M�nchen, Deutschland -- Someone really must be looking out for us here. Everywhere we go seems to top the last place we went. It stared off at the McDonald's at the Zurich train station, filled with families, playing Snoop Dawg and Jay-Z (let us just say the songs weren't edited for the radio ... I love the freedom here ... none of that anal retentive Puritan thinking that dominates the idea of free speech in the states). It continued with the train ride from Interlaken to Munich, which brought us through the Alps, glass-topped lakes, intense forests colored in full fall colors, and rolling hills. We get out of the train in Munich and are immediately approached by a local, spewing this story about his three-star hotel just getting a cancellation, and how he needs to fill it, and since it is so immediate it is a great price, and how breakfast consists of museli, fresh fruit, bacon, eggs, tea, rolls, meat, cheese, and how there is cable with american channels, free internet ... blah ... blah ... Full of german crap, we figured, but we had time to kill so we checked it out. And Lord bless this man, he was telling the truth. A three star hotel with free internet and nice rooms and hot showers and CNN and a helpful desk attendant ... for 17 American dollars a night. Cheaper than the hostel. So we check in, still thinking maybe we just signed some Army recruitment note or something. At this point, we are hungry, so the desk attendant sends us down the street to a beer hall with cheap German food where "the locals eat". This place was amazing. Not drinking beer here, and lots of it, is a deadly sin. At 2 bucks a litre, this was no problem for us. They bring it out faster than American restaurants bring you water. I think instead of water pitchers, the busboys carried beer pitchers ... A statue of fresh pretzels sat next to us, waiting to be sampled. Best of all, the way these beer halls work, you sit at benches and long wooden tables filled with Bavarians (not to be confused with Germans) drinking steins of beer. Loud and lovely. We order food, not knowing what we ordered. In two minutes, Reyes gets a platter filled with a full pig and dumplings. I get a mess of meatloaf, gravy and potato salad. We finish everything off with a plate of apple streudel. All this for 12 bucks each, including a lot of beer. They take their food seriously here. The difference being that in every place we have been so far, the food has been 'dandy'. Pretty portions on small plates. Spanish have tapas (small), French have baguettes and ham (small), Italians have antipasti, a first plate, a second plate .... all served taking time and in small segments. Here, they bring it out on a platter in a few minutes, with more food than Taj eats in five weeks ... And accompany it with steins of cheap, tasty beer. All with people laughing and drinking and enjoying themselves. And the service was better than it has been anywhere. To complete the deal, we wake up this morning to find out that, indeed, the free breakfast was composed of bacon and eggs and beans and bread and cheese and meat and tea and apples and fresh orange juice and cucumbers and rolls and all this with great service. Tom Petty on the radio. This is my kind of culture. And Kenta, I know you look Japanese, but I am quite sure you are Bavarian in blood. Here, if you don't drink beer (a lot of it), you are exiled from the land. Makes me wonder if it woulda been better for the Germans to have won WWI .... we freed the French from two Wars, and they hate our guts. We beat the Germans twice, and they love us. I can't figure it out ... maybe you can add some insight for me.
If there is one thing that travelling has brought to mind this past week, it is that I am closer to adulthood than I gave myself credit for before leaving. Or maybe travelling has made me realize just what "being an adult" really means. It is not just the fact that German youth hostels don't allow you in if you are older than 26 years old (giving me 10 months left to be an official 'youth'). It was the past three days at the hostel in Interlaken, which was more like an American frat party than a hostel. I spent two hours listening to a girl in the bar talk about the benefits rushing of Sigma Nu vs Alpha Epsilon Omega ... how her ex-boyfriend could balance three beer mugs on his head while taking a shot of 151 .... Amazing, I tell her .... I was never such a man ... Other people telling me how they don't know whether to go to Georgetown law school or Northwestern ... Well, I certainly cannot tell you that, oh ye of greater intellect .... Dance on the dance floor to Will Smith, and I get freaked by some girl from Notre Dame ... uhh, that whole freak dancing thing went out about five years ago .... We see people spending daddy's money like it ain't nothing .... they don't have rent payments to make .... Mike and I almost never drink too much, so we can enjoy the day without being hungover. I am actually waking up consistenly early out here ... I am talking 8 am with being tired. This is as shocking to me as it is to you. Hanging out with the college kids and recent graduates made me realize how non-college (and the few years after) my interests are. I listen to the people talk, and think, I have been down that road already ... time for something different. I don't have the same illusions and fears about responsibility I had a year ago ... Funny that I came out here looking for direction, and somehow it was direction that seemed to be looking for me instead.
And, if you are wondering why this Blogg is so long, it is because two hours of internet here costs me 80 cents.
God Bless Germany.