Munchin' in Munchen

It was only half-full when I got it (I swear).

While in Munich (that's "Munchen" to the locals - hence the title of the post), Anne and Mark visited some of the many places to eat.  As previously mentioned, they quickly found a street vendor with extrem scharf in his currywurst (I think there is a cure for that now).  Now it was time to visit the big shots.  First up, the Hofbrauhaus.  (*editor's note: please excuse the egregious misuse of double dots over the "u" in "brau" and "Munchen" - this keyboard does not have the umlaut character).

The Hofbrauhaus is a huge place in the middle of Munich.  Anne and Mark made it to the third floor
(they estimate this was half-way through the hall) before being lured by the siren song of an "oom-pa" band back to ground level.  The atmosphere at this centuries-old beer hall was quite festive, even though Anne and Mark visited in the middle of the afternoon on a slow day.  In addition to the fine HB products pictured above, the Hofbrauhaus served "hocks" of several varieties (you know, ham hocks and.... other hocks) and several cabbage products.  Good times were had by all.

After leaving the Hofbrauhaus, Anne and Mark were careful to avoid turning left.  The reason is that they saw this sign to the left:

Obviously, this sign designates that area as a single-mother and child only zone.  Anne and Mark do not qualify, so they avoided that area.  This type of sign was fairly common.  On their visit to Fussen, Anne and Mark noticed this:

This one was really quite inconvenient because it was on the main walking path to the castles.  However, when visiting foreign lands, Anne and Mark try to obey local law and custom, so they avoided these areas.  This is not to say that Anne and Mark agreed with the law.  They actually felt quite uncomfortable when they saw this sign:

Discrimination of the worst kind.

Granted, Germany is allowed to make whatever type of laws they want, but a no-single mother zone?  Is that really necessary?  I don't think so.  It is certainly not very classy.



Back to the food.  Speaking of classy, on the classiness meter the Hofbrauhaus was a bit above the currywurst vendor, but that's not to say that  the currywurst vendor was inferior in any other way.  In fact, the currywurst vendor may have been a genius.  In addition to the spicy dish, the currywurst vendor also had a "ketchup-udder."  Just brilliant.  The hungry customer holds the currywurst (or whatever else) beneath the bottle and gives it a gentle squeeze.  Ketchupy goodness is then released.  How in the world did we never come up with this technology before?

Streamlined design, inspired by nature.

Later, Anne and Mark went WAY up on the classiness meter and had dinner at the Rathaus.  Although it may appear to, this does not translate as "Rat House."  (Or maybe it does, Anne and Mark do not speak German.)  What they do know is that it is a bad idea to fill up on pretzels and mustard before your entree arrives, no matter how much you might like pretzels.

Free pretzel appetizer?  I paid five bucks for a pretzel at a Twins game last summer.

 Anne and Mark visited one other place for a meal, but they are still not quite sure where this place would fit on the classiness meter.

 If you want to make the argument FOR "Classy," you have these points to work with: suit of armor on the wall (Classy), restaurant provides a bib for the patrons (Super Classy), and you are encouraged to eat with only a knife and your fingers (Uber Classy, until you cut off a finger, then Klassy).

 If you want to make the argument AGAINST this place being classy, consider that this is what happens when you leave a light tip.....

Thank heavens for abnormally thick wrists, or Mark would still be in the stocks.

And with that, Anne and Mark are on break.  See you in January...

Curry and Castles

One of the main goals of the visit to Munich was to find some spicy food.  Bulgarian cuisine can be quite good, but it is not particularly spicy - unless you count garlic as "spicy."  But Germany has pretty much everything, so Anne and Mark (particularly Anne) were excited to sample the foods there.  In particular, Anne wanted to track down some Currywurst.  Currywurst is a street food that is what it sounds like - bratwurst and curry. 

Feeling rather adventurous, Anne and Mark wandered the Christmas market until they found a currywurst stand.  But they did not stop at the first stand they saw.  Instead, they sought out a big, bad currywurst stand.  One that was so tough, it had to have a warning label.  Eventually, they found one that had the sign pictured above.  Although neither Anne nor Mark Deutsch Sprechen, they took a stab at translating this anyway.  The first word, "Achtung," is taken from a famous U2 album called "Achtung Baby" and is probably there to attract music lovers to the stand.  The second line says "extrem scharf."  We were hoping for extreme, but certainly did not want to end up scharfing on ourselves.

Anne winces her approval of the spicy currywurst.

As it turns out, this was an extremely spicy currywurst (they should have given us a warning about that!)

After snacking on the sharf currywurst, Anne and Mark ventured to the town of Fussen, which is home to two large castles.  The smaller of the two is called Hohenschwangau and the larger and more famous is called Neuschwanstein.  Anne and Mark tried to get an explanation of these names, but the best they could surmise is that in the German language, you buy two syllables and get three more free.



Hohenschwangau

Both castles are tied to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.  He grew up in Hohenschwangau and built Neuschwanstein.  He is sometimes referred to as "Mad King Ludwig," although whether he was actually insane has never been determined.  Regardless, the guy liked castles.

You know who else likes castles?  Anne. (In contrast to Ludwig, however, Anne's sanity is quite well established)  Anne is picured above on our approach to Neuschwanstein.  If this looks somewhat familiar to you, maybe it is because several other castles have been patterned after this one, including the castle in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Saint George is on Anne's right, slaying that dragon.

After wandering around the castle grounds for a bit, Anne and Mark wanted to get a look at the castle from a different angle.  They decided to take the walk over to Mary's Bridge.  Mary's Bridge is pictured below.  It was placed a good distance away from the castle, but provides a fantastic vantage point from which to see Neuschwanstein..... usually. 

Mary's Bridge - no fog problems yet.

Unfortunately for Anne and Mark, by the time they had made the trek from the castle to the bridge, it had begun to rain and the fog had rolled in.  So, its value as a vantage point was.... somewhat diminished.

Mark poses on Mary's Bridge with Neuschwanstein in the background (take our word for it)

The fog was actually a bit of an issue on the way back to Fussen.  Anne sets much more of a quick pace than Mark does (no big surprise there).  Usually, this is no big deal, but when the fog started getting thick she nearly disappeared from view all together.

Christmastime in Germany

City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks

December 8 is a holiday in Bulgaria that falls right before the end of the school year.  Anne and Mark decided to take advantage of that scheduling quirk by leaving town for a long weekend and visiting the Christmas market in Munich, Germany.  Many people associate Munich with a festival that occurs a little earlier in the year, as Munich annually plays host to a huge Oktoberfest celebration.  However, the Christmas market is no slouch, as Anne and Mark found out.

There are several markets set up around the city.  Anne and Mark looked enough like locals that they were asked to give directions once or twice.  At first, they stated that they did not know their way around, as they were not actually from around the area.  After a little thought, though, Anne and Mark decided that a flat denial was just not in the Christmas spirit.  The next time someone asked for directions, Anne and Mark decided that they would give some (left, right, left, right, up, down, up, down, B, A start?), for better or for worse.

One of the large Christmas markets starts in Marianplatz (which roughly translates to "Mary's Plaza"), which is right in the center of Munich and spreads along the adjoining streets.  If you go to Munich with a travel guide, it will send you to Marianplatz so that you can view the famous Glockenspiel.  For those who don't know, the Glockenspiel  kind of looks like a huge cuckoo clock.  Everyday at 11 and 12 o'clock, the clock chimes and the glockenspiel re-enacts a joust from four hundred years ago (or something like that).  After the home team (the Bavarian knight) wins, some little coopers do an interpretive dance.  According to our guide, the coopers were the beer makers of the time.  Unfortunately, the city was hit by plague.  As often happened with plague, they blamed it on the cats.  So they killed the cats.  This allowed the rat population (which actually spread plague) to balloon and things got really bad.  The people started quarantining themselves in their homes to avoid getting sick.  This was bad news for the coopers (because no one buys beer if they never leave their house).  So, long story short, they imported some cats from Italy, took down the rats, plague goes away, everybody wins.  The people, though, still did not know that the coast was clear.  So the coopers turned to the most logical form of communication for this type of situation - interpretive dance.  They invented a little twirling dance to symbolize that the plague was over.  The coopers in the glockenspiel do it every day.  The coopers in the city of Munich do it once every seven years, to commemorate .... well, I guess to commemorate the day that the imported Italian cats got after the German rats.  So, if you're interested in seeing the coopers of Munich do a swirling dance down the streets, head's up - the next one is in 2012.  Anyway, for some reason the Glockenspiel is a famous tourist attraction.  Anne and Mark were more impressed with the Christmas market.

The Christmas market at Marianplatz was pretty extensive.  Even so, the vendors could mostly be categorized into one of two camps: (1) arts & crafts or (2) booze.

Possibly selling arts & crafts AND booze.

Anne and Mark eventually found their way to a stand that was peddling Gluhwein, which is mulled wine.  Anne and Mark were encouraged because although the arts and crafts vendors were frequented by fellow tourists, Anne and Mark had to elbow their way past Munichians Munchkins Munichese people from Munich to get to the counter of the Gluhwwein stand.  When eating or drinking on the road, always go where the locals go.  If you need to fight past the locals - all the better.

What does that lady have in her hat?

Later, Anne and Mark took a short trip to a town called Fussen.  Fussen is much smaller than Munich, but also had a market.

Home Brew

Man Cave.

Anne and Mark have seen a few 'man caves' in their time.  Usually, this is an area of the house set aside for the benefit of the sports-watching, beer-drinking, Tim Allen and Larry the Cable Guy-appreciating members of the household.  Usually there's an old ratty sofa, a beaten up fridge that barely even keeps the beer cold, and a huge, state of the art television.  However, last Saturday, Mark took a little ride with Krassi outside of Blagoevgrad and saw the man cave to beat all man caves.  What set it apart?  How about a full, working distillery.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the distilling process is used in the production of alcoholic beverages.  And if you have one of these in your man cave you are probably either a Bulgarian or Hawkeye Pierce.

Hawkeye and BJ Honeycutt: early innovators of the man cave.

And just in case you are not convinced of the man cave cred that this place had, consider this: just to get there, we had to roll in past the welcoming fence posts/artillery shells.  Yeah, that's right.

That's got to be a pretty good break-in deterrent.

The distillation process is not for those with short attention spans, as it takes a little while.  We got there at around 8 in the morning, loaded the wine and crushed grapes into the oven and started a big fire.  Then.... well, then we waited.  After a few hours of cooking the potion, the chemistry starts working its magic and the distilled spirits start separating from the rest of the materials.  As they separate, the distilled parts rise and are directed via a series of pipes into a separate tank.

The remainder of the materials, which consists mainly of really hot crushed grape .... husks?, are fired out the back door of the furnace into a receiving pit.   

But do not worry about waste.  This is actually more of a "by-product" than "waste."  We did three cycles of distillation, so this pit was filled up twice (the third time, we distilled the product of the first two batches to get a super distilled final product, so we did not have a by-product of grape husks).  While we were there, some local farmers stopped by two or three times to take the grape husks away.  The local herds of pigs and sheep feasted on grape husks that night.  Hopefully all the alcohol had evaporated, or we could end up with some pretty silly goats.

After we started the second batch of distillation, it was about lunch time.  Since we had a man cave and a furnace, we decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try "flash grilling."  Someone ran to the store and picked up some sausages and chops.  Then the sausages and chops were placed over the inferno for at least ten or fifteen seconds and bing bang boom, lunch is served.

The Bulgarian Olympic rakia drinking team.

If you notice in the photo above, there is a half-empty bottle of rakia on the table.  The thing about man cave lunches is that they may involve a bit of booze. Mark is on a mission to experience the local culture as fully as possible and, as such, did not abstain from the local drink of choice.  (Those of you who know rakia recognize that it is a bit stronger than whiskey regularly, and this was the bottle they brought for "special" occasions, so who knows what proof it was packing)  However, Mark does not have the ability to tolerate rakia like the men in the photo above do.  

Readers paying close attention will notice that this account of events has gone from the morning until midday.  After that, the accounting of events gets a bit hazy.  Mark vaguely remembers arguing FOR artificial turf, discussing the nursing program at AUBG (*editor's note: there is no nursing program at AUBG), arguing AGAINST artificial turf and then.... well.... waking up the next morning.  Good times.