MUNICH DAY 1: PRETZELS AND A BACON OMLETTE

I must admit that prior to arriving in Germany, I was a bit apprehensive about the cuisine. I didn't know much about German food, aside from the beer, pretzels, schnitzel and lots of sausages. So I pretty much thought that I'd be screwed(not consuming pork and beef), and living off of beer, pretzels and gummi bears for my entire week in Germany.

And in retrospect, I realize that I was completely right. I really did live mostly off of beer (and might I add, the best beer that I've ever had), pretzels and salads for most of the trip. I quickly realized one of my problems was my lack of knowledge of the German language. I mean, I speak a good number of languages, but German was completely beyond me. There are words that are like 16 letters long. Sometimes without vowels! And when you're staring at a menu like that, you really have no safe place to go.

So let's get started on my first day in Germany. I've decided to organize these posts by day rather than by meal since it'll make things a ton easier. I arrived at the Munich airport (at this point, my favorite airport in the world, it's just immaculate and really cool) where I met my best friend Rudes. We quickly ran off to the metro, dropped our stuff at the hostel and went looking for food. (With all the flight delays and layovers, it'd taken me 22 hours to get from Boston to Munich). Unfortunately, it was Saturday, and we quickly learned that not much is open after 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. We tried to find some of the restaurants listed in my guidebook, but ended up at a marketplace where we found lots of Australian and Brazilian soccer fans enjoying beer, sausages and pretzels. Wait, first let me show you this massive stack of pretzels at a pretzel stand.Ok, so i sent Rudy in to buy some food and he found out that the place had absoloutely no food that did not have pork in it. Except for a pretzel. I was off to a great start. So of course, I got a pretzel, while Rudy had his first (and certainly not last) sausage of the trip. My pretzel was a little disappointing, but really, what did I expect, it wasn't exactly the specialty of the beer stand. And I was just happy to have something to eat.But Rudy's beer was great. Though he didn't know how to pour it. (hence all the head. I had to teach him how to pour it correctly.)And he really liked his sausage.
I'm gonna throw in some pics of the marketplace that we were in. here's a pic of a meat stand.And of course, the ubiquitous white asaparagus. These things are hard to find in the U.S. and they're really expensive, but they're everywhere in Germany. And they have huge ones too. This is just a pic of the asaparagus tips.Ok, back to the food. Rudes and i went back to the hostel for a power nap. And by the time we'd gotten up, it was dinner time. (like 9:30, we just slid right into the European schedule, which wasn't hard cause it was still light out). We decided to hit a biergarten, cause that's what Munich is famous for (this is where they hold Oktoberfest afterall). And we found a big one, the Augustiner, which is actually a big chain, with the Italy v. USA soccer game on.

So I was faced with a German menu. Actually, it was translated into English. But something was lost in translation. I decided to order a mushroom omlette served on bread. I thought that was pretty safe. And I discovered the Radler (which I'd read about in my guidebook). It's basically beer mixed with lemon soda. I had to give it a try. And it was excellent. I ended up drinking these throughout our trip. (when Sam, the German expert, arrived a few days later, he explained the whole story behind radlers, which I'll tell you if you're actually curious, but it's actually a lighter beer drink for earlier in the day.) Here we are with our beers.So when my omlette arrived. It looked pretty good. Lots of mushrooms. And we were sitting outdoors, so it was pretty dark. About two bites into it, I realized that it was filled with bacon. Actually, with the flash from the camera, you can see the bacon. I hadn't eaten bacon since i was 15. But i didn't freak out. I just picked out the bigger chunks and finished the omlette. Whatever, we were in Germany after all. And let me say, after 11 years, bacon doesn't taste too bad. But i'm not gonna start eating it now.We were entertained by a really crazy Australian band that seemed to be traveling from biergarten to biergarten. (we'd actually seen them earlier in the day). But they were really so drunk that they sounded terrible, but were still a lot of fun. And we finished dinner with this apple dessert thingy. Which wasn't very good, but again, I don't think that was their specialty.All in all it wasn't a great food day for me. But i had an excellent time trying out the beer and enjoying the atmosphere. I just hoped for the arrival of Sam, the only person in our group who would be able to understand those German menus.