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| 04.13.04 (5:27 am) [edit] |
What a weekend! Munich kicks ass! You will notice that most of this Blog revolves around Beer. That is because all of Munich revolves around Beer and Beer culture....
What a great city - museums, palaces, tons of history everywhere you look and the beer gardens. OH the beer gardens! This is a city that takes it's beer and weisswurst (white sausage) VERY seriously.
We arrived early Thursday afternoon and had some sausage, sauerkraut and beer for dinner. Thursday was a fairly early night - after 8 hours of trains we were all pretty wiped out.
Friday we toured around the city center, saw the palace (Residenz), went to the art museum and hefted a few beers as big as your head! The beauty of Bavarian beer is that they actually have "purity laws" which allow them to only use 5 ingredients in their beer (hops, barley, malt, yeast and water). No crap in your beer = little to no hangover. In fact, I think the sauerkraut put a hurting on me FAR worse than the beer!
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Saturday Karen took her parents and me on a forced death march up a mountain in a snowstorm to see King Ludwigs's Castle.... King Ludwig nearly bankrupted Bavaria back in the day building these elaborate castles until he was found dead one day under VERY mysterious circumstances. It WAS a very impressive Castle once we got there but that still didn't stop us from busting Karen's ass for the journey we had to undertake to see it!
Saturday night Karen and I went on a guided tour http://thecrawl.beertour.de/w... of the beer halls and gardens with a group of about 40 people. First we had a lesson on the proper way to hold a liter (It's NOT a teacup you f*ck!) then a bit of history talk from our Australian tour guide. A liter at each of 3 different beer halls and THEN we stayed out with our new friends til around 4am at some crazy Irish bar.
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Karen won the highly coveted and well earned "Best Drinker" award - a beer "coozie". In the words of our tour guide at the beginning of the night "You are out of the contest if you fall down, throw up, spill a beer, pass out or just generally make a "f*ck" of yourself"! The tour's logo promotes it as "The best night you'll never remember". They were right!
We got off to a bit of a slow start on Easter Sunday (due to the "crawl" the night before) but eventually made it to the Deutches Museum which is a HUGE science and technology museum. It was like the Boston Museum of Science but much bigger and much better. Actually it was like what the Boston Museum wants to be like when it grows up. You could spend 2 days in this building and STILL not see everything.
Easter dinner consisted of slow-roasted "pig knuckles" and - you guessed it - beer. The swine was unbelievably good and we were all uncomfortably full when we finished stuffing our faces. Then we went out for - more beer.....
Beer is not considered "alcohol" in Germany. It is considered a "beverage" and is taxed and regulated in the same manner as a can of Pepsi. The drinking age is 16 (14 if the kids are with their parents) BUT they also have some VERY strict drunk driving laws and such good public transportation that most people would never even consider trying it anyhow. The US could take a lesson.... But I digress.
We ended our Munich weekend with a few hours in the world famous Hofbrauhaus. THE beerhall that the rest of the world views as a "typical" German beerhall. It's not. But it IS a buttload of touristy fun and revelry! Picture 500+ drunk tourists drinking liters and singing "Sweet Home Alabama" to the music being played by an Oom-pah band and you have an idea of the type of scene we had plunged ourselves into!
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It was a blast and we met some great folks at our table including a young guy who had just returned from 330 days in Iraq. He was with the Airborne division that parachuted in to secure the airfields on day 4 of the war. We bought him a beer - whether you agree with the war or not you HAVE to agree that this kid earned his beer! He swapped war stories with Karen's dad who was in Germany in '52-'54. What a time warp!
That about hits all the highlights of our trip - more stories to come as we remember them and we'll have pictures out to you all soon....
Be good!
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posted by: Timah! (reply)
post date: 04.13.04 (7:01 am)
I love Munich. I am pumped you guys got to go. The Bavarian purity law is the Reinheitsgebrot and Redhook boasts that they adhere to the same principles. Neuschwanstein was the model for the Disney Castle. I have found that Australians and Bavarian beer make an almost lethal combination. The aussies sonsider drinking a sport, thus they expect to be injured at some point. They wear their drinking scars with pride. Remember gang, Munich in September for Oktoberfest!
posted by: BrianKaren (reply)
post date: 04.13.04 (7:15 am)
Oktoberfest!! WooHoo! Karen and I are planning on the last weekend of Oktoberfest (Thurs Sept 30 til Sun Oct 3rd)..... We're checking on cheap rooms this week - I'll update you with what we find....
posted by: Kiwi in Munich (reply)
post date: 04.13.04 (8:41 am)
Munich was so much fun. I had a great time trying to keep up with karen on the pub crawl. Nice to see your website. I just had to see those cow fight photos!!
posted by: BrianKaren (reply)
post date: 04.13.04 (10:40 pm)
It was a blast - we should have some photos posted today from the weekend!
posted by: Your Australian Guide in Munich (reply)
post date: 04.14.04 (10:28 am)
Hello guy´s glad to see you had fun and that me dragging you up to the Castle in the snow was all worth it. Good to hear you are planning Oktoberfest. Karen you are a drinking legend, I thought American girls could not drink beer?????
posted by: BrianKaren (reply)
post date: 04.14.04 (10:45 pm)
Hey David - Karen has turned into everybody's favorite drinker since the Beer tour! Thanks again for the trip up to Neuschwanstein Castle - we had a blast despite the weather and I sent a thank you email to your tour company so tell them to give you a raise in pay now!
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