The forest that launched a thousand cakes

I may have mentioned somewhere amid the feverish horsepower-worship of my earlier post that Oskar the Beemer was actually taking us somewhere. Our destination was the Black Forest, a few hours’ drive west of Munich in the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemburg. Ja, that Black Forest. The one with all the cake and ham and schnapps. I hope you’re not too hungry while reading this ‘cos there will be lots of lurid food description.

Punit had to catch his flight back home on Sunday afternoon, so we decided to get a head start on Friday night by driving to Stuttgart. I can’t decide what was worse, the weather or the traffic, but I was in my Beemer + Autobahn honeymoon period, so nothing was bothering me a great deal at that point. By the time we got to Stuttgart it was quite late, and it was rainy and cold. We ended up getting an early night to save our energy for the days ahead.

I will recount one incident, though, which took place while ordering drinks over a late dinner:

Punit: *looking at the menu* Hmmm… helles, radler, dunkles, … ah, weissbier. Wait. It only says 0.3L on this menu.
Waitress: Anything to drink?
Punit: Er… can I get half a litre of weissbier?
Waitress: *raises an eyebrow* Er… no?
Punit: Really? No… really?
Waitress: Sorry.
Punit: Wtf.

Do you need half a litre of beer to wash down dinner? Probably not. Is one month in Bavaria enough to get so used to ordering by the half-litre that any smaller amount seems just a tad stingy? Apparently.

On Saturday morning we grabbed breakfast on the go and started the drive into the Black Forest. Our first stop was the famous spa town of Baden-Baden.

“It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good. I fully believe I left my rheumatism in Baden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it.” – Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

Jetsetter types like Bill Clinton and Posh Spice come to Baden-Baden to open up their very rich, very famous pores and be pummelled by water jets and masseurs. The most famous spa there, Friedrichsbad, has been ushering bliss-seekers through its sixteen-step relaxation process since Mark Twain visited over 120 years ago. Clothing of any sort is forbidden during any of these sixteen stages.

Being a little too modest for Freidrichsbad, we  headed for another bathhouse named Caracalla Therme, where swimsuits are mandatory rather than verboten. We spent a languid couple of hours floating from cold water to warm to hot and back again, having all our little aches and pains massaged by a hundred different kinds of water jets, and being coaxed gently anticlockwise by a whirlpool. It wasn’t Friedrichsbad, but it was still pretty damn relaxing.

There are places in Baden-Baden where you need to be wearing a jacket and tie or formals just to get in, but you certainly don’t need to be as rich as the Beckhams to enjoy the place. It’s a pretty little town just to explore on foot, and you can do as we did and just pick up a döner on the street if you get the munchies.



Our next stop on our Black Forest drive was to visit this charming young lad:



In Tim Burton’s version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the scenes of Augustus Gloop’s home town of Düsseldorf were in fact shot in the Black Forest town of Gengenbach. When we got there, we could see why – walking the cobblestones of its main square, surrounded by quaint, freshly-painted old half-timbered houses, felt a little bit like being inside a postcard.



Gengenbach is also the place where we decided to finally take the plunge and become Black Forest cake snobs for life. We stopped in at a little café and ordered a slice of Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, as it’s called in German. From the moment the first bit of cake touched our tongues Punit and I entered a state of cherry-and-cream-induced bliss. Black Forest cake from the Black Forest is much lighter and airier than the kind you get in the US or Australia. It’s sweet enough to be delicious, but as I’ve noticed with many German desserts, they hold off on the sweetness and denseness just enough to leave you wanting more.

It was a brilliant, yet tragic experience. Brilliant because my tastebuds were turning cartwheels of joy. Tragic because from now on, eating Black Forest cake is totally going to be a situation where I’ll be channelling my friend Jon (hi Jon!). Jon likes to imitate people who’ve gone travelling somewhere, and then once they’re back vocally and unfavourably compare any dish of that cuisine they eat in their home town to the standard they experienced in its place of origin. He puts on this snotty voice and says (for example) “When I was in Gengenbach, I had the most divine Black Forest cake. I tell you, it was to die for.” It doesn’t sound that funny when I type it, you have to be there. But anyway. The long and short of it is, you don’t want to be there when I eat any Black Forest cake ever again, because I’m going to be a total jerk about it.

We also tried Neuer Wein (new wine), a drink that’s available in wine-producing regions during the autumn harvest period. When wine growers are sorting the grapes, they keep aside the ones that aren’t going to make the cut for fancy aged wines, and use them to brew a refreshing, unaged, still-fermenting drink that tastes a little like a very sweet, light sparkling wine. It has to be drunk within a few days of production since it ferments fast. It was delicious! Unfortunately I could only have a few sips since I was on point to drive a very expensive car right afterwards. But here is Punit posing with the spoils of our Gengenbach gustatory adventure. The reason he doesn’t have a totally goofy grin on his face here is that the cake was still untasted at this point.



Once we were done being cake-eaters (quack! quack!), we got back in Oskar and headed on. I should mention that the landscape we were driving through was really spectacular. The road south meandered through beautiful, emerald green valleys, ringed by gentle hills that were bursting into a riot of autumn colour.  Even the factory smoke puffing from the industrial chimneys dotted along the route managed to look somewhat picturesque. With that kind of scenery, those kind of wheels, and my totally l33t driving $k1llz0rZ, we could have filmed a nice car commercial.

Next we visited the little town of Triberg, which is tourist central of the Black Forest. You will know you’re almost there when you see the sign in English directing you to “WORLD’S BIGGEST CUCKOO CLOCK”. When we got there around 6pm, though, it was relatively peaceful and most of the souvenir shops were shut.

The main reason for our stop in Triberg was to see Germany’s highest waterfall. Niagara it ain’t, but it’s still quite pretty, especially with the fall colours in full swing. It’s not one giant cascade but rather a series of them connected in a stream that meanders down a big hill. There’s a small trail that criss-crosses the falls several times as it snakes up the hillside.



We would have stayed longer admiring the falls, if at that point the weather gods hadn’t decide to step up their constant sprinkling into full-blown hail. On the up side, this did give us a little taste of what the Black Forest must look like in winter:



By the time we made it to Freiburg, our overnight stop, it was well past dark. Freiburg is the biggest town in the Black Forest and home to the local university, so we figured it would be a fun place to spend the night.

We checked into our totally sweet and kick-ass hotel room (right on the main cathedral square!) and headed out to fill our tummies. I’m not sure what was going on in Freiburg that particular weekend, but we were literally turned away by at least half a dozen restaurants before we found one that was uncrowded enough to take us. I thought Seattle was a pain on Saturday nights, and this place has one-fifth of the population. By the time we found a place that would take us, we were pretty damn hungry.

Luckily, the restaurant we ended up at more than satisfied our growling stomachs. We finally got to eat fancy-pants German food – the existence of which until now I was not fully aware of. So far in Munich, any remotely fancy food I’d eaten had been Italian or French. My idea of German food was a big fat schweinshaxe or hendl to go with your maß. Delicious, bestimmt, but not particurly ‘oigh brow.

Our dinner in Freiburg was a revelation of what German food can be. I had rabbit, Punit had venison, it was all amazing. I want to mention is the dessert we had, which was called Tannenhonig-Parfait. This is a specialty of the Black Forest that I have never seen offered at restaurants in Munich. Tannenhonig is a very dark-coloured, delicate honey from the silver fir tree. They use this as the flavour base for an icecreamy-yoghurty substance that is then covered in marzipan, and served with hot cherries. Oh. My. Lord. If you think you can only eat one dessert per day that makes your knees weak, you should come to the Black Forest.

Since living in Bavaria causes you to grow a separate stomach compartment for beer, we then headed to a brewpub to sample the local brews and check out Freiburg’s student night life. I tried the banana-weizen, or banana-flavoured wheat beer. It was pretty delicious – the beer had the body and sweet thickness that you would expect of anything that has banana injected into it! The bar had a very Seattle-like, sedate, laidback atmosphere, which I guess is not surprising for a brewpub.

In Freiburg  we were able to observe the German Permi-Student Phenomenon firsthand. Germany is famous for its uni students still being at school about five years after you would have expected them to graduate in any other country. Despite it being a university town, I still felt like one of the youngest people there.

The next morning, we woke up to the wonderful view from our hotel room:



We had to hurry back to Munich for Punit’s flight, but we had a little time left to walk the streets by daylight. Freiburg is certainly a town that was built with TLC. In most towns, the footpath is simply made up of plain concrete blocks or cobblestones. Freiburg’s sidewalks are paved with tiny colourful stones forming a mosaic beneath your feet. You can still tell where the pharmacy, butcher and baker used to be centuries ago, because in front of many shop doors is a special mosaic depicting the logo of that profession!



Our final act in the Black Forest was to climb the grapevine-covered hill of Schlossberg to get a view out over the city.



And then, after an uneventful drive back to Munich, Punit’s unexpected month in Bavaria was over. With our farewells said, I was back to being an Urmi of One!

Highway star

Today, boys and girls, we’re going to hear the story of Urmila the Prius Driver and Oskar the Beemer. Subtitled, “how the girl who only cared about EPA ratings finally came to understand why people buy expensive cars”.

Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Germany, a girl named Urmila went on a weekend road trip with her friend Punit. They were bound for the Black Forest, a magical realm of cuckoo clocks, fairy-tale villages, vineyards… and the cake. Aaah, the cake.

To execute said road trip, Urmi and P-Unit needed wheels. Punit would be the driver, since he was the elder one, unfettered by stupid underage rental fees. So our heroes visited the abode of Madame Hertz, who took Punit’s ID and declared, “O Pretender, thy licence hath expired! Thou must find another driver, or be banished henceforth from this automobile dominion.”

All seemed to be lost: until Punit turned to Urmila and said, “O friend, my part in this tale is ended. You must take the ring to Mordor.”

Wait, wrong story.

Ahem. What he actually said was, “Milly, I think you’re gonna have to drive.” Also, the lady at the Hertz counter wasn’t named Madame Hertz. Also, he actually conveyed this information to me over IM while I was at work. But I didn’t lie about the cake.

So I hot-footed it to the Hertz office and we transferred the drivership over to me. I mentioned that I’d need an automatic car, since I’ve never driven stick before (auto is not the default in Europe). The lady (ok, I’m just going to call her Madame Hertz) wasn’t sure if they had any left so she checked the database.

Madame Hertz: Ok, we have one automatic car left. It’s going to cost a little more than what you originally reserved.
Punit: Ok, what is it?
Madame Hertz: It’s a BMW 3 Series.
Punit: *looks awed*
Urmila: *looks blank*
Punit: *remembers he’s not going to get to drive it – looks downcast*
Urmila: A 3 series… is that good?
Punit: *facepalm* We’ll take it.

On our way to the garage, Punit explained to me that the 3 Series Beemer is the medium-sized one and therefore the best kind, because it’s big enough to be powerful, but not so big that it’s an old person’s car (his words).

I’ve never been a car buff at all. When I was 6, I designed a cross-shaped car for four drivers so you wouldn’t ever have to turn, and my knowledge of cars hasn’t progressed much further since then (although I’m a decent driver). I’ve always been about the fuel efficiency – clean, small, practical, that’s all I want. In Seattle I didn’t even own a car (although I did occasionally drive around in a Prius).

When I moved to Germany, everyone was all like “You HAVE to go drive on the autobahn!” And I guess the idea of driving on a road with no speed limit sounded exciting, but I hadn’t really given it a huge amount of thought.

I guess that’s because all I’d ever driven was the small, practical cars. Waiting for us in the Hertz parking lot was a shiny, black, powerful and sporty-looking Beemer: the kind of car I would never have considered buying (or renting) for myself.

We got inside, and I was immediately awed by:

• Pimpin’ leather everything
• The button that folds the side mirrors up for you when you’re parking in a tight spot, and then unfolds them again
• Sensors that tell you if you’re close to an obstacle when you’re parking
• Butt warmers built into the seats (programmable to off, low, medium or high)

Coming down the five spiral ramps of the parking lot, I noticed how tightly the car could take corners. Punit actually had to tell me the first couple of times to stop turning so early. Once we got away from the city streets and onto the open road, I tapped the accelerator a bit to get to the speed of traffic. My first thought was “Oh, I guess the highway’s a little slow today”, before I realised I was already going at 120. If I’d had to guess by the sounds the car was making, I would have said maybe 70? I was hardly hearing a peep out of the engine.

I think that was the moment when my brain went from thinking “Must… not… crash… expensive… car” to “Wow. I wonder what else this baby can do!” Apparently I’d just experienced BMW’s advertised promise of “sheer driving pleasure”.



So we got out on the autobahn, the speed limit was 120 (it’s not actually unlimited the whole way), and it soon became clear that the speed limit signs only exist so that everyone can ignore them completely. For pretty much the entire trip, the cars around me were going at around 140 if the limit was 120, 120 if the limit was 100, 100 if the speed was 80, and so on. I should also add that it rained and hailed almost the entire weekend, and still every man and his dog was speeding. Not that I minded – Oskar was more than up to the task (I compulsively name all cars I drive).

On the sections without a speed limit (delineated by a speed limit sign with a big line through it – how awesome is that), I got up to about 170km/h. With the bad weather/visibility and frequent construction zones, I wasn’t up for going any faster. But each time, it was amazing to floor the accelerator and bodily feel the car surging forward with so much power. I have to admit that each time a guilty little voice in my head said “I wonder how much gas I am wasting”. You can take the girl out of the Prius…  :) But I still enjoyed it. A lot. A whole lot.

Basically it was the car equivalent of eating a whole multi-pack of Kinder Riegel in one sitting. It'd feel a little wrong to do it every day, but daaa-yumn it's tasty here and now.

I mentioned the construction zones – the highways seem to be constantly under maintenance here. We never went more than an hour or two without hitting another area undergoing roadwork. But I guess that also explains how the roads are in such good condition. You drive at 140 and hear nothing. The autobahn is wide and smooth and quiet and an absolute joy to drive on. I can see now why so many people in Munich own expensive sporty Mercs and Beemers. When you can go out on such a nice road with free reign to absolutely gun it, why wouldn’t you?

With everyone going so fast it was interesting to see that things still moved like clockwork. There was one douchebag in a Porsche who revved past us in heavy rain at over 200km/h (we speculated that he was a tourist in “omg autobahn” mode), but apart from that we saw zero accidents, and maybe one or two close calls. Good old orderly Deutschland :)

So here I am, 2 days and 950km later, with Punit, Oskar and I in one piece, and a newfound appreciation for fast cars. A fitting experience in the country that invented the automobile!

Best of the wurst

(Yes, you may take a few moments to groan at the pun. There may or may not be more sausage puns coming up.)

I would like to announce that I ate the best sausage in the whole world recently. It was in a town called Regensburg, in eastern Bavaria. The air was chilly and we were hungry and rained-on, so we joined the queue streaming from the tiny kitchen that’s been serving up sausages to the good people of Regensburg for 900 years.

You stand patiently out in the cold, sustained by the wafting aromas of bread and meat. Once you’ve progressed to the front of the line, you finally shuffle into the weenie little galley, which looks and feels more like the inside of a brick oven. There are two gruff old ladies bustling around inside making the magic happen.


(Picture by Punit)

Ordering is very simple, because there’s just one thing on the menu. You only have to decide how many. Over the spitting and sizzling I called “Zwei, bitte!”, and within a few seconds, a cook shoved into each of our hands a soft, warm bread roll, each containing two little sausages topped with homemade Bavarian sweet mustard.

As we pushed our way out, there was still a steady stream of people lining up – men, women and brats. Once back in the chill, we bit into our sandwiches, and what happened next I will never be able to describe here fully. I can only tell you that it was a happy, happy moment, and that I will never forget it. To be frank, I never even knew that the humble wiener could be so delicious. I guess 900 years is enough time to be able to perfect the art of the sausage.

All of this is reminding me of a random joke:
Q: What kind of dog feeds the hand that bites it?
A: A hot dog.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that, because we actually did do something in Regensburg other than eat sausages, although that was definitely one of the major highlights. We saw the cathedral, which is very pretty and apparently the most important example of Gothic architecture in southern Germany. We also walked on the Steinernebrücke, or the Stone Bridge, which is another thing in Regensburg that is almost 900 years old. Apparently the Charles Bridge in Prague is actually modelled on this bridge. Steinernebrücke may be less famous than its Czech counterpart, but it’s still beautiful:



As we walked along the Danube, we spotted a little bank covered in little flat stones. I took this opportunity to go skim some stones, which I wouldn’t bother mentioning except that Punit got this excellent action shot of the first and second bounce:



An hour or so’s leisurely boat ride down the river is the Walhalla, built by King Ludwig I to be a monument to German national heroes. Well, technically, German-*speaking* heroes. The prerequisites to get into Walhalla are you have to be great, speak German, and be dead.

It’s all a little surreal, actually. You’re happily drifting down the Danube, looking out at the forest turning all autumn-y, and then suddenly there’s this big-ass Greek temple looming over you:


(Picture by Punit - my own camera decided this would be a fun time to run out of battery)

To go inside Walhalla, it’s a fair hike up the mountain climbing a huge promenade of marble steps. All very metaphorical I suppose – the people commemorated in the hall were all at the peak of their respective fields. Einstein, Gauss, Copernicus, Sophie Scholl and Schubert were among the busts I recognised (unfortunately the vast majority I did not).

Back in Regensburg, we happened to catch some kind of street festival happening in one of the squares. There was a band playing 90’s English songs and stalls all around selling beer and wine and all sorts of goodies to enjoy while listening to the music. We sampled the local brew, Thurn and Taxis. Pretty solid. (It seems that a prerequisite of being a proper Bavarian town is having your own brewery.)



Not bad for an spontaneous weekend foray into a random nearby town. It’s great to live in Europe!

Under the influence of Escher

If you’re visiting Amsterdam, you may feel a hankering to bend reality a bit - to believe in waterfalls that feed themselves, staircases that never end, and cartoon animals crawling out of the page as flesh-and-blood creatures. If so, you have a couple of options. You could spend some time at your friendly local coffee shop; alternatively, you could hop on a train to the nearby city of Den Haag (the Hague) and visit the M.C. Escher Museum. Or, for maximum effect, you could do both of these in sequence :)

Escher has been my favourite artist since I was a nerdy Year 6 student at maths enrichment camp. (Yeah, I was that kid.) We got divided into teams to solve maths problems, and each team was named for a famous mathemetician. My team was Team Escher, and we kicked ass. In fact, we won the whole problem solving competition, and took home our very own Escher bookmarks as prizes. I’d never seen an Escher drawing before, and was completely mesmerized for a moment when I saw the design on my bookmark:


(From http://www.tessellations.org/eschergallery27.htm).

Since then, Escher has been my favourite artist. They told us at maths camp that he was a mathematician, but in fact he had no formal mathematical education. And yet his natural intuition for spatial concepts, obvious in many of his works, had research mathematicians knocking on his door asking him to write papers on how the hell he did it.

I could rabbit on forever about how freaking cool and brilliant and creative Escher was, but I’ll restrain myself. If you aren’t familiar with his work, here is a link to a site with lots of pictures. And here is his Wikipedia page.

The Escher Museum is inside a former royal residence in the Hague. The first couple of floors are filled with his many works, several of which I hadn’t even seen before. These new discoveries took me straight to Cloud Nine. Think about how much you adore your favourite musician in the whole world. Then imagine that, on top of all the amazing stuff you already love listening to over and over, you found out that they had secretly released five obscure and equally brilliant albums that you had no idea existed. It was like that. I could have died that instant a happy woman.

Here is one of the new discoveries I made: my meta-picture sucks, but omg! Bad-ass tessellation!



And here is a picture of me with the Escher picture I had hanging in my room while I was growing up. I look pretty excited, no?



One of the really cool things about the museum was that it displayed not only the finished products, but also Escher's own hand-drawn diagrams and explanations of how he created his works. For example, instructions for regular division of a plane. The motherlode! When I was in Year 6 I was pretty sure that if I could figure out how to tessellate like Escher, I could probably leap tall buildings in a single bound, or transcend time or something. Now that I know the secret, I can go get winning lotto numbers from the future, and I'll never have to work again. Hurrah!

There was also a display of some of the woodcuts he used to create his prints. Yep, most of Escher’s amazingly intricate pictures were not drawn, but carved into wooden blocks and then printed onto paper. As someone with little-to-no hand-eye coordination, I find this almost inconceivable. And yet it is true :)



The top floor of the museum was full of mind-bending exhibits demonstrating how Escher used different tricks to create optical illusions. For example, there was this trick photo booth that made it look like Natasha, Punit and I were beating up on Kostas, the biggest guy in our group:



(The tricks included: slanty ceilings, slanty floors, differently sized windows…)

And other random displays that made for some zany photo-taking.



Best geek-out day ever. Tick one more childhood dream off my list!

Baby went to Amsterdam

Ok, it’s time to chain myself to my chair and write about my trip to Amsterdam. It’s been almost 3 weeks since I was there, but every time I try to blog about it, the Peter, Bjorn and John song “Amsterdam” gets stuck in my head, and then I have to go listen to that whole album, and then I have to go listen to their other albums, and then… y’know. It’s kinda hard to dance to “Nothing to Worry About” and type at the same time.

Bloody Peter, Bjorn and John. Troublemakers, all three of them.

Given Amsterdam’s reputation as a city to explore by night, I decided this was one place that would be infinitely more fun with company. So when my Seattle friends came to visit me in Munich for Oktoberfest, I roped them into coming to Amsterdam with me (not that they needed much convincing). After wrapping up at work on Friday afternoon, we all met up and jumped on a plane to the Low Countries.

By the time we’d arrived at Schiphol airport and hopped a train to Amsterdam Centraal, it was late, and we were tired. We took a taxi to our hostel, which took us through the outskirts of the red light district. I might have been sleepy when I got into the cab, but those few blocks woke me up pretty fast.

For those not in the know, the Netherlands is rather unique in that prostitution is a legal, regulated industry. The “working girls” in Amsterdam pay taxes and have their own union with standardized wages. They rent little rooms with windows facing onto the streets of the red light district, and advertise their wares under the glare of scarlet lamps. Pimping is illegal, and the women have panic buttons in their rooms that immediately summon the police in case they feel threatened.

Unsurprisingly, this unusual approach to the world’s oldest profession has turned Amsterdam’s red light district into a major tourist attraction. I for one was definitely curious to see how the whole thing worked (well, not the whole thing, but… you know). When we went walking in that area later on, the demographic breakdown of the people on the street was comparable to your average tourist attraction (minus the kids) - backpackers, elderly couples, bachelorette parties, and pretty much everything in between. All there just to have a gawk and a giggle. Of the hundreds of windows we walked past, I only saw two guys actually go inside. I really wonder how many people are there to satisfy anything other than their curiosity. Maybe I was there on a slow night, but it didn’t seem like there was enough traffic to sustain that many windows.

Saturday morning dawned crisp and sunny – it was a beautiful day. We decided to rent some bikes and explore the city. I thought Munich was a bike-friendly city, but Amsterdam takes it to a whole new level. On a vast majority of Amsterdam’s streets, cyclists have their own divided roadbed separate from the cars, trams and pedestrians, and a high enough proportion of the population rides everywhere to necessitate specialised parking facilities like this:

This is one of the things I absolutely love about this part of the world. Cycling (or pedestrianism for that matter) isn’t an afterthought in the way things are designed – it’s a default, and that makes all the difference.

<tangent>I spent  my first year in the US living in the suburbs without a car. I walked about a mile each way to get my groceries every week, and the people driving by me in their cars always had this pitying look on their faces. I’m pretty sure they were wondering if I was a homeless person. Why the hell else would I choose to walk? As a result, one of my absolute favourite things to do in Europe has been to watch the poor buggers in their cars trying to navigate through the mass of humanity and wondering (a little too gleefully) why the hell they would choose to drive…</tangent>

Anyway, back to the four of us on our bikes in Amsterdam on a Saturday morning. As I pedaled my chunky orange easy rider bike along the cobblestone streets, I was the happiest girl in the entire world.  In the light of day, Amsterdam was just heartbreakingly gorgeous. We sailed past block after block of quaint row houses, facing onto tree-lined canals filled with houseboats. Since there were barely any cars,  it was quiet. I just soaked up the sunshine and felt happy. It’s hard to explain. I hadn’t even been to a coffee shop yet.



It annoys me to put my pictures in this blog, because they simply don’t do justice to how pretty this city is. How is it that I’d heard a hundred different stories about Amsterdam, but no one had told me how beautiful it was? I guess the fact that I didn’t expect it to be beautiful made me appreciate even more that it was. This is a long blog post, and I wish I could fill as many paragraphs as I've written about other things, with descriptions of how much I enjoyed that bike ride. But it was just a feeling, and a moment, and it's hard to put into words now. But it was my favourite part of the entire trip. Except maybe the curry mayo, but more on that later.

One of our stops was the Anne Frank House and I will admit that it made me cry. I hadn’t read her diary (although I picked up a copy in the shop afterwards). But the idea that an intelligent girl like that was holed up in an attic for years, at an age which should have held so much promise and life experiences, just broke my heart. The idea that that, and worse, happened to millions of people just like her, is very hard to think about. The museum was very well put together, and managed to pack an emotional punch even though we were all shuffling through like a tourist assembly line.

After Anne, we locked up our bikes for a while to go on a walking tour of the city. Locking up your bike in Amsterdam is a whole process in itself. Apparently there is a sophisticated industry of professional bike theft in the city (around 10% of bikes are stolen every year), so the arms race has escalated over the years to point of ridiculousness. The bikes we rented came with two locks. The first was a piece attached to the bike that prevents the back wheel from turning. You’re meant to use that first lock even if you get off your bike and turn around for five seconds to take a photo. The second lock was for when we walked away from our bikes. It was a metal chain so chunky and heavy that it must have been manufactured by the same supplier who outfits the local maximum security prison, or Ali G. You need to get the chain around the front wheel, the frame, and something solidly attached to the ground (like a railing or lamp post). Leave the front wheel out, and someone will happily detach and run off with it, leaving you to test your unicycle skills.

Having your bike stolen is such a standard part of life here that no one bothers to get a nice-looking one. It just makes it more likely that you’ll end up losing it. If I had an EU passport, I would start buying older bikes from all the trendy Munich people  who want to upgrade to something shinier, and sell them to people in Amsterdam. I would make a killing. Until I find a way to acquire said passport, all EU citizens reading this must hereby promise not to steal my idea. Here, you can sign your name below:

___________________________
Signed, lucky person who can work anywhere in the EU for as long as they want (I hate you all).

Wait, I was going somewhere with this bike locking thing. Oh, yes. The walking tour. We went on a walking tour with a hyperactive tour guide from New Zealand who pointed out such interesting sights as a pair of brass breasts embedded into the footpath in the red light district, the former city torture chamber, the cannabis museum, and shields installed in dark alley corners to prevent drunk men from peeing in them. Amsterdam is pretty badass, and none of it is fake. Eat your heart out, Las Vegas.



We spent our evening rotating between various bars, coffee shops and frites stalls. Amsterdam has a great atmosphere at night. I’m not normally a big nightlife connoisseur - I’m that annoying girl in your hostel dorm who sleeps at 10:30 and starts stirring at 5:30 – but I had so much fun walking around Amsterdam with my friends that it was 4am before I knew it.

I mentioned frites: the Europeans really know how to do it right with their deep fried potatoes. The frites are hot and crispy and properly double-fried. They come in a giant paper cone with these useless mini wooden forks. The four of us spent about 8.5 seconds digging around ineffectually with the forks, before throwing them out and substituting the infinitely more efficient utensils God gave us.

Most stupendously of all, the frites come drowned in whatever combination of cardiac arrest-accelerating condiments takes your fancy. One of my friends, a veteran of frite-ordering, commandeered this process and introduced me to the holy trinity of frites with curry mayo. It’s frites, topped with mayo, topped with curry ketchup. OH. MY. GOD. My knees almost buckled on my first bite.

And that was about 20% of the highlights of my one glorious day in Amsterdam. (On Sunday we went to the Hague, which will get its very own post.) One measly day in my new favourite city (it’s a big call, but I will make it). I was so sad to leave, and I spent the rest of the week wanting to go back.

Am I going back to Amsterdam? Is the Pope Catholic? Watch this space.

The greatest party on earth

All of Munich mourns this fair evening, for tonight is the last night till next autumn that  Münchners can join the crowds in lederhosen and dirndls at a giant fairground, find a table under a giant inflatable angel covered in underwear, and drink copious amounts of beer by the litre, whilst gnawing on pretzels the size of bicycle tires and ox meat shaved off a giant spit. And then go puke it all up on a stomach-churning carnival ride that would have American liability lawyers putting a down payment on their next Porsche. And not have to go to work the next day!

If the above paragraph just blew your mind, rest assured that all will be explained. But before I start, I would like to let you know that I lied. In my last post, I claimed that millions of people come from all around the world to attend Oktoberfest. Double-checking this bold claim on Wikipedia a couple of days later, I read that only 15% of the 6.5 million visitors are actually from outside Germany, or about 950,000. My bad :)
Anyway, the last time you read this blog, your heroine was receiving Bavarian fashion advice from the grabby sales lady in Marienplatz Kaufhof. Here are the results from that adventure:



The next day, wearing my spiffy new dirndl, I headed to Theriesenwiese (or the Wiesn if you wanna sound all local) with three Seattle friends in tow. Oktoberfest virgins, all four of us. How innocent we were. How full of hopes and dreams and questions… and how empty of beer.

The latter, at least, was rectified within seconds of staking our claim on a table in the Augustiner-Festhalle, one of the larger tents that seats six thousand people and serves its beer out of individually-tapped wooden kegs. Our waitress came by and promptly deposited a litre of beer in front of each of us (called a maß). We all just looked at our steins for a moment, in wonder, gratitude and delight. Then we pulled ourselves together, picked up our maßkrüge (they are really heavy) and drank to each other’s health: “Prost!” And thus the sad, pre-Oktoberfest chapter of our lives came to an end.



There are some unique elements of Oktoberfest beer-drinking that really assist in the intoxication process. Firstly, the breweries in Munich make a special extra-strong brew to serve during the ‘Fest(around 6.5% alcohol). It’s as drinkable as your standard German helles, but it’ll hit you harder.

Secondly, as mentioned earlier, the beer comes by the litre. So you’re definitely going to be drinking at least that much. You could in theory order a Radler (half beer, half Sprite), but as I was informed by a colleague, being male and ordering a Radler is basically an invitation for your friends to call you out as a pussy in front of everyone. If you are female, they will probably think it but not say anything. So unless you want everyone to know you’re a pussy, just order a proper beer like all the other awesome people, okay?

From what I described above, you may still be wondering what the big deal is. You can get that pissed in your own house after all – so what exactly is the difference between Oktoberfest and your average beer-fuelled high school house party? Well, first up, I’d like to see a house party where the house looks like this:



… nuff said.

Secondly - this is something the entire city genuinely gets into. It’s not just for frat boys or yuppies or backpackers: in the beer hall, you’ll be drinking elbow to elbow with Bavarians from 16 to 60… or 70… or 80 (the drinking age in Germany is 16). And as famous as Oktoberfest is worldwide, it’s still very much a local festival. Over 70% of Oktoberfest attendees are from Bavaria (thanks, Wikipedia!). And with a few maß in them, they’re a really friendly, lively bunch. I think I got to practise more German during that one day in the Augustiner than I did for the rest of my time in Munich put together.

One cool person we met at our table was Philip, a twenty-something guy from the Bavarian Alps who taught us this simple drinking song (not my video):

The band will play this song every 5 or 10 minutes to ensure you’re progressing through your maß at a respectable pace. The words are “Ein prosit, ein prosit der gemütlichkeit” which apparently means something like “A toast, a toast to happiness” (Philip’s English was nicht besonders gut – but better than my German – story of my life).  Oh, and you’d better be standing on the bench or table while you’re singing – or you’re obviously not giving this Oktoberfest thing your 100%.

As well as playing Bavarian drinking songs, the bands in the tents also play German pop songs (like my current favourite, 54, 74, 90, 2006 – I think I impressed my German colleagues at our work party when I sang the entire chorus, in German, drunk) and random English songs (if you ever wanted to hear “Walking on Sunshine” played by a brass band in lederhosen, here is your chance). Once you have a maß or two in you, you may find, as I did, that you can sing way more of “Bohemian Rhapsody” than you ever knew you could.



You may still be wondering about the giant inflatable angel covered in underwear which I mentioned earlier, and which you can see in one of the pictures above. Let me enlighten you. In the Hofbräu Festzelt, the tent where our work Oktoberfest party was held, the section in the middle is known as the “Pig Pen” (for the record, our party was at some tables nearby). The Pig Pen has a reputation as the craziest, rowdiest patch of one of the craziest, rowdiest parties in the world. If you want to go in there, you better let go of all your inhibitions, because when you enter the Pig Pen with underwear on, one of your fellow drinkers will helpfully relieve you of it and throw it into the lap of the overweight cherub floating above you. I heard this story from several people, and decided to take their word for it and avoid the Pig Pen :)

It’s inevitable that during a festival where millions of people are walking around intoxicated, some unfortunate things are going to happen. The day after my first visit to the Wiesn, I happened to see a front page headline on the Abendzeitung (evening newspaper) saying that 800 people had been injured so far. And that was just Day 3 of 16. A girl at my office had her mouth cut open with glass when a drunk Aussie backpacker lost his balance and fell off a table, dropping his Maßkrug right on her face. And two tourists died this year – one an Australian who drunkenly walked into the path of an oncoming train, and another a Brit who got roaring drunk, tried peeing out a window and ended up falling out of it instead.

That said, the atmosphere at the Wiesn still feels amazingly safe and non-seedy. Sure, you will have a few people collide unsteadily with you as you walk around the fairground, but I didn’t see a single overly aggressive incident or fight in the time I spent there. People bring their kids to Oktoberfest, so it must be pretty safe overall. I think the vast majority of people are there to make merry, eat lots of wurst, and spend time with friends - and they do it responsibly. And that’s awesome.

Speaking of kids, I felt like a kid again at Australia’s Wonderland when I saw all the amazing rides spread across the Wiesn. I tried out this multi-loop roller coaster after 3 maß, and successfully got through it without puking or being puked on:



On another day my friend Punit convinced me to go on this ride, called Techno Power.



I’m not really sure how to explain the experience, except to say that I’m pretty glad I was sober and had a completely empty stomach. I don’t think anything like this would fly in the US. If I’m here this time next year, I would definitely spend one night at the Wiesn just trying all the ridiculous rides on an empty stomach. That wouldn’t protect me from other people’s puke, but I guess I could bring a rain poncho.

Oh, and the other thing you can look forward to at Oktoberfest if you really don’t want to drink is the copious amounts of really good food. Apart from the standard hendl/bratwurst/sauerkraut I got to sample some pretty amazing fairground food at the Wiesn, like roast duck, ox-sausage hot dogs, and mackerel salted and roasted over hot coals. And there was a lot more I could have eaten if only I could have fit it into my stomach (or been just a wee bit more drunk)!



I had the time of my life at Oktoberfest. I’m not a big partier or drinker the vast majority of the time, but there’s just such an amazing atmosphere at the Wiesn that’s really hard to put into words. It’s unlike any other party you will go to anywhere else. There is something really cool about standing on a table and toasting in Bavarian with a bunch of complete strangers. Even when you’re not actively there (I only attended 3 days out of the 16), you know something cool is happening. People are wearing their trachten to work and out on the streets, and there’s a buzz about the whole city. This has been two weeks that I will never forget. Prost!