Beer

It would be great if I could blog about the recent excellence of Duke Basketball. Coming off of a dominating win over Carolina my Duke friends and I were actually imbued with a confidence that hasn't been present since 2004 when we lost to UConn in the National Semifinal. We killed Maryland and seemed to have a legit shot at running the table in the ACC which we haven't done since the Battier years.

And then the Wake and Miami debacles happened, so I'm not going to talk about basketball.

Anyways, I watched the Wake game at a place in Seattle called Taphouse Grill. They are very proud about their selection of draft beer: over 160 regular taps plus 10 rotating seasonal taps. I decided to order a sampler of porters and stouts (winter time!). I had ordered the four beers that come in the sampler when the waiter informed me they might be out of one or two of my selections, so I should probably name some backups. I named two, and all was well.

Except that he came back and informed me that they could only find three out of the six, and could I pick yet another beer. Surprisingly, they actually had beer #7.

I ran into this same issue when I would go to the Brickskellar in DC: their menu has hundreds, if not thousands, of beers, but their refrigerators usually only have about half what their menu promises. I understand that it is hard to keep some things in stock, but why run your business in such a way that continually disappoints your customers? Why not have a more conservative menu (in the Brickskellar's case, maybe only 400 beers) and always have them. And if there are some rarities sitting around why have your wait staff offer them up as specials? Am I missing something here?

Maybe this is why Franko got a cat

My friend Jon got a cat back in March. Somehow this was a replacement for the friendship of Huan and me since we both moved away from DC. We've long debated why he felt the need to replace us with a cat.

I think I know why.

Having someone around is a great excuse not to eat. I lost about 15 pounds after moving to Seattle. A lot of it was the stress and emotion of the move. Some of it was not knowing anyone, and thus having no excuse to go out drinking. But some of it was having someone else in my apartment who would (passively) make me feel guilty about sneaking late night snacks or eating a 2nd portion of my dinner meal.

Now that I've started to meet people who like going out, I find myself in bars a lot more frequently than in the Spring. And with Huan living it up in the China I don't have anyone to shame me into not eating. The combination (along with a stretch of work that kept me out of the gym and eating takeout food) has encouraged a couple of the lost pounds to find their way back to my belly. Which makes me wonder: Should I get a cat to shame me into not eating?

And then I snap back to reality and realize that cats are lame. I'd rather be fat.

The rest of Munich

Here's the (not so brief) summary of the rest of my Saturday:

First, some remainders from the morning. I was pretty pleased with myself in terms of looking young when the tour guide offered to give me the student rate. I was talking with the college girls on the tour, and was kind of hoping to tag along with them for the day... they seemed fun, interested in drinking beer, and they spoke English. At some point during the tour I mentioned that the last time I had been in Munich they were still using Deutsch marks. The girls asked what marks were. When I had to explain it was the currency in use in 1999 they told me they were 12 years old in 1999.

We didn't hang out much after that.

Anyways, the rest of the day was beer: a quiet beer in the English Gardens, and then a beer tour (same guide as the morning). The tour was pretty good... the guide took us to 4 places, offered up advice on the better beers at each place, talking about the history of beer in Germany (did you know wheat beers exist because barley prices got to high?), etc. The tour group was a bunch of Brazilians who didn't actually seem to enjoy beer, an Australian who spent the winter as a ski instructor in Austria, two Scottish kids and their mom, a couple of old American dudes from Albany (they didn't know Pat), and the worst American in Europe (more on him in another post).

Sadly, there aren't a lot of great stories from the evening that don't involve the awful American. By the time we got to Hofbrauhaus (the most famous beer hall in Europe) it was 11:00 and I was staring a 6am wakeup call in the fact, so after 1 liter of the lager I called it quits. Turns out that Hofbrau closes at midnight, which I didn't know before.

Wow. This blog post kind of turned into nothing. I realized that I put most of the stories on Flickr.

Sober blogging

It's a little past 1:00 here in Munich... no beers as of yet, and given the paucity of internet cafes near beer gardens, I can't promise a post-beer blog post. You never know, but that's the way it looks now.

I went on a walking tour this morning, and have signed up for a beer tour this evening (they claim it's not a tour to get drunk, although it may happen... we'll see). Anyways, I'm not convinced that I've never been in Munich before. Some of the buildings are familiar, but most of them aren't. I spent 3 days here in 1999, and none of the city looks familiar. It's entirely possible that the city has changed in 8 years, but the other, more plausible, explanation is that I was way drunker than I thought in 1999. The tour I took then was on bikes, and it stopped at two beer gardens, and it was just a mess. If I learned anything it was to not be surprised by naked dudes in the English Gardens. But Munich history? Nothing.

Hopefully what I learned today will stick, as the city actually has a pretty interesting past.

Other thoughts:

1. The Mike's Bike Tour for this morning was cancelled because the tour guide didn't show up. I've got to believe this happens all the time... those guys are drunks.
2. There were four American college students studying in Vienna on my tour. It just kills me that I didn't study abroad... they pretty much spend every weekend in another cool city in Europe. Occasionally they study, but not really. Mainly they go to cool cities, party, and try to meet a scruffy multilingual tourguide to bring home to the midwest (that's what the four girls were doing today).
3. Coolest thing I've seen today: Porsche Carerra GT. Me and another guy on the tour nearly lost the group because we saw it and spent 10 minutes staring and taking pictures. Didn't recognize the guy driving it, but he was almost certainly famous.
4. I'm going to get a sunburn today. I'm kind of upset by that, but then again, I'm going to the palest city on the west coast, so it'll be nice to have the color.

In Munich, not sure what's going on

First, the kezboards in Germanz are reallz screwed up, so apologies in advance.

I've now been hanging out in the Munich airport for 3 hours, pushing me past the 24 hours without sleep mark. I'm kind of starting to hallucinate, or at least I was an hour ago. I attempted to fix that situation by walking outside (the Munich airport has a reallz nice glass roof covered courtyard inbetween terminals) and getting some fresh air. However, I may have countered any benefit from the fresh air by sitting and having a late lunch, with a half liter of weissbrau, at Airbrau, the Munich airports own brewpub. And brewery. Iäm not kidding. They play a lot of Phil Collins.

)Seriouslz, this keyboard is a joke. It onlz makes my current state of mind all the harder to deal with).

Anywho, not too much else to report. I thought there was a really trippy Burger King statue, but it turns out to be some sort of Bavarian mascot. I have a picture of myself crossing the 24 hour mark (it happens to be in the bathroom), which isnät as bad as it could be.

The last time I was in Germany was 1999, and obviously much has changed since then. However, I distinctly remember being told not to bring or wear any denim for fear of looking like and American tourist (since the backpack never gave it away). Well, we (i.e. America) seem to have won that war. Everyone is wearing jeans. Old, young, it doesn't matter... they are all happily walking around in Levi Strauss. I feel out of place with khakis (don't worry... I brought two pairs of jeans).

Also, I think every American who has an issue with multilingual education needs to come to Europe alone and see how many people can and are willing to speak English. It's quite impressive... I bought a little German phrasebook, but no one has given me a problem when speaking English (except the girls trying to hawk me an Amex gold card). My lack of sleep has somehow activated the part of mz brain that remembers Spanish, and it's all I can do to not throw "La cuenta, por favor" out when asking for the check.

Lastly, the Munich airport is really quite nice, but it lacks the chaos of Heathrow (or, for that matter, any American airport), which makes it kind of creepy. Like the baggage claim area. At National Airport the baggage claim area is kind of like a rugby scrum. But here, people come in, get their bags, and leave. No big deal. Weird.

Well, hopefullz this is my last blog before sleep. My co-worker should arrive within the hour, then we get our car and head to Regensburg. Maybe more from there tomorrow.

Adios.