Day 7, Saturday 09.20.08

After a full day's train travel, we slept in quite late. So, after finally getting dressed, we headed out onto the metro into town to find the venerable Hofbräuhaus for lunch and liters of beer. Winding, twisting streets, plus the lack of a map that names all the tiny alleyways, led us to a confused walk through town. Finally, using our rusty skills of directional awareness, we find it.

And oh what a line to even get in!

When the herd of humanity that we were apart of was finally allowed to enter, it was a sea of beer drinkers on wooden benches for as far as the eye could see. Amazing. The noise level was intense. The throb of people and the clinking of heavy mugs all added to an auditory overload. We finally find an empty bench and pop a squat. Then the menu....all in German (well, duh!). Chris could make out what he wanted as he is a fan of the sausage and brat and weiner and such. Kimberly? Not so much. So it took a bit of confused looks and references to our travel guide to decipher some of the ingredients. Finally, an English menu is found and all is well. The darling pretzel girl pictured above sold us a delicious treat:

Three battery salesmen from South Africa sat across from us and proceeded to engage us in lively conversation: wine, politics, Germany, food, schnapps, beer. Funny to hear folks from a long long way aways from America discuss our presidential election.




The world is indeed watching. During our stay, we spoke with South Africans, Italians, and Scots about Obama/McCain..after THEY brought it up! Anyway, so we order up a few liters of beer and order our food. The liters are drained and the food still hasn't arrived. Just a huge ass pretzel. The food finally makes it (sausage plate for Chris and cheese spaetzl for Kimberly). Great, at least SOMETHING to absorb the massive amounts of alcohol in the belly. The jovial South Africans, not content to wait for a liter's worth of beer alcohol to take effect, promptly order shots of schnapps. "You are in Germany now, it must be done!" they exclaim. Oh boy, we're in for it. The "plan" was to go in, have some lunch, and have two liter mugs of beer. Then, on to the next place, say, the Ayinger spot across the street! Nope. Not happening. We spent a good portion of our afternoon here, experiencing all sorts of things, both good and bad: jolly South Africans who seemingly are immune to alcohol's treacherous effects, spontaneous shouts of what we assume to be drinking songs or chants, a creppy Italian who was enamored with Kimberly and asked Chris if it was OK to have sex with her, an assholish person playing grab-ass with Kimberly on the way out. And this was during the afternoon! Could only imagine the debauchery involved had it been the evening. The Hofbräuhaus experince, at least the bad ones, left Kimberly feeling what in the hell are we getting into??? Mostly, the atmosphere was one of fun and frivolity making new friends from far away lands, and hopefully over time this will drown out the creepiness that Kimberly sadly experienced firsthand.

After relieving our bodies of excessive alcohol (ahem, in more ways than one...schnapps AND beer? Whew, Chris felt so much better afterwards...), we staggered to the pedestrian area near Marienplatz to look around for a coat for Kimberly. The cold snap continued, and the jacket she brought just wasn't cutting it. So a new coat, scarf and gloves were acquired for her, and Chris fit the Oktoberfest bill by getting a green felt hat with a feather. Ahhh, warmth!

It's now dark and late (seriously, we spent virtually the entire day at Hofbräuhaus) and Chris's tummy, I mean, we feel well enough for some dinner. Another cobblestone street, another alley, and we make our way to Andechser am Dom for dinner. The Andechs monastery produces a fantastic beer called Andechser Doppelbock, a rich fruity beer that nourishes. Hey, when monks fast and all they drink is this? Almost makes you want to get fitted for a robe. The monastery is a ways out and a bit of trouble to get to, so they opened up a restaurant in town to make some cash, also limiting the number of beery tourists heading out to see them and generally harassing them about their beer.

So we find a table and order some dinner. There was an item that had the translation "meatloaf" in it, so Kimberly ordered up a plate to split (and Chris got some veal meatballs for splitting purposes).

Leberkäs is the name. Never order it.

It was a compact, dense, moist loaf of hot dog. Think an enormous hot dog, compressed into meatloaf size. Nasty. Not until a little later did we surmise that "leber" means "liver", and that we saw souvenir tins of leberkäs sold in shops. Tins. Of meat. It's freaking SPAM.

Ugh.

Our first full day in Germany is indeed an interesting one. One we may never forget.