Sausage and Pretzels and Beers--Oh My!

A lot went on this week, so this post is gonna be a doozy.

First of all, I got to teach about Thanksgiving which was a lot of fun. I explained about how every school had a thanksgiving play and so we put on a little show in a bunch of my classes in order for me to tell the story of the first thanksgiving. The kids really enjoyed it (though they were definitely pretty racist in their portrayals of native Americans. I was a little uncomfortable but I guess coming from a country without any of that past/tension, for them it’s more cowboys-and-Indians and thus ok?). As they are in elementary school, I gave the kids the elementary-school-version of the story. You know, the one where the pilgrims and the Indians are best friends forever? But in one of my classes the teacher decided the kids should know that in reality, we Europeans mercilessly slaughtered the natives, “So it’s odd that you celebrate it as a holiday”. Hey buddy, back off—I LOVE thanksgiving.

On Wednesday I went up to Epinal where someone from Oxford University Press was presenting a new English textbook kit for elementary schoolers. I had decided to go on strictly social grounds, knowing that some other assistants would be there, but it ended up being somewhat informative as well. And afterwards all of the assistants went out for drinks which was really fun. As soon as I got back from Epinal I had about three minutes to scarf down some leftovers before Alex and I hurried on over to the Darou for game night with other Alex and Nicholas. Note: playing taboo in a second language = hard

Thursday was Thanksgiving! I taught classes in the morning and then in the afternoon did some shopping/cooking/ buying of a pre-roasted chicken (without an oven options were pretty limited). Strangely enough the other American that I live with had completely forgotten about it and decided to go to the gym rather than eat thanksgiving dinner with us, but Estelle and Alex were both quite excited for their first thanksgivings. Both were super skeptical when I brought out the cranberry jelly (Alex: “I don’t trust the way it moves”), but then they tried it and really liked it. Point for the American team. Boo yea.

Our Thanksgiving mini-feast

In keeping with Weisman/Clausen Thanksgiving tradition, I watched “Home Alone”, but I decided to watch it dubbed into French. The French title can be translated to “Mom, I missed the plane!” but other than that no major changes. (They do however change “you’re what the French call les incompétents” to “you’re what we call les imcompétents”). It felt really weird to be watching it alone and the parts where Kevin realizes how important family is really tugged at those heartstrings. (Love you fam!—Clausens included). But before I could get too emotional/ sleep off the Thanksgiving food-coma, it was off to Munich for the first international Beer Summit with Hannah, Tricky and Kevin!

Day 1: Got up early to catch my series of three trains. The middle one was late which screwed things up a little, but in the end, I only arrived one hour later than originally planned. And the ride was really pretty since everything was covered in fresh snow. For some reason I had the feeling I was riding a train across Russia—random but pretty cool.

When I arrived I was greeted by my fellow beer summitters (or as Tricky pointed out, since it was more than one day, it should more accurately be called a beer conference) and Socktoberfest celebrants at the train station. They had all gotten in earlier that morning and so I missed the weekend’s first event which was a visit to the potato museum (which apparently is run by the German consul to Guatemala?). Sad sad.

We headed back to the hotel/hostel we had booked for an amazing 9$ per person per night. They wouldn’t let us check in for another 20 minutes so we waited in this creepy room with a pool table with no cues and a captain fantastic/Elton John pinball machine dating back to who knows when. (When Kevin tried to plug it in, Andrew remembered the movie “Big” and advised against it.)

After settling in at the hotel, we ambled over to the Octoberfest museum which had some amusing posters/postcards, some hilarious English translations and an enormous number of beer steins. After the museum, we walked around the city center which had its Christmas market already in full swing. As we were about to leave, Tricky noticed some people gathering on the balcony of the town hall and we realized that we had haphazardly come across the Munich tree-lighting ceremony, which like most ceremonies took waaaay too long for something to actually happen. As far as I can tell, there was some analogy about the strength of the tree and the strong chances of getting the Olympics in 2018 and then finally they turned the lights on and it was quite nice. Since that took quite a while, by the time it was over we were ready for the first beer hall of the night—Hofbräuhaus.

We scrunched in at a table and soon struck up a friendly conversation with our German neighbors (I use the term “we” fairly loosely since my three other companions speak fluent German and I speak one sentence: “don’t fall in love with me, I’m bad news” which surprisingly wasn’t all that useful this trip) and soon they were teaching us drinking songs and hooking elbows with us so we could sway properly as we sang them. Our waiter was also quite a character. When we asked him for an English menu for me he said “why not” and for the rest of the night whenever we said anything to him, he just said “why not”. And hey, why not? The beer came by the liter and the sausage and kraut were wunderbar. No wonder everyone is so jolly here.

Prost!

After Hofbräuhaus, we moseyed on over to the next beer hall, Augustiner Keller, which was in this cool vaulted brick cellar. It was really cool but in a very different way, with a trendier feel and far less lederhosen/accordion. It had its endearing touches though, like a giant beer keg made into a booth.

Filled to the gills with beer, we returned to our room in order to observe the Socktoberfest holiday (with some thanksgiving-leftover festivities thrown in for the hell of it). We ate chickpeas and pumpkin pie (with socked hands of course), though sadly no flock of seagulls or yahoo answers.

Day 2: Our first stop was the toy museum, but when we got there it hadn’t opened yet, so we wandered around the markets a little bit, and visited some churches (Tricky was able to show us his favorite one which featured skeletons wearing crowns). After the museum we went for brunch to another beer hall to get the traditional German breakfast of white sausage and beer. I was a little self-conscious ordering a beer before noon but, after a quick survey of the room, realized it would be weirder if I didn’t—what a country!

festive beer hall #3

During our post-brunch stroll, we came across a church tower that Tricky remembered had nice views. It wasn’t open yet though so we killed some time by getting some mulled wine in the market. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a climb up a very tall windy staircase (very vertigo-esque) after a couple of drinks. But it was definitely worth it to see views like this:

Then we headed over to the Deutshces museum (Munich’s version of the Smithsonian) and saw lots of boats and planes and telescopes and space shuttles—basically lots of boy stuff. It was cool though.

Since beer halls aren’t terribly vegetarian friendly, we had Thai food for dinner before going out to drink more beer. Unfortunately, right when we set out, so too did half of Munich, newly returned from a soccer game. So we ended up having quite an adventure. The first place we went to came highly recommended by Rick Steves. Rick Steves, as it turns out, is an idiot. It was super lame. Then we tried going to one of the larger well-established beer halls but that was packed. So Hannah suggested we try to find one that her sister had suggested but which nobody really knew where it was. We hopped on a series of trams and buses out into the suburbs where our maps were no help, and eventually gave up because it was really cold. So we ended up back at Augustiner. This time though, there was some kind of German choir group sitting at the table behind us who would occasionally burst out in song in the middle of their drinking which was kind of fun.

Sunday was more relaxed. We went to an art museum in the morning and had “Indian fastfood” for lunch (where we actually ended up waiting quite some time for our meals).Then it was time for us to head back to the train station and our respective homes. All in all a very successful weekend and I can’t wait for the next European beer summit!

(also sorry my pictures suck, I’m gonna try to steal some better ones)