Prelude: Other than living the first few months of my life in Germany (my dad was stationed there at the time), really I've spent about 3 weeks there that I can actually remember. I can tell you right now that I feel like I've seen and experienced about 5% (at best) of what the country has to offer. I spent those three weeks in mainly Berlin and Munich during the summer of 2006.
I'm not even going to beat around the bush. The only real beer country that I had been to up to this point was Australia and I was hankering for some more yummy beer from the home of the biggest beer festival in the world. I ran into an early snag with my first beer tasting like a bitter Budweiser. I almost cried. I also noticed a lot of guys wearing tight jeans and jean jackets at the same time, so this wasn't a great start at all. I wasn't a happy American and my travel partner, Colin (not real name), wasn't happy to hear me bitch so much. So I don't count that as my first real beer or real memory of Germany. Oh, and the next day in Potsdam held another let down as I tried my first vendor bratwurst and it tasted like they just wrapped straight pig fat up into a sausage link. Off to a bad start.
A couple days later the true Germany emerged. We were waiting for our train from Berlin to Munich when we struck up a conversation with a local guy, Durk, who was about our age. Well, he was looking for the same train as us and it switched tracks, but no one gave us a warning. So we had two hours to kill before the next Munich train came. The 3 of us went the small park nearby and set up camp next to a girl reading her book in the middle of the lawn. She took us right in as friends. Durk bought the first round of beers from a vendor and we had our first taste of German yumminess. This was one of those surreal moments where you feel like the moment couldn't be set up any better. Sharing a great beer in public on a sunny day with two great people that you just met and will never see again; and you know you'll never forget the moment. After the third round in about an hour, we went up to catch our train. I personally was feeling quite nice after having a small breakfast smothered by all the tasty drink.
Durk stayed with Colin and me in the service car of the train. The car was a little wobbly and got more wobbly as we drank more, but it was great to just be on my first train and seeing the countryside of Germany. They have a lot of power generating windmills throughout the country. Fun fact: 10% of Germany's electric comes from wind power. These were the things I was thinking about while Colin and Durk talked a level of drunken politics that I couldn't handle. Durk eventually got off and we finished our ride down to Munich without a hitch.
We arrived in Munich at night and found our way to our first hostel. As soon as we turned around from the desk after checking in, there were some guys at the long picnic table wanting us to play cards. That's about how hard it is to meet people while traveling during the summer and staying in European hostels.
Cincinnati has flying pig statues in different colors and designs all over the city center. Louisville has its horses in the same fashion. DC of course has pandas, donkeys and elephants. Well, Munich has lions. And just so you know, after heading back from the Augusteiner beer hall, I rode the one dressed like a gesture. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Munich also has the beautiful Haufbrienhaus (Cincinnati has the only other one and it doesn't look as good, but is about as good of a time as you can have at any beer hall). I had always heard that the Haufbrienhaus was the beer hall of beer halls, but when I walked in on this Wednesday afternoon (apparently not prime time) I saw a grand restaurant with tall ceilings, a large courtyard in the center, a second story, and everything was covered in beautifully carved wood. Its not what I pictured a beer hall to be. Colin and I set up camp at a table in the court yard, ready to taste the world class beer. We also ordered the best bratwurst on the menu, the whitwurst (an albino brat). It melted in my mouth, literally. Beautiful. I chased it down with their dark dunkel beer and holly crap on a stick, it almost made me cry for a completely different reason than when I had my first German beer. It was great afternoon toped off with one of the Eastern Europeans, sitting next to us, puking right next to himself and just continuing the conversation as if nothing happened. The waiter had the "Did that just happen?" look on his face. Also, there were two ladies sitting on the other side of us that couldn't have been younger than 80 years old and they were running through their pints just as well as we were. Colin and I were so impressed that we went over there and got their number and showed up at their place later for a booty call and shuffle board... but not really.
When we were in Italy we ran into a group of German girls and I had a real enlightening conversation with one. She got upset after she found out that I had just got out of the Marine Corps and almost stopped talking to me completely until I reminded her of how mature that was and showed interest in how someone could be angry towards military members. She quickly went to Bush's Iraq War and how wrong it was and said that I agreed to it by volunteering to defend my country for any cause. I struck back quick and hard through the easiest and most honest route by telling her "If it wasn't for Americans volunteers you would be living in a Nazi regime along with a lot more of the world." Okay, this is when she did quit talking to me for a good 5 to 10 minutes and wouldn't even look at me. Maybe if I hadn't had a bottle of $2 wine it would have come out a little softer. When we started talking again is when I realized, well, she told me, that Germany as a whole still feels extremely guilty for the whole thing and doesn't want to be looked at as nazis. Up to this point it knew the war was over and nazi things were for the most part taken care of by the late 1940's. I never really pictured Germany as anything, but a nice place with good beer and great engineers. I had no idea how much of a consciousness they still have of it. Calling a German a Nazi seems almost like calling a black person a N$@*&^. I must have been in rare form that night because normally I would've thrown out a nazi joke and made a complete ass of myself. I've been described as "classy" when it comes to my word usage.
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