It's revolting. Anyway, so I have my first beer, a Paulaner. It was good. Nothing great, but good. It's not going to replace liquor for me, but since I'm in Germany, and it's a state law that you have to drink beer, well, here you go. It's also $1, so shit.
We meet a ton of cool people at Happy Hour; pretty much everyone in the hostel gathers down here before they go out each night. But most importantly, we meet Sarah and The Aussie. Sarah became one of our best friends on the trip; she is also Australian, and was one of the nicest people we met over there. I swear guys, Aussies are the coolest people on the planet. Anyway, The Aussie was this guy who had such a thick Australian accent that we could barely understand him. Super nice guy, really funny, really laid back. We had a ton of fun with him; unfortunately, we never did catch his name. So he quickly became The Aussie.
Anyway, Sarah told us they were going on a Pub Crawl at 8, and we decided to go. It was one of the best decisions of our trip. We met in front of the Internet Cafe, and paid $15 to go. The guy doing the announcing was British, and it was all the beer you could drink as you walked to the beer gardens. There was this guy from Jersey carrying the beer; he was kind of a small guy, but I would not recommend fucking with him, because he carried a shitload of beer around all night. I was impressed. He's going to have some major back problems when he gets older if he does that for a few years. After the first stop, they also served Jager shots. That's right: someone was giving me all you can drink Jager. For free. Ahhhhhhhh...
Our first stop was the Augustiner, which was the beer garden we'd walked through that morning. It was awesome. The beer garden was just incredible. There were literally 5000 people sitting there, eating sausages and sauerkraut, drinking beer, and hanging out as the sun set. It was such a peaceful, beautiful setting. Nice to see a community just hanging out together, you know? Anyway, the steins probably weighed at least ten pounds, possibly 15. It was awesome. It was truly a cup that was sized for me. There's no way you don't feel like a man when you're drinking one of those. And the beer was incredibly good. Like, I actually LIKED it. We're having a great time, at this point we're hanging out with two British girls who I could have listened to talk all day. They were cracking me up.
I'll skip to the end. We were supposed to go to 5 beer gardens, I think we only went to three. Maybe four at the most. We were pretty rowdy at the last bar; people were starting to throw things, and a couple of soccer hooligans had started screaming at each other. So our guide wisely cut off our night a bit early. At the end of the evening, I was chosen to compete in a "who can down a beer the fastest" competition. I'd struck up a bit of a friendship with the guide as the evening went on, so that's why I think he choose me. I found it very ironic that out of the 40 or so people who were in our group, almost all of whom had certainly drank plenty of beers in their life, the beer virgin was chosen to participate. I almost won, too--I was one gulp away--but a Mexican guy beat me. Much props to our brother from the south. I was actually really happy to see a Mexican, it was a little taste of home.
Now, the Euroyouth bar stays open until about 5:00am. So we went back there, hung out for a while, and finally crashed out I'm guessing around 4:00am. It was a great night.
And with that, I'm going to split Part 3 into Part 3A. It shouldn't take as long to tell the rest of the Munich trip. So enjoy, and I'll see you soon with the rest of our time in Munich!
In other words, Germany is starting off on the right foot.
We get some much needed water--and, of course, a strawberry tart--and then IMMEDIATELY head to the ticket counter to book our trains to Paris (me) and Italy (them). Sam and Jared get a sleeper car. Even though I'm returning to Paris on a Monday night at 9:00pm--not exactly peak times--the sleeper cars are already sold out.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
I seriously said that to her. I didn't mean to, it just kind of slipped out. Remember, I've had a rough night. Fortunately, she either didn't hear me, didn't speak enough English, or didn't care, because she didn't really react at all. I paid for my train, and left.
So we walk outside the train station, and are amazed. It looks kind of like we're in America. I mean, not exactly like it. But it was a very welcome feeling to see an architecture style that you recognize. It was strange, because I immediately understood what I was looking at: the US had rebuilt Munich 40 years earlier, as part of the Marshall Plan. So it was a very weird feeling to see that. My first real, kind of physical touch with something I'd studied so well, World War II.
Well, as we're standing there, an American walked up to us and started talking to us. There's a little strip mall right as you leave the train station, and the first two shops are bike tours. Both bike tours have guys out front handing out fliers. The guy gives us a flier, we chat for a moment, and move on. The next guy hands us a flier, and we chat with him.
Now at this point I should point out a bit of our situation here in Munich. We came to Paris with hostel reservations, a decent grasp of the language, and with me having done a lot of research on Paris. Also, Jared has spent about a month in Paris two years ago. In other words, we came fairly prepared.
In Munich, we were supposed to meet with Bob's (middle brother) best friend. We'll call him "Ed", since his name is Ed. He's stationed in Munich. Well, Ed was supposed to meet us in Munich. Yep, you guessed it. Ed didn't meet us in Munich.
Now my grandfather speaks German, and I know a couple of phrases in German. Unfortunately, I was having a REALLY hard time going from English to French to German. I had tried reading and picking up some of the language on the train, and I just couldn't pick up German the way I had been picking up French. It was too soon, and it was too different a language, and plus I didn't want to just dump my French, as I was returning to France.
In other words, I was worried we were going to be in some shit.
But no! We asked the guy handing out bike fliers where we should stay. First, the hostels were literally right across the street. Awesome. Second, he recommended which one to go to. Third, next to the two bike shops was a Tourism Office. We picked up some city maps there, though unfortunately we weren't helped by the smoking hot girl who worked there.
We proceeded to the first hostel, the Euroyouth.
God damit, I just wrote about three paragraphs and the page crashed. Son of a...
Anyway, back to the Euroyouth. It's an older building, but the guy and girl behind the desk are Brits and are cool. They have a room to leave your bags that is video monitored, there's a couple cute girls checking in, and there is a bar on the first floor.
Unfortunately, they are booked for Friday night. However, we get to make reservations for Saturday and Sunday, and we don't have to pay to make the reservations. We will now go to buildings over to the brand new hostel, the Wombat (the guide told us about the new Wombat, but said he liked the Euroyouth better, and that it was cheaper).
Now I know what you're thinking. The way things have gone so far on the trip--especially when it comes to lodging--you're ready for a long tale of woe. I mean, for God sake, we're going to a hostel named after an Australian rat. You're probably ready for me to tell you about how we ended up sleeping in a bench across the street at the trainstation Friday night.
Well, my friends, there is no need to fear for our well being. For Fortune's beautiful face was shining upon us our entire time in Munich, and we bathed in her dazzling countenance.
We walk into the Wombat, which we find from our Aussie and Brit employees is barely a year old. The cost for the same type of room as at the Euroyouth? A whopping $1. That's right. One more euro. They give you clean sheets every morning for your bed. They also have a room to lock your shit up in, and they have private lockers in each room. AND they have showers in each room! No group showers! AND in the building of the Wombat is the Wombar! AND you get coupons for three free drinks at the Wombar when you check in! AND THERE IS HAPPY HOUR FROM 6-8 EVERY FRICKING DAY WITH $1 BEERS!!!!!!!
Eh. It'll do for a night.
We check in and go up to our room, which is very clean and very nice. There are 6 beds in a room: 3 bunk beds. Duh Duh!
Now, of course, the bunk beds are maybe 6'3" long. To be honest, I'm probably being generous here. So I must have the top bunk in order to fit in these beds. Now, the beds--which are brand new--are basically IKEA beds, which we all know what that means: they look and feel like they are going to collapse at any minute. Every time I climbed in or out of bed, I was sure it was going to collapse and kill me. So Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, don't worry: (nevermind the fact that were was 4 other men in my room, one of whom was my baby brother) there was no way I was having sex on this bed. Just not happening. Sam actually did a really funny impression of someone doing that when he hopped in his bunk, and I seriously was afraid the first time that that would be enough to do the bed in. However, the beds were very comfortable; much better than we'd been expecting.
So we get situated, and there is one thing I really want to do: go work out. At this point, between Ryan's wedding (which was the weekend before we left) and the trip, it's been a full week since I've lifted. We ask our good friends at the Wombat if there is a place, and they know of none. We then go back to the Euroyouth and ask them, and the cute girl at the counter points us to a Beer Garden.
Now at this point I think it's fairly safe to say we've hit some sort of language barrier (even though she spoke very good English). However, it's also at this point that I'm thinking two things: 1) It's Germany; surely if we just walk around, I'll see a gym. This is the land of Hanz and Franz, for God's sake! (They might have been Austrian, but whatever, it's close enough.) 2) The lifting thing isn't going to happen, so we might as well get out and see the city.
1:00pm. It's off to the Augustiner Beer Garden we go. It's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day; not a cloud in the sky, 75 degreesish. Surprise surprise, there's no weight lifting at the beer garden, but we got to check it out and now know where one is. We then just walk back to the hostel by taking a different route to see some more of the city, and stop by an AWESOME internet cafe that is a block away from the hostel. Props to the German keyboards: the only difference between those and American keyboards are the y and z are juxtaposed. Don't even get me started on the French keyboards. I didn't even try to type by touch; it was all hunting and pecking there.
Anyway, it's now time to start on my second quest of the day: finding a cardboard tube. Now fans of the Cardboard Tube Samurai (keep hitting next to see the exciting conclusion) are probably afraid that I have marked someone for death. But you have nothing to fear; I'd bought several AWESOME paintings/sketches in Paris that I wanted to roll and keep in there.
First, I go to a copy center (Jared and Sam have left to go see a church we spotted). No dice. Next, I go to the post office. Surely I will meet with success here! Unfortunately, no. How a post office doesn't have cardboard tubes I don't know, but apparently the Germans only use them as weapons, and God knows the last thing we want to do is hand German Postal Employees weapons. However, at the post office I find one of my most valuable pieces of information: Hertie.
Hertie is Munich's largest department store, and is located right next to the post office. I couldn't make this up guys; EVERYTHING we needed was a 5 minute walk from us. Unbelievable. Anyway, I digress. So I go into Hertie, which is just like an American department store. Think Sears, except even bigger. So I acquire my cardboard tube, and then an epiphany strikes me: I should ask the guys in sporting goods if they know where a gym is. So I travel to sporting goods, and the gentlemen up there is kind enough to point me in the direction of where he thinks a gym is. Okay, I'm thinking. That'll do. I then go check out their clothes to see if they have a bunch of Dirk stuff. It is here that I find a pair of authentic TEAM USA Olympic basketball shorts for $27 Euro. In America, these would go for about $80. And as we remember, I left all my athletic shorts at home, which is especially traumatic for me, since all I wear when I'm not dressed up is basketball shorts.
I told you, Fortune was smiling upon us.
I'm so excited about my find, I'm practically giddy. I go down to where the guy suggested I look, and there's nothing there. It's actually a huge shopping area, but really cooly done. It's in a lot of older buildings that looked like they survived the war but had been renovated during the Marshall Plan. Cool place to stroll around.
It's not about 3:00pm, and I'm supposed to meet Sam and Jared back to the hostel. So back I go!
3:00pm. Meet up with Sam and Jared. Now, Jared's nickname is "Grandpa", because apparently he can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. So Jared takes a nap, and Sam and I decide to explore South of the hostel (all of spelunking--okay, there were no caves involved, but I love that word--has thus far been north of the hostel). So we're running around a street south of the hostel, and find--you guessed it--a fricking gym. I have to pay $15, and there's no AC, but I get a really good workout in.
One problem with the gym: ummmm...how do I put this? Let's just say there were no women in there. Now, there were only about ten people in there while I was there. But none of them were women. And one of the dudes was wearing one of those skintight spandex workout suits that has straps over your shoulders and is cut out from the chest area. You know, the thing you see in movies where Americans are making fun of Europeans, and you laugh and think, "My God, no one in the world would ever really where that." Well, unfortunately for the rest of us, we thought wrong.
But whatever. Finally got a good workout in. I was happy. One other funny thing about the gym was the music they were playing, which held true of our entire trip to Europe. They love American music over there, but the most recent stuff they have is AT LEAST 5 years old. For instance, I heard Dre's song, The Next Episode, which came out in October 2000. Seriously. And that was the most recent song. I lifted weights to Jennifer Lopez (She's still Jenny from the block, in case you were wondering), Depeche Mode (this didn't bother me; I would have been surprised to NOT hear Depeche Mode over there), Madonna (and I'm talking classic Madonna, from the 80s), and Cyndi Lauper (that's right: girls do just wanna have fun). Quite a collection there. And they really like JLo over there. Nothing would crack me up more than when some guy in a nice BMW or Benz (which everyone drives) would roll up with his windows down, BLASTING JLo. Wow. Stay hard, buddy.
So I head back to the hostel, catch a shower (btw, as there is no AC in Europe, the only way to stay cool is cold showers. A cold shower had never felt so good.) Anyway, get done with that, and grab a quick nap.
It's almost time for Happy Hour.
6:45pm. We oversleep, and cover it up with "we want to be fashionably late" to happy hour. We head downstairs, and something very dramatic happens: I pop my beer cherry.
That's right. Up to this point, I had tried, but never finished, a beer in my life. Of course, we're talking about American beers, which I seriously don't understand how anyone could drink that. I just don't get it guys. It's revolting. Anyway, so I have my first beer, a Paulaner. It was good. Nothing great, but good. It's not going to replace liquor for me, but since I'm in Germany, and it's a state law that you have to drink beer, well, here you go. It's also $1, so shit.
We meet a ton of cool people at Happy Hour; pretty much everyone in the hostel gathers down here before they go out each night. But most importantly, we meet Sarah and The Aussie. Sarah became one of our best friends on the trip; she is also Australian, and was one of the nicest people we met over there. I swear guys, Aussies are the coolest people on the planet. Anyway, The Aussie was this guy who had such a thick Australian accent that we could barely understand him. Super nice guy, really funny, really laid back. We had a ton of fun with him; unfortunately, we never did catch his name. So he quickly became The Aussie.
Anyway, Sarah told us they were going on a Pub Crawl at 8, and we decided to go. It was one of the best decisions of our trip. We met in front of the Internet Cafe, and paid $15 to go. The guy doing the announcing was British, and it was all the beer you could drink as you walked to the beer gardens. There was this guy from Jersey carrying the beer; he was kind of a small guy, but I would not recommend fucking with him, because he carried a shitload of beer around all night. I was impressed. He's going to have some major back problems when he gets older if he does that for a few years. After the first stop, they also served Jager shots. That's right: someone was giving me all you can drink Jager. For free. Ahhhhhhhh...
Our first stop was the Augustiner, which was the beer garden we'd walked through that morning. It was awesome. The beer garden was just incredible. There were literally 5000 people sitting there, eating sausages and sauerkraut, drinking beer, and hanging out as the sun set. It was such a peaceful, beautiful setting. Nice to see a community just hanging out together, you know? Anyway, the steins probably weighed at least ten pounds, possibly 15. It was awesome. It was truly a cup that was sized for me. There's no way you don't feel like a man when you're drinking one of those. And the beer was incredibly good. Like, I actually LIKED it. We're having a great time, at this point we're hanging out with two British girls who I could have listened to talk all day. They were cracking me up.
I'll skip to the end. We were supposed to go to 5 beer gardens, I think we only went to three. Maybe four at the most. We were pretty rowdy at the last bar; people were starting to throw things, and a couple of soccer hooligans had started screaming at each other. So our guide wisely cut off our night a bit early. At the end of the evening, I was chosen to compete in a "who can down a beer the fastest" competition. I'd struck up a bit of a friendship with the guide as the evening went on, so that's why I think he choose me. I found it very ironic that out of the 40 or so people who were in our group, almost all of whom had certainly drank plenty of beers in their life, the beer virgin was chosen to participate. I almost won, too--I was one gulp away--but a Mexican guy beat me. Much props to our brother from the south. I was actually really happy to see a Mexican, it was a little taste of home.
Now, the Euroyouth bar stays open until about 5:00am. So we went back there, hung out for a while, and finally crashed out I'm guessing around 4:00am. It was a great night.
And with that, I'm going to split Part 3 into Part 3A. It shouldn't take as long to tell the rest of the Munich trip. So enjoy, and I'll see you soon with the rest of our time in Munich!
posted by Michael Pondrom at 8:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home