So picking up where my 8/16/13 blog entry ‘Austria’ left off, my girlfriend Lona and I left Vienna, Austria the night of 8/26/90 on an overnight train to Munich, Germany. We were in the last month of a backpacking trip through Europe that started in Greece back in April and would not end until September in Ireland. We were still a bit buzzed from spending the afternoon drinking in the park with three homeless people we had met in Vienna, and we were dead tired. We could not find an empty sleeper car though so we gamely sat in our uncomfortable Eurail-pass seats and tried to get some sleep. What helped was the scruffy guy sitting a few seats behind us in the back corner that offered us some hash. Lona declined but I took a hit and then we went to sleep. We were woken up at 4:30 am to the sounds of scary men in uniforms with guns stomping through our car. It was the German border patrol and they were checking passports. I was nervous, thinking about the hash and for a split-second thought of the acid I had brought from the USA to Europe 4 months earlier. That was long gone though as we had eaten it all in Greece before leaving for Italy. The guards stared sternly at us and our passports, stamped them and moved on. The scruffy hash-guy was nowhere to be seen and I sleepily wondered what became of him. We fell back asleep but not for long as we were only a couple hours from Munich.
We got off the train at 7 am on the morning of 8/27/90 and began searching for the cheap-hotel/youth-hostel information board that was in every train station. Suddenly a lady ran up to us holding a fanny-pack and in broken English asked if it was ours. HOLY F*CKING SHIT! My fanny-pack containing both of our passports and several thousand dollars in travelers checks. Everything that was of any value to us was in there and I cannot even fathom what we would have done had we lost it. I’d had that thing strapped to my waist and tucked under my shirt day and night for much of the last 4 months, but for some reason I must have unsnapped it on the train, left it on our seat and walked away. We thanked her profusely and then set about finding our next place to sleep.
After cashing in some of our travelers checks for Deutsch Marks we found a circus tent that offered foam rubber pads and blankets for $4 per night. Interesting. Gross, but interesting. We were so elated though at having all of or money back after our near miss in the train station that we decided to splurge and get a real hotel room. It was $53, but it had a shower and laundry and we felt like we were in heaven after our last few nights on the trains. We took a shower and a nap and then pored over the Let’s Go Europe book that had been given to us in Zurich and decided how to spend our day.
First we took a city train to the Deutsches Museum. As the world’s largest museum of space and technology it was freaking huge and cost us 2 Deutsch Marks each to get in. We had a lunch of white sausages at the restaurant at the top of the museum, and then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around looking at the 28,000 various objects on display. After a train ride back to our hotel we did our laundry and headed for the nearest outdoor beer hall.
We walked over to Lowenbraukeller, Lowenbrau’s version of the quintessential German beer hall: good beer, great food, fun crowd, and awesome barmaids. As an import-beer in the United States Lowenbrau gets a bad rap, but over there straight from the tap it was awesome. The sausage-potato soup we ordered was absolutely delicious. The clientele was drunk and festive. And the beautiful, strong, blonde waitresses with ample breasts heaving out of the top of their tight German barmaid outfits while carrying ridiculously large trays covered with huge mugs of beer were incredible to watch. It had all of the right ingredients for the perfect evening, except we were almost out of money and the banks were closed so we could not exchange any more travelers checks. We had just enough Deutsch Marks left for two beers each and the soup. Two beers was not enough for this wonderful place and we sat at our outdoor table wistfully looking around at all the happy drunk people. Could we somehow finagle a beer or two out of a friendly face…latch onto a nice table where people were buying rounds and the table was covered with beers?
Suddenly to our left I heard some Americans talking. Hmm…with a big charming smile I walked over to a table of six obviously American tourists and asked where they were from. As was the custom when talking to strangers in Europe they started with the nearest large city, which was Chicago. I brightened and said: “Oh really? Me too!” Then the process of narrowing down the location continued when I said: “Actually, I’m more up by Milwaukee, north of Chicago.” “Oh really? Us too!”, one of them proclaimed. ‘Awesome’ I thought to myself. Then one of them said: “To be more specific, we’re from Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee.” This was going better than I could have ever imagined. “Me too!" I exclaimed. "I went to Waukesha North High School!” Then one of them said: “Well, actually we’re from the little town of Wales, just west of Waukesha.” Unf*cking believable. “Me too!" I said. As it turns out, they were three middle-aged couples from Wales, WI visiting Germany together. Not only were we neighbors, but when I had my paper route as a kid I used to deliver the Milwaukee Journal to them. Crazy…I was in a beer hall on the other side of the world talking to some ex-neighbors. After all that I figured they would just have to invite a nice young couple like us to sit at their table and have beers with them. Nope. After a small chat, with us still standing there uninvited to sit down, they all just stared at us like they were waiting for us to walk away. So we did. Bummer. ‘A-holes’ we thought.
Dejected at our failure of procuring any free beers, we went back to our table and nursed our final beer. We had fun people watching but our night there ended when we sadly witnessed something I have never seen before or since. The whole time we were there I simply could not get over the strength of the amazingly beautiful barmaids carrying HUGE trays around over their heads with a dozen gigantic beers in huge heavy glass mugs on each tray. In addition to their strength I admired their prowess, zooming through the crowds with these things and then carefully unloading them at a table. I happened to be watching one particularly buxom lass when suddenly one of the beers slipped off the tray as she was walking and crashed to the ground with a deafening ‘CRASH!’. Beer and broken glass splashed everywhere. Her tray was now off-balance though and the sudden loss of weight on one side of the tray caused the other side to dip down. So then another beer slid off that edge and came crashing down with an equally large ‘CRASH!’ and splash…and then another and another… By now everyone in the beer hall was looking at her in horror as the scene repeated itself over and over again until all 12 beers had taken turns committing suicide, jumping to their deaths off of the tray. When the final beer came crashing down and the poor barmaid was left holding an empty tray, the place was utterly silent and I have never felt so bad for anyone. I could not stand watching the poor woman’s distress anymore so when she ran to get a mop we left, not wanting to have to watch her clean up the huge pile of glass and beer.
We got to bed at 11:30 pm. The next morning was 8/28/90 and our plan was to go to the city of Rosenheim for a festival that we had heard about. It was not Oktoberfest time yet, but it was summer and there were a lot of festivals around Germany. We decided we would spend the day there partying at the festival and then take an overnight train that night to Berlin. So we ate our free breakfast and packed up all of our newly-laundered clothes thanks to our wonderful hotel and headed for the train station. It was only a 45 minute train ride to Rosenheim, but we must have gotten bad information because when we got there we could not find any festival. So we tried to get a room but there were not any rooms available anywhere. I tried to call ahead from a telephone booth to Berlin to book us a room there for the night, but I could not seem to get through to anyone and it cost us $4 for nothing. I got really mad and took it out on Lona, swearing and being a dick. Sorry Lona.
So we got out our Let’s Go Europe and tried to figure out where to go next. We looked at a few cities between us and Berlin, but knowing we had only scratched the surface of all the cool stuff to do in Munich we decided to take a train back there for more sightseeing. First we went to St. Peter’s Church (Peterskirche) and climbed the 306 steps to the top of its 92 meter tall tower. Built in 1150 it is Munich’s oldest church, it has eight clock-faces and great views of the city. Then we made it over to the Glockenspiel for the 5 pm viewing of its show. It has 43 bells and 32 life-size figures that re-enacts a couple of stories from the 1500’s. After the 15 minute show we went to the Hofbrauhaus, one of Munich’s oldest beer halls founded in 1589. We had dinner there and got fairly drunk on their incredible beer.
After many beers we headed to the train station for the 10 hour overnight train to Berlin. The train was so packed though that there were no more empty seats. We tried every car and could not find two seats together. We headed to where the sleeper cars were and could not find any space there either so we just laid our backpacks down in the hallway and used them for pillows as we tried to sleep on the floor. Luckily we were still buzzed because the floor was disgusting, full of sticky beer and spit and garbage. We tried to get some sleep but it was loud, with drunk people stepping over/around/on us all night. We finally woke up for good at 7 am in Berlin on 8/29/90. We had a blast in Munich, but we were really looking forward to seeing the Wall in Berlin…or what was left of it as it had just come down on 11/9/89. I will pick up there on a future blog entitled ‘Berlin, Germany’.
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