Kramer and the Beer Factory

Cultural experience number 5 with the language class was a visit to the Spaten-Franzikaner-Löwenbräu Brewery in München.  The brewery has occupied the same site in down town München since 1854.  The place was just like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory only the Oompa Loompas were bigger and the chocolate fountain was, of course, a beer fountain.  The tour was spoken in Deutsch and luckily because of prior brewing knowledge I understood most of what was going on.  I came away with three poignant facts.  They produce an awful lot of beer, the average number of times a glass bottle is recycled is 21 and that the cost to deck out 6 normal wagon horses in traditional livery for Oktoberfest was over €700,000.

12 lucky and girls and boys were chosen to go upstairs to the senior management canteen to sample the product.  In Australia this would mean that you get a thimble full of their least expensive product.  In Germany it means you sit around a big table and a kind lady takes your order.  The beer is served in halves but this means half a litre and there are bretzels for as far as the eye can see.  The organiser of the event did a sterling job but let herself down at the last moment when she failed to account for some fundamental cultural differences.  Instead of saying we need to leave here at 6pm she said you can only order beer until 6pm then we must leave.  The difference is subtle but the consequences are far reaching.  For an Irishman, an Australian and 3 Koreans all we heard was you have 45 minutes to neck as much beer as possible.  The Koreans led the charge with the ambition of sampling all the beers produced in 500mL increments.  For myself and the Irishman we knew what we liked and stuck to it.  For me it was Dunkel Weißbier, for him it was a Helles. For the last round I whispered the magic words "Haben Sie Stark Bier" to the kind lady and verily there came 5 Stark Biers with their froth flowing, over their taste dark and malty and an alcohol content approaching that of a good Shiraz.

I rode home that afternoon.  It was peak hour and raining, the tail end of a thunderstorm.  There is nothing like riding a fixed wheel bicycle through a strange city at peak hour in the rain to heighten ones senses.  I had a moment, only a little moment, where I dropped the back wheel into the tram tracks but the force was with me and I managed to keep everything up right and travelling in the desired direction.  I also became geographically challenged for a little while but it didn't concern me because I knew that I was in München and if you know what city you are in then things can't be that bad.

The Miele Mystery

A little while ago the butter dish from our Miele fridge met it's premature demise.  There was a brief juggling act before it plummeted to certain death on the kitchen floor.  This was a shame for a couple of reasons.  The first being that it was a good butter dish. It met, and in some instances exceeded, the necessary requirements for being a butter dish.  It was big enough to fit a standard block of butter.  It had a see through lid so one could immediately ascertain how much butter was left.  It had a stable base so it would sit firmly on the table without rolling or sliding away and it was aesthetically pleasing.  Unfortunately it failed in one vital respect, that is the requirement for being able survive a one meter free fall on to a tiled floor.  The other reason it was a shame is because the butter dish actually belongs to Christoph and Tanja, the owners of our apartment and after they had successfully managed not to destroy their butter dish for some two years I thought it was a bit poor for us to do it in less than 2 months.

So Annika sent an email to Miele enquiring about a replacement butter dish.  An email was received stating her email had been forwarded on to the correct department and then nothing.  A few days later was Easter and we were in Salzburg.  As fate would have it, our hotel was just across the road from a Miele shop which, strangely enough, was open on Good Friday. Striking while the iron was hot, we went in a purchased a new butter dish.  When we returned to München we found a DHL tag on the door saying they had tried to deliver something.  We weren't expecting anything.  The next day I went to the post office to collect the package.  It was a butter dish shaped box with Miele printed on the side containing a free butter dish.  Strange.  We didn't order it, we had only inquired how to replace the broken one.

We now have two butter dishes and are hoping they will breed.

Salzburg

So we were at a loose end, as it were, for Easter.  Luckily the cost of a train ticket to Salzburg was inexpensive and the trains departed frequently.  We weren't set to a particular time table so there was no stress about leaving, we simply packed what we needed, jumped on our bikes and rode to the Hauptbahnhof.  The regional trains are set up for bikes, you just have to find a carriage with a bike symbol on the side and jump on board.  The bikes can be locked down stairs whilst you sit in comfort upstairs.

2 hours later we were in Salzburg.  Salzburg the birthplace of Mozart.  Historically significant because Austrias greatest composer was born there and of course because of the abundance of easily attainable salt, hence the name Salzberg.  Poetic licence had not been granted in the middle ages thus the names of places were not very imaginative.   Our hotel was just down the road from the Bahnhof and next to the river Salzach.  We unpacked and headed into town, choosing to leg it rather than take the Deadly Treadlies.  First impressions were good, it was warm and people were out by the river taking advantage of the late afternoon sun.  We wandered into the Altstatd and marvelled at the Schloß. Dinner was at The Waldmann, on the recommendation of a random stranger.  Annika has developed this charming habit of asking complete strangers where the best places to eat are.  Her selection of strangers is not totally random as I had previously alluded to.  She does in fact scrutinise each stranger with the aim of determining if they are a local or a tourist.  The locals are treated to a winning smile and a polite inquiry whilst the tourists are treated with the disdain that they so obviously deserve.

On the way home we chose to walk through Mirabellgarten and we were rewarded by a spectacular display of tulips. Spectacular is an understatement by the way.  I have a new appreciation of the Great Tulip Crash of The Dutch Golden Age in 1637.

Saturday morning had us wandering down the local café strip in search of Früstück.  We found it in a café that turned out to be vegetarian, the coffee was good though.  Next we decided to ride South down the river to Waldbad Anif.  Here we were treated by the sight of trout and tits. The trout were in the water and the tits were beside the water.  I never cease to be impressed by European women's love of the sun and for their propensity to sun bathe topless . It is easy to recognise a wealthy middle aged Austrian woman because she will have a face like a prune, tanned nut brown and breasts that she can tie a reef knot with or perhaps even a bow line.

From the tits and trout we made our way to Schloß Hellbrun.  Where we spent the afternoon lazily wheeling our bikes around the grounds. We climbed to the local vantage point to see the view and escape the tourists. From here we could look across the valley to Salzburg and not even know it was there, hidden as it were by the Schloß and its' berg.

The ride back was amazing.  We rode down a boulevard of large trees that led directly to Salzberg, dodging the pedestrians.  We decided to have an early dinner at the Stiegel Keller above the city on yet another recommendation gleaned by Annika from an unsuspecting local.   The Stiegel Keller is good and I am a bit reluctant to comment about it on such a public forum, afraid that I may contravene the laws of tourist attraction of which the Stiegel Keller is a prime example of Euler's first law.

If one applies Euler's first law of tourist transfer it is immediately apparent that a tourists interest in an attraction varies inversely with the amount of effort required to view that attraction.  Furthermore it can be seen that the relationship is exponentially decaying such that if you plotted the number of tourists (ordinate) against the level of effort required to view an attraction (abscissa) the number of tourists would reduce exponentially as the level of effort increased.  Further more when La Place's theorem of obesity and it's resulting gravitational attraction is applied the aforementioned relationship is further compounded, with each new tourist drawing yet further tourists to the attraction but only when said tourists are within the immediate vicinity of the point of interest and the level of effort required is minimal.  This phenomena can be observed time and time again in Europe with Salzburg being a prime example.

Me doing my Hugh Jackman impersonation, it's uncanny.

One can demonstrate La Place's theorem quite easily at almost any tourist local that is rich in attractions.  Simply stop and look up at some random piece of architecture.  Look at intently for a while and perhaps take a few photos.  Before too long you will be joined by others wondering what you have found.  The more astute will move on quickly but the majority will stay, too worried that they will miss out on some obscure, yet startlingly important piece of history, afraid that they will return home and their well travelled friends will say.  "Oh you were in Sienna.  You must have seen the Prophetic Brick of the Twelve Apostles set high into the wall in that little alleyway just down from the Piazza del Campo".  The very fact that people have stopped to wonder at the imaginary attraction will draw even more people to it.  Once critical mass has been achieved the system becomes self perpetuating and one can step away and observe the phenomenon.

The journey home was interrupted by possibly the best Apple Strudel I have ever had.

Sunday morning found us back on the café strip enjoying Frühstück.  Then it was a walk up to the Schloß for a little culture and history.  Once our collective cultural cups were full we decided to explore the hill directly across the river. It was a bit of an enigma because in a country where space was limited and a city where real estate was scarce the hill across from the Schloß was empty, with nothing but trees and the remnants of the old city wall.  Finding a route up the hill suitable for a fixie was difficult and in the end, when finally faced with a never ending set of steps, we chose to lock the bikes together and walk up.  At the top we were amazed to find a small Bier Garten in a converted fortification.  (we weren't really that amazed, I think we were more amazed to find only one)  Once again Euler's first law applied and the Bier Garten was quiet.

I had a little moment on the fixie on the way down.  I have a problem with riding over curbs at acute angles of approach.  It is an affliction I have borne since learning to ride and one that James can attest to. It is all about timing, or more specifically the lack there of. When you want to jump a curb on a bicycle it should be a matter of pulling the front wheel up just before you hit the curb then flicking the back wheel up an over. My problem is that I get lazy with second bit and this leads to problems if the approach angle is acute.  In this situation the back wheel may choose to track along the curb rather than up and over it which invariably results in bike going in different direction to that of your body.  I managed to address the problem of my bicycle beginning to disappear from beneath me by putting a foot down and kicking the bike up right.  This worked very well in that it managed to get the bike over the curb and back underneath me but didn't work that well in avoiding a large ivy covered wall.

After my near miss with death we headed back into the Altstadt to visit Mozarts birth place.  It is now a museum full of interesting things from the period Mozart was alive, some of which actually belonged to Mozart. Dinner was once again at the Stiegel Keller followed by Strudel at the café strip.

Monday was our last day and we decided to try the Früstück in the hotel.  We wanted to walk along the old city walls in the park so rode to start and then walked up past the monastery. Our wanderings eventually took us back to the small beer garten where we stopped for a refreshing beer.  We had one more task before we caught the train home and that was to blow more than the cost of a meal on some cheese and sausage in the Altstadt Markt.  The Truffle Camembert was worth it

Our stuff has arrived

After 3 months our stuff has finally arrived.  Everything has made the journey intact and we are quite happy with how smoothly it all went.  Looking through the stuff that we packed I have to question our sanity in the last days before we left.

The whole experience went quiet smoothly with the truck driver providing updates of where he was and when he was likely to arrive.  He turned up on time and the only hiccup was when he managed to park the truck with the steering lock engaged and the front wheels of the truck hard up against the curb.  This doesn't sound like much but it had far reaching consequences.  Occasionally when you park a car with wheels turned the steering lock engages in such a way that you cannot turn the ignition.  In such instances one usually jiggles the steering wheel until the lock releases allowing one to turn the ignition fully and start the car.  In this particular instance the truck wheels were up against the curb so the steering wheel could not be jiggled, the truck could not be started and the hydraulic tail gate could not be lowered.  Big problem.  Solved by me, the truck driver, his mate and any hapless passer by having to push the 10 tonne truck backwards until the steering wheel could jiggled.

So we now have some more of our belongings with us.  Most importantly for me the stereo and TV are here.  The neighbours are blissfully ignorant to the perils that await them but soon they will feel the sub and hear the obnoxious sounds of TISM and The Bloodhound Gang.

Das Messer

One of the things that has been has been vexing me since arriving in Germany is my lack of access to good knives.  My hopes were raised in the first apartment that we stayed in because the kitchen draw was full of large purposeful looking knives.  They came crashing down when I found out that every single knife had an edge on it that would have difficulty cutting through butter.  For me there is nothing more frustrating than trying to cut food with a blunt knife.  Some people love blunt knives, arguing that there is less chance of cutting yourself with a blunt knife.  I think these people are demented.

Next came a very dark period in our German adventure.  The "Fortnight of Frustration".  We moved into our new apartment, unfortunately our belongings had not arrived yet so we had retrieved Annikas' knives from her days living in Ulm.  These knives, whilst once of holders of fine edges, were now no better than those used to spread patê.  The evenings meal preparations were invariably punctuated by profanities and curses as I vented my frustration on the inability of these knives to perform the function they were conceived to do.

Providence smiled upon me and the Gods of all things right and pure decreed that the REWE supermarket chain would hold a promotion where the just could collect stamps for every 5€ spent and ultimately buy a knife at a price affordable to those no longer working in the Oil and Gas Industry.  A knife forged by one of Germany's finest knife artisans no less.  Needless to say the stamps were collected and a 20cm Chef's knife was brought with great ceremony into our kitchen.  Barely had the knife been unpacked before I inadvertently attempted to cut off a finger but so sharp and pure was it that the wound healed before my very eyes.  Upon reading the instructions I found that this blade was not too dissimilar from the famous Kurki of the Gurhkas which cannot, once drawn, be sheathed without drawing human blood.  It is but a small price to pay for having a sharp knife.

In search of the ultimate cup of coffee

One of the crappier streets in Schwabing

Saturday was ein schöner Tag.  There was a rumour going around München that a café existed that served good coffee.  It was whispered in the quiet streets, furtively passed from stranger to stranger, that there existed a single venue known only to those that craved coffee.  Coffee that wasn't made from a machine programmed to make something resembling coffee.  Coffee that was made by a skilled practitioner of barrista arts using only the freshest of beans supplemented by milk squeezed from a cow and not boiled at ultra high temperature until all resemblance of milk is lost.  On this particular Saturday Annika and I went in search of the legendary Caffe Fausto.

We found it after a brief search on the internet.

Finding it in the real world was on little bit harder and involved a bit of a ride.  Caffe Fausto ist ein sehr kleines Café.  It literally only has two small tables and it is really a coffee retailer that happens to make the occasional coffee rather than a café.  None the less the coffee was very good.  The best I have had in Germany.

That night we had Berndt and Verena over dinner.  Berndt and Verena are friends of Christoph and Tanja, the owners of our apartment, and they are part of the lease agreement.  Not only do we get their apartment but we get their friends as well.  A good deal I think.

Hands free on the Fixie in the Englisch Garten

Sunday had us breakfasting with Melanie at Cafe Schwabing.  The day was so nice that the three of us decided to go for a short ride.  We headed North through the Englisch Garten with no real objective or destination in mind.  We finally left the park and headed up the West bank of the Isar until we found a bridge where we crossed and started heading back.  We stopped at a small lake and spent about an hour sitting on the grass in the sun, dangling our feet in the water and watching coots trying to make lots of little coots.  We left thinking that a cold beer would be just the thing to round off the afternoon.  We had barely ridden 200 meters before spying a small Bier Garten nestled in the trees.  Providence had smiled upon us

Do you want a Han? No thanks I'll go Solo. (Carlos Spicey Wiener)

I am listening to my music collection at the moment and the song Labour of Love by Frente came on, this song is unique in that it has a recorder solo in it and it brought to mind one of my fondest memories from my uni days.   At the time I was "sort of sharing" (I was romantically involved with one of his house mates [not Chris]) a house with Paul "the finger" Dalton.  Paul really liked this band, consequently he had dug out his old recorder from school and taught himself to play the solo.  I remember being in awe of him as he forced us to listen to Labour of Love whilst joining in on the solo.

Another moment worthy of note and a testimony to the sheer creative brilliance of the man was when Paul found his old skate board helmet and discovered that if one wore it back to front one could see out of the two holes conveniently located in the back of the helmet.  This mere fact, coupled with a bit of imagination, would render the wearer of the said helmet with an uncanny resemblance to the main character in the cult classic Robocop.  This resemblance could be further reinforced by donning a wetsuit and walking around the lounge room with a mechanical gait.  The final nail in the coffin, the coup de grâce as it were, was when one paused their portable CD player at the start of the staccato drum solo in New Orders' Blue Monday.  With the aforementioned in place it was simply a matter of walking with a mechanical gait into a lounge room of unsuspecting house mates, turning dramatically, pointing the portable CD player at the dumbfounded house mates and saying those timeless words "Dead or alive.  Either way you are coming with me." then releasing the pause button.

This performance would render the viewer speechless, as if transporting them into the movie itself.  If it had been recorded and uploaded to Youtube it would have made top 10.  That is a fact not an opinion.

Der Wein ist schlecht

Some advise to all my friends and family.  If any one ever offers you a glass of Van De Kaap (selected vineyards) 2010 Shiraz from South Africa you should punch them in the face immediately.  If you can retrieve the bottle and smash if over their head all the better.  Unless they are a naive but well meaning friend then one must gently, but firmly, remove the bottle from their possession and empty the contents down the nearest lavatory all the while explaining to them that your friendship is perilously close to being dissolved.  If they are a close friend they will understand.

The good and the bad

I have a confession to make .  Whilst these entries appear chronologically I don't always write them chronologically.  In a lot of instances I start an entry and post it some days/weeks after the event.  I do this for many reasons but the main one is to annoy the few readers that I have.  However today this is being written in real time as it were.  I am in fact sitting on the balcony in the sun wearing nothing but an old pair of reg grundies, my laptop is on my lap and a fresh beer by my side.  Annika is asleep on the day bed, tuckered out after a long ride down the river Isar.  There isn't a cloud in the sky and spring has rushed into the year.  It seems that last week everything was stark a leafless and now there is green everywhere and birdsong is the order of the day.

Some wild boar piglets that we saw later in the day

The bad.  For a little while the fixie has not been feeling right.  There has been some play in the drive train and because all my tools are still on their way to München I have not been able to investigate any further.  I finally bit the bullet and bought some spanners so I could pull the back wheel off and check the bottom bracket.  Sure enough there was some play, no bearing rumbling just a bit of movement. 10 minutes work to fix if I had the tools.  I didn't so I went to visit the bike shop across the road.  Despite having the best bike workshop I have ever seen they didn't repair bikes that they hadn't sold.  The next one gave me the same spiel.  By this stage I am getting really pissed off.  I take it to a bike mechanic and tell him that the cup on the bottom bracket needs tightening.  He has a look and tells me he doesn't think it is the cup, takes the bike and tells me I can collect it in 3 days at 1pm.  At the nominated time I go to collect the bike and he tells me, low and behold, he has tightened the cup on the bottom bracket and also mentions that the self extracting caps that I have on my cranks are not good.  I don't really understand what he is talking about but soon discover he has cross threaded the caps on both sides of the cranks rendering them useless.  For f**k sake.  I can tolerate incompetence in someone with no experience but when a bike mechanic cross threads not just one cap, but both of them, you have to wonder.


The good.  As I previously mentioned spring is here and today we decided to go on a cycling adventure.  Christoph and Tanya have kindly left us a load of books, including many cycling tour guides.  We opted for the tour down the Isar.  München is simply brilliant when the sun is shining, there is no other way to describe it.  The down side is that all the Müncheners agree and as soon as the sun is out so are they.  Our ride involved negotiating our way through thousands of pedestrians and cyclists.  Whilst one can say that the Germans are good drivers the same can not be said of their prowess on the simple bicycle.  If you own a road bike and want to stretch your legs for a bit then wait for the coldest, wettest, most miserable day before venturing out.

I am pleased to say that I upset at least two people during our cycle adventure.  The first was an elderly, well dressed lady cycling through the Englisch Garten.  She had some sort of problem with her shoe/trouser/cerebral cortex which meant that she did the balancing act of devoting 50% of her attention to riding her bike without hitting any of the thousand other pedestrians and cyclists and 50% of her attention to fixing the problem with her shoe/trouser/cerebral cortex.  I assessed the randomness of her route and decided to pass on the right leaving me the option of going bush if things got out of hand.  At the same moment Annika rings her bell causing the old duck to focus on the more important matter at hand, which was riding her bicycle.  She dutifully moves to the right only to get a little fright as the black fixie rushes past.  I copped a mouthfull for that one.

The next one wasn't quite so exciting but was so typically German that it made me laugh.  We were much further down the track and the crowds had thinned out.  The town planners had rather thoughtfully provided both a cycle path and pedestrian path.  I liked the light and thought it would make a good photo so stopped to take a picture.  I thought the better photo would be from further back from the way we had come so decided to turn around and ride back.  There were some cyclists coming in both directions so I decided to turn and ride down the pedestrian path which only had an elderly couple on it.  I copped a mouthful from the bloke for riding on his path.  His wife told him to pull his neck in.  I just laughed to myself.

Perth has the beach München has the Isar.  As soon as the sun is out half the population makes their way to the Isar to sun bathe, BBQ and socialise.  A few even brave the water, which can best be described as spanner cold, meaning that it really tightens your nuts.  That is a metaphor that only half the population can relate to.

The move

It is the end of March and our lease has expired on our short stay apartment so over the last couple of days I have been moving our meagre belongings up stairs to our new and much nicer apartment.  For a while I had been feeling guilty thinking that I had brought more clothes with me than Annika.  I had travelled with the larger suitcase as well as a suit bag.  Today after having moved all of Annika's clothing upstairs I have vanquished all the afore mentioned feelings of guilt and can once again stand proud.

In Germany an employee is entitled to a days paid leave, over and above one's holiday entitlement, for moving house.  So Annika took Friday off so we could move and clean the old apartment.  It was all done by midday and successfully handed back to the owners.  As our belongings from Australia have been delayed we have found that we are short some of the basics, such as plates, cutlery, bed linen, towels and pillows.  So we decided to head back to Annika's parents place to collect some of our wedding presents and beg some additional stuff from them.  It was Karina's birthday and the family met in Jena to have dinner.  Dinner was standard Deutsch but of exceptional quality and it was really pleasant to have a typical meal that was really well prepared.  After dinner we went to the Planetarium to watch a rock presentation IMAX style.  Jena is home to the oldest Planetarium in the world.  Unfortunately the long day over came me and I slept through some of it, including most of Phil Collins, which was a blessing in disguise really.  Knowing how much I dislike listening to Phil Collins my lovely wife thought it would be amusing to wake me up for a song she knew I really hated.  Luckily for me the soporific effects of Phil Collins quickly had me back in the land of nod.

Saturday had us getting up late then and sorting through the belongings we wanted to take back to München as well as a quick trip to Sömmerda to buy a set of spanners and some new sunnies for Annika.  That afternoon Tobias's parents came over for coffee and cake and we were joined by Annika's grandparents.  Oma and Opa gave me a belated birthday present.  A much appreciated bottle of 12 year old Single Speyside Malt.  It is ironic that the best scotches I have ever drunk have always been in Germany with Annika's Grandfather.  Later in the afternoon we went for a drive in Tobias's hire car.  He had requested a medium sized car but they had up graded him to an Audi A6 which he thought was too big.  There was a 3 series cabriolet in the lot so he asked if he could take that.  Why not was the answer?  So Tobias and Karina got a 3 series cabriolet for the weekend and of course we all got the chance to feel the wind in our hair and the sun on our face.
Looking at the photos you can see that there is a fundamental difference between men and women.  I would have framed the whole car in shot.


Saturday night found us playing board games with Annika's mum & dad and drinking too much.

On Sunday we heard the sound of a motor bike and looked out the window to see Annika's Uncle Ziggy starting up his old BMW R1000LT to go for a ride.  He has been unwell recently and it was good to see him up and about, especially good to see him getting out on the bike. 

The train hit 230 km/h on the way home.