Munich

Kay and I are having breakfast in a cafe/meat store called Vinzenzmurr in Munich not far from our hotel. One of the things that immediately caught my attention the first time I was in Germany in Cologne 2 years ago was the quality of the little breakfast/lunch spots everywhere. The places are nothing special in the sense of being well known; they are more like the Greek coffee shops that were everywhere in Manhattan when I was in graduate school. But the similarity ends there. This particular one is astonishing. They have multiple counters. At the one where Kay and I are eating, we got our cinnamon roll and my salami-cheese sandwich at one counter along with a delicious coffee drink they call a latte macchiato, served in a glass with a 3-inch collar of milk foam that you eat off the top with a long spoon. I’ve noticed that virtually all the specialty coffee drinks are made by machines rather than baristas, and they are at least as good as anything you’d get in the US. I checked this out and found that while mechanical coffee machines have made inroads in the American home and some large food chains, your local coffee shop has not embraced them. I guess the cafe-going crowd prefers the personal touch of a neck-beard-wearing barista with a man bun, but take it from me, one macchiato latte made German machine style and they may very well change their tune.

Kay has left to take a bus tour (that woman can tourist hard, I tells ya), and I have opted to take it easy today to give my aching back, knees, and feet a chance to recover so I can enjoy Salzburg and Strasbourg. They are setting up the cafe for the lunch rush, and it is a wonder to behold. They have a cold salad bar that has about anything you could want or imagine wanting:

My understanding is that this chain started out as a butcher shop and branched out into a chain of eateries. One thing I will say about the Germans is that they are very focused on all things pork, preferably in sausage form. Here’s what’s on offer here at Vinzenzmurr:

They also have another station where they sell roast pork and giant loaves of something like liver-flavored ham loaf.

This would be a tad heavy for me at 9AM, but the locals were devouring it. It’s also interesting that every German restaurant I’ve been in so far pretty much has exactly the same menu: Roasted pork knuckle with those giant matzah ball-type dumplings and kraut, sliced roasted pork, half a roasted chicken, breaded pork or veal cutlets, and sauerbraten. For snacks, they dearly love their pretzels, although these are the big soft kind, not the little crunchy ones we have at home. All of this is washed down with copious drafts of beer, which comes in half liters or the convenient liter mugs. Between the heavy food and beer morning, noon, and night, I don’t see how anything gets done around here.

One thing that is very different here is that the legal age for drinking beer and wine is 16, and you can buy schnapps and other hard liquor at 18. I think I mentioned that you can drink in public here as well. Given how we handle this in the US, I had to wonder: are German teens getting loaded and driving their cars through crowds of tourists or having drunken brawls in the streets?

It turns out there are good and bad things about both the US and German approaches to young people drinking. My research indicates that German children are taught from an early age that drinking beer is a normal part of life, but getting hammered is uncool. I should note that just because it is uncool, it doesn’t prevent there from being plenty of drunken Bavarians staggering down the street on a Saturday night, or any other night of the week. Germans as a group consume more alcohol per person than Americans. But surprisingly, they have a lower rate of what we mental health folks refer to as alcohol use disorder. Here are the diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorder:

• Alcohol is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended.
• Persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control alcohol use.
• A great deal of time is spent obtaining, using, or recovering from alcohol.
• Craving, or a strong desire or urge to use alcohol.
• Recurrent alcohol use resulting in a failure to fulfill major obligations at work, school, or home.
• Continued alcohol use despite persistent or recurrent social or interpersonal problems caused by its effects.
• Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of alcohol use.
• Recurrent alcohol use in physically hazardous situations.
• Alcohol use is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem likely caused or worsened by alcohol.
• Tolerance (need for markedly increased amounts to achieve intoxication or desired effect, or markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount).
• Withdrawal (characteristic withdrawal syndrome, or alcohol taken to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms).

It turns out that although Germans drink more than we do, they do it regularly and moderately. They have much less binge drinking. A binge is defined as 5 or more drinks in 2 hours or less for men, or 4 or more for women. I suspect that the lower rate of bingeing has to do with beer being the beverage of choice. I don’t know about you, but I’d be hard-pressed to down 5 half liters of pills in 2 hours; I’d have to down a stein every 24 minutes. It can be done, but you’d really have to work at it, unless you’ve been practicing for a while.

Actually, when Kay and I were in Ireland back in 1989, I spoke to a bartender in a place called Ballyvaughn in County Clare. I asked him what the most he has ever seen anyone drink. He told me that 4 brothers had come into the bar after church on Sunday and started to drink. By the time they had finished, they had drunk a barrel of Guinness. A barrel is not the same as a keg; An American keg holds about 15 gallons, while a barrel of beer holds over 30 gallons. I did the math; that’s about 60 pints per man. I assume they drank for 8 hours; that would be about 7 pints per hour, or a pint every 8 minutes. I’m not sure I believe that, since they would have finished up with blood alcohol levels of 1.63%; the legal limit in the US is 0.08, and 0.4 can be fatal. The bartender told me that they were carried out by paramedics on gurneys, so it could be true; if so, on a certain level you have to respect their dedication, if not their judgment.

But back to Germany. Even though 16-year-olds can legally drink, they have fewer fatal, alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents. One theory is that because drinking is a normal thing, they don’t get crazy when they have a few beers. I’m not sure that would work in the US for a whole bunch of reasons, at least not any time in the near future. Everyone will probably switch to cannabis in any case.

We were discussing Munich. It is a big, bustling, interesting city with lots of cathedrals, palaces, and museums. Kay and I went out to the Nymphenburg Palace, and the place is huge, with acres of gardens, gigantic audience chambers, and elaborate murals and frescos. One thing I was struck by was the way the rooms were laid out. Rather than using hallways, you just walked through the the bedrooms.

I can’t help but wonder, if you were getting friendly with a lady-in-waiting, did the folks ignore you or offer a friendly “Guten Abend?” It seems like it took way too long for folks to figure out the idea of hallways. But it recently occurred to me, didn’t it take a ridiculously long time for someone to realize that you could put little wheels on a suitcase? They weren’t common until the late 80s; we had put a man on the moon and had personal computers, and it didn’t occur to anyone to stick a handle and some casters to the bottom of a suitcase?

I mentioned in an earlier post that I wasn’t going to take shots of well-known attractions on my blog, since far better ones are plentiful on Google. Case in point, the Nymphenburg Palace:

Trust me, it looked just like that. I know people like to have a picture of themselves in front of these places, and I understand the impulse, but I think you can probably imagine an older bald gent standing front and center in this pic. And there is also only so much you can say about something like this: Baroque? Majestic? There’s always “ethereal” (minor digression; I propose a new law that makes using the word “iconic” a misdemeanor for the first offense; we’ll have to get creative for repeat offenders.) But don’t get me wrong, it was well worth seeing.

It’s the offbeat things that are worth blogging about. For example, today we went to the Toy Museum. It should actually be called the Barbie Museum, because that’s all they have. But it had its interesting features:

For example, there’s Tippi Hedren Barbie being attacked by Hitchcock’s birds, along with Rosie O’Donnell Barbie, Joan Jett Barbie, and Shakira Barbie.

What other experiences stand out? Well, here’s one; here’s a doctor I’d be reluctant to see; he may be great at what he does, but given my druthers, I’d go to see Dr. Mench or Dr. Chochum.

And the food and beer are constants. You see your manual laborers starting the day with a pilsner, and it’s everywhere you turn. And they present the food well:

And Lord knows the love their pretzels. They are definitely growing on me:

The beer halls are impressive. Some of them hold hundreds of people. The outdoor gardens are best, weather permitting. The indoor ones can be pleasant, but the larger ones can be loud and hot. The Hofbrau Haus is the largest and the most famous, but Kay and I could not get out of the place fast enough.

They had an oompah band, complete with lederhosen and Tyrolean hats, blasting away, and the place was like an oven. And don’t impede the Biermadel, the local name for the women who carry multiple liters of beer to the thirsty crowd. I guess we were in the way, and one of them shouldered me out of her path like Ray Lewis tossing aside an offensive guard, then plowed through Kay for good measure. There are smaller but more pleasant places to drink beer, and unless you feel you must have a liter at the fabled Hofbrau House, steer clear.

Kay had done some touring of the city on her own. She discovered what she described as an amazing deli and took me back to see it, and it lived up to the hype, kind of like a German Dean and Deluca, only better.

There were whole legs of ham to be thin-sliced; looks delicious but I am a little put off by the hoof. They also had caviar for any budget, and bottles of cognac that will set you back several thousand semolians. For that kind of money, I better see God with each sip.

So today (Thursday, 9/11) Kay and I checked out of our tiny room at the Hotel Mio and caught a cab for the Salzberg train. Spoiler alert: I will not be going on the Sound of Music tour and I could not care less where Mozart was born.