The Canadians are Coming! and Starkbier

I met Danimal in Munich. It was a very... interesting weekend. I had a lot of fun - hanging out with Dan is always a lot of fun - but some pretty strange/annoying things went down.

For example, I was on the train to Salzburg - I had to switch trains there - and about two hours or so from Vienna I remember that I had completely forgotten to bring my passport. That was great. I spent the whole train ride worrying about how I would check into the hostel. I actually had a whole plan worked out where I could buy ticket for a night train to Vienna, grab my passport, and make it back to Munich by 10:30 the next morning. Luckily, I didn't have to enact this plan because the hostel let me check in using my driver's license number. That was nice of them. Also, when I arrived at the station in Munich, I couldn't find Dan. We had planned it out so that we'd get there at the same time, but we didn't plan out a place to meet. After about an hour of looking for him, I went to the Hostel. He arrived at the hostel slightly after I did. We spent the whole time looking for each other in a train station that is not that big (relative to other large cities.

Dan and I wondered the city for the first night. We saw some nice churches and the Rathaus, which is nice - it has a Glockenspiel with some folks doing a traditional dance - but I think the Wiener Rathaus is better. It's more imposing and has a park in front of it. We also found the Hofbräuhaus. We wound up that night sitting up with a couple of Canadians, an Irish guy, a couple of Germans and a Swiss fellow. The Swiss guy told us how to say kitchen drawer in Swiss German which basically sounds like you're hocking a loogie three times in a row. One of the Canadians, Nathan, was nice, but the other guy was a complete tool. He was always saying something like "Go big or go home." He was completely wasted and was staying there with his family. He was only 18, but come on. He should be old enough to know that the way he's acting is complete bullshit. Anyways, I told someone something about the Turks and one of the German guys erupted and said something like he hates the Turks. This makes sense, since the Turks in Germany don't learn German and don't care. Though all of the Turks I know are learning German and they're all good people. I told this guy that as well, but he seemed unconvinced. Later on we I bought all these people shots of Feiglings or something like that. It's some type of schnapps where you put the cap on your nose, the bottle between your teeth, and down it. This older dude walked in about this time and we invited him over. I was easily the most sober of the crowd and I moved over to talk with him. His name was Joshua and he's from Israel. I asked him about a number of things, like what he thought of the war in Iraq. He said at first he thought it was a good thing, but now he's not so sure. Iran and Iraq used to keep each other busy and now they really don't have that quarrel so Iran might become a little too powerful - or something like that. He also told me a little about Turkey in the region. He said it was a very nice place to vacation because the Germans decided to offer the Turkish in Germany jobs in their homeland so they'd leave Germany.

I then tried to get into my room. No matter how hard I knocked, I wasn't able to wake up whoever was in there. I thought this weird since the room was supposed to have six people in it. I even went to the desk, and the guy there was very cool and tried to help me get into the room, but the key was still in the lock on the other side so he wasn't able to open it. I stayed up all night talking with him. His name is Sebastian and he is a very big Star Wars fan. He collects the actual movies because he thinks the action figures are stupid. He also said that German teens start drinking and getting drunk on liquor at about 12. The liquor salesmen in Germany don't care about age restrictions and sell to just about anyone - which seems to be the case in Austria, as well. I also met some Americans from Cali, Virginia, and Missouri. They were cool. I finally got into my room and slept for about two hours.

At 10 in the morning, I meet Dan and we go out walking. I was so tired this whole time that I don't quite know where we went. I know we wound up in the city center and went to a museum. The museum had an exhibit on the history of München and an exhibit about the history of nude photography (which was the ad that drew us there in the first place). I liked the museum because I took a nap there. We climbed the Alte Peterkirche afterwards and saw the whole of München. Afterwards, we walked around the Englischer Park. For some reason there's a giant pagoda in the middle of it surrounded by one of the biggest Biergartens in the world. It made no sense to me, unless there's some connection between München and China which there seemed to be.

Then we went to the Hofbräuhaus. We took a seat and waited. And waited. And waited. After an hour of being ignored, Dan got so pissed off he left and took off for McDonald's. I convinced him we needed to go back to the Hofbräuhaus. We went for a free beer tasting and I met some guys from Colorado and a girl from Canada in my room, then Dan and I took off for the Hofbräuhaus. Neither of us felt like eating in the really crowded downstairs so we went upstairs and had a nice quiet dinner. There was still music from an accordion and baritone so we got some of the experience. And the food was delicious.

The next day we went to Salzburg, so I'll write that up later.

After we got back from Salzburg we went to the hostel for the "happy hour" which was €1 shots of Jägermeister and played cards. We met a Quebecian girl who told us that in the larger cities most people spoke French and English and out in the country everyone spoke only French. She knew English because she wanted to get a decent job. I swear, I've met more Canadians in Europe than any other nationality - I'm almost positive.

On Monday we were both leaving so we went to the Englischer Park one last time. We went to the Biergarten with the pagoda and I bought some food. We both bought beer. It was Hofbräuhaus Urbock, and might just be the best beer I've ever drank. The mug of beer, and it was a liter HBhaus mug, cost €7.60 and there is a deposit on the glass that was an extra Euro. Now, Dan and I were both looking to buy one of those mugs from the HBhaus, but they were a little expensive. They were €8.50. So we thought that since there's a Euro deposit for the glass, then if we wanted to keep the mug it would be fine. So we sat and drank about half of the glass and then decided to go for a little walk with our beer, conveniently not returning to the Biergarten. We now have a HBhaus mug apiece and a helluva good memory. I view it as only "kind of" stealing. And the beer, the Urbock - a Starkbier, was incredible. And, since it's a Starkbier, as Dan said, "This beer.... it's full of alcohol."

We spent so much time in the park that we actually had to run back to the train station for Dan to catch his train. It was a really good little excursion there. And I also must thank Dan for coming up with the stealing-the-beer-mug idea. Pure brilliance and balls on his part.