7/26 Munich

7/26

After a leisurely breakfast and a quick walk with Lola down to get pretzels, we left for Munich. Our intrepid band is joined today by our friend Chrystal and her husband Jared – great company and swell people. This drive is so much like driving to Mt. Angel it could make you homesick (if you weren’t excited about tasting the ingredients all put together). This is the Bavarian hop region, and there were row after row of Hallertauer and Saaz hops. The harvest looks pretty good this year.

We pulled into Munich around 1:30, and, after the quest to find a parking space, went to lunch – at the Hofbrauhaus. OK, I get that this is kind of a big tourist thing now, and the locals all go somewhere else, but it’s kind of like Disneyland for beer drinkers. If you do, you must.

It’s big and crowded and finding a table took time. Then we had to track down our Foam Dude and get our maβ (a maβ is a one liter beer stein). Then the party started. Look, I am a performer. I am fortunate enough to work in some pretty large venues and to see a lot of crowds. This place was like a bomb waiting for a match. You drop a band like, say, Z Musikmakers in here and we could have this place going absolutely bonkers in 5 seconds. People know what they want when they walk in the door, and if they don’t get it, they’ll make it themselves. Three different tables near us were singing German folksongs, accapella. There is a brass band in the middle of the place, with the greatest gig I have ever seen. They play one tune. Then wait 5 minutes or so, and then play another one. They are very good, and when they play there are people dancing in the aisles. But then, another 5 minutes? Come on folks, let’s do this. The best part, though, is the obligatory “ein prosit.” There have got to be hundreds of people in this place, and they are all singing, holding up steins as big as their heads and toasting each other.

Lunch was fabulous. I had a potato frittata thing that was great, and Z had a roasted pig on a spit thing with a huge salad that she said was fab. The service was a little erratic, but probably to be expected in a place this busy. The beer was great session stuff – why I could have had another couple of those steins. Ahh, but there is more beer to drink, so onward.

A short walk down the street took us to the Spatenhaus, the downtown pub for the Spaten and Franziscaner breweries. A short diversion… Bavaria is one of the greatest beer producing regions in the world, and Bavarians drink more, per capita, than anyone else. Every town has a little regional producer of something, and almost all of it is swell. Munich is home to the big breweries, and there are traditionally five. The oldest is Augustiner Brauerei, and then there are Hacker-Pschorr, Löwen-Bräu (that’s “Low-ven-broy” kids, not “Low-en-brow”), Paulaner Brauerei , and Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu and then there is Staatliches Hofbräuhaus, which is a brew pub, but is trying hard to grow the empire, plus various other swell brew pubs.

As long as we are diverging – many of you, my friends, are like me, Hopheads. We like big beers full of those wonderful green flowers. 100 BU’s, oh, come one, bring it! The beers we are talking about here are more subtle than that. They are in balance, and not big in the Northwest sense, so you can sit around knocking them back all day in mugs the size of your head. That said, some of them have more of the little green flower, and those, of course, are my faves. For this reason, I was looking forward to trying Spaten on their own turf. They seem to be unafraid of hops.

A nice clean place with what looks to be a pretty good restaurant, we just settled in for beer this trip. Hoppy within the breed, pleasant – a nice session beer, much like the Hofbrau suds, but hoppier. We sat and enjoyed a beer and watched the protest gather in front of the restaurant. They didn’t like something in Iran, I gather.

We left Spaten to do a little shopping and check out the sights. We found the factory store for Manner Cookies, the greatest cookies on the planet, not that I am biased. We enjoyed the view of a couple more amazing churches, had a cup of Starbucks (supporting both my stock and my bladder at the same time, what a deal!), and endured a torrential downpour in the doorway of one of those amazing churches and then bought really, frightfully expensive umbrellas to make sure that the rain thing didn’t happen again.

When traveling, sometimes you get lucky. There is often a best way to see the sights – a correct order, if you will. We had just bought our umbrellas, and the clouds were beginning to thin a bit, and I heard the sound of the Glockenspiel. Munich is supposed to have a killer one of these, so I wandered down the street to investigate. I have been in Europe long enough to have seen some amazing churches and buildings, and like to think that I am somewhat immune. But, alas this is another one of those spots where words are going to fail me. As you enter Marienplatz, at least from the direction I did, you get an amazing view of an incredible church steeple. And then another one. And then another one. And then a remarkable statue, and they just keep piling this stuff on and on. I have never seen anything like it, it was beautiful. And then I turned around to see the Glockenspiel on the front of the Neues Rathaus (New City Hall). This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I kind of stood there and walked around in circles with my face to the sky and tears running down my cheeks. You must go to this beautiful place. Don’t miss it. Really, you’ll be glad you listened to Uncle Dave. (The glockenspiel is kind of cool, too, but doesn’t have Christiana playing violin on it, so it’s my second favorite.)

We caught a few more sights and then moved onto the Augustiner pub downtown to try beer from the oldest brewery in Munich. Unfortunately, we got lost and had to settle for the pub next to the Hofbrau, rather than their old pub building. As my Father-In-Law says, “if you do it all on the first trip, you’ll have nothing left to do next time.” Augustiner is another great Bavarian session beer, not that I have had a bad one yet. Look, some of them have water that is a little soft, which doesn’t work for me (example, the dread Jelen Pivo – stay away), some of them could have more hops (most of the local stuff), but at least they are in balance with themselves, are tasty and refreshing, and are served in great big huge mugs. I’ve not had a bad one yet. But it’s like pumpkin pie, the worst slice you ever had wasn’t that much worse than the best one you’ve ever had. Augustiner is pretty good. I’ll drink it again.