It turns out that I did not come properly prepared for the weather here. That seems to be the theme of my trips these days. I’m either cold or hot - and here, I’m cold.
We determined that we would not be going to Oktoberfest today - after we finally got up (did I mention that word from the home front suggests that L and E were up at 4 a.m.?) - and decided to check out the city instead. We took a three-hour walking tour. It was great. I highly recommend doing it in any city you visit if you get the chance. However, I also highly recommend doing it on a warm day. Today was freaking cold - but not rainy, so not quite like being at home (although it was lovely and sunny when we left London. Go figure.).
Anyway, the tour was very fascinating as it was one not afraid to come right out and talk about Hitler’s involvement here - yet another opportunity to see how much of an asshole he was, but in his “home” town.
It is interesting the way that Munich has dealt with its history. It’s very subtle, but the remorse clearly exists throughout the city. They’ve placed plaques where the buildings were trashed on krystallnacht and there’s a place in Dodger’s Alley where they’ve memorialized the people who did not want to walk by Hitler’s guards and perform the salute.
They’re trying.
This is the synagogue - heavily guarded of course.
I learned a lot from our Irish tour guide. (Did you know…someone in Munich took very detailed pictures of all of the buildings before the war so that they could reconstruct them afterward?) I am very glad that we did the tour, even though we’ve been home for nearly two hours and my toes are still freezing.
On a completely unrelated note…I’ve been cold in Germany twice before.
I first froze my ass off here in 95/96 when I came to visit my friend Nelly, who was living in Giessen at the time. We had cold toes in Hamburg, and Berlin. We spent New Years at the Brandenberg Gate where I ate my first crepe (mmmm), and first got shot at with fireworks. (No, they didn’t warm me up.) (We also went to Poland, but that’s not Germany, so freezing our asses off there is a story for another time.)
The second time I froze my ass of here was in December of 2002 when we came with Aaron’s family and stayed in Berlin. We mostly stayed in the hotel, but we did make it out a couple of times between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (when it was light) where we saw all of the stuff I didn’t get to see the inside of last time I was in Berlin because everything was closed New Year’s Day.
And just look at me now…freezing my ass off in Munich. Clearly Germany loves me.
(There was that one time in 2001 when I was here with Aaron in Freiburg and it wasn’t cold, but we’ll gloss over that one for the sake of the theme.)
Anyhoo, after our tour, we came home and sat on our frozen asses. It’s lovely to be on vacation.
We got warmed up in time to head out to Nurnberger Bratwurst Glockl am Dom for a traditional Bavarian meal. As we got off of the U Bahn at Marienplatz, I noticed an odd thing. It seemed a little strange to me that the police presence had increased from none at our first stop to 50 at this stop. Then I saw the riot team hanging out at the base of the entrance/exit to the subway. They didn’t have helmets on, but they did have their helmets at the ready.
It freaked me out a little bit until we walked out and saw the huge barricade with police stationed about every 10 feet or so. It seemed that the 10 people or so inside the barricade were enjoying themselves tremendously, while the people outside of it were taunting them. I finally figured out that they were saying “No Nazi.” Turns out that the “insiders” were all about the National Socialist party and the rest of the world was there to drown out whatever they were trying to say. It was nice to see them so outnumbered. 
At the restaurant, we sat at a table with another couple and didn’t speak to them. We ate our food and I downed a whole bunch of cabbage salad along with my pork roast, and left the “potato dumplings” on the plate. That shit was nah-stee. It wasn’t the tastes as much as it was the texture. There were two different kinds and one of them tasted like liver and the other was squishy like jello’ only made from riced potatoes.
We finished diner and I was enjoying my sparkling water. (Ahem, have I mentioned that I quit drinking? No worries…I still want everyone else to drink. It’s not that sort of thing - I just feel better.) when the quintessential Loud American Woman and her husband, Tom, sat down at our table.
Woman was from someplace on the East Coast and clearly wore the pants in the family.
First she fell madly in love with the sauce containers that they used to serve the…wait for it…sauces. She told Tom that she wanted to get some before they left and he evidently looked at her like she was loony because in an irritated New Yorkish accent, she responded, “They’ll fit in my suitcase, Tom.”
Then in her excitement at finding such a treasure, she asked Tom to take a picture of them and she pulled out her phone. Why she couldn’t take the picture herself is beyond me because when she handed the phone to Tom and asked him to take the picture and he fucked up her phone, she was NOT thrilled.
“Tom! Don’t you know how to take a picture? Give me that. Now what in the world did you do to the phone? I can’t get in to read Sandra’s message now. If you knew how many messages I get that require an emergency response….welll….” and she continued messing with her phone. She finally decided that she’d have to mess with it later (”Sometimes you have to blow on the sim chip, Tom.”) because she put it in her purse and when Tom asked what she was doing, she told him as much - loudly, though she seemed to be trying to whisper it across the table to him. It was comical (to me, anyway) and I was having a hard time focusing on Aaron. Poor guy.
The waitress came to take their order, and even though I’d heard her discussing So-And-So’s recommendation of the bratwurst she decided to ask what was good…in English.
She wanted to know what “the people here eat.” I heard the waitress pipe in with “suckling pig” and wurst (pronounced versht), but before she could go on, the woman said something about the white sausage and offhandedly tried to order a different amount than was available on the menu. After the waitress corrected her, she ordered something breaded and he ordered pork.
She really wanted everything to be good because she commented. “That this is the best X I’ve ever had.” for everything she ate.
I had to laugh when Tom took a bite of his “dumplings,” choked it down, and coughed, “well THAT was a mistake.”
She jumped right in and assured him that it most certainly was not and took a bit herself. She tried to like it, but I could tell that it wasn’t settling so well. He put some on her plate (that’s right…stick it to her, Tom.) and it was still there when we left after I couldn’t stand listening to them any longer - but not after I made a few notes. (I love my bluetooth keyboard.)
Leaving was a stupid thing to do though.
We searched for a drinking establishment for about an hour without luck - nothing stays open past nine around the area. Seriously…bars and coffee shops would die in the rest of the world if they did this.
We finally headed back to our apartment and changed clothes and walked up to the main street in our area where we located a drinking establishment titled [Something] Cocktail Bar. We headed in only to find that the door was locked and we had to be buzzed in. Hmmm.
Upon entry Aaron noticed that everyone was smoking, even though there’s a smoking ban in place. Double hmmm. Upon entry, I noticed that the bartender seemed to have a penchant for Phil Collins.
The set up was just weird. The whole place was sort of neon pink. The bar itself was stainless steel, L-shaped and the ‘tender had to squeeze in to the short end of the L to get to some of the patrons. Fortunately the patrons at that end of the L were not the bartenders. They would not have fit.
Aaron had one beer and we each smoked about three cigarettes secondhandedly. In the time we were there, the music went from Phil Collins to reggae to Green Day to Notorious B.I.G. as I sat next to the fake floral arrangement, the real floral arrangement, the Buddha, and the picture of one of the Baldwin brothers or their twin sitting at a bar (not this one) next to a woman on horseback.
It was a leetle weird.
