september trip, part 5: prague

The next leg of the trip brought us to Prague, this had me excited for two reasons: old architecture, and pilsner. If I ever drive into Prague again, I am going to do it in the daytime, or have a very good understanding of the parking situation. We rolled into Prague late at night driving up and down very steep and narrow cobblestone streets trying to find Clown and Bard, and it just seems like it would have been easier with sunlight. The idea was we would pick a cheap hostel where the backpacking party animals would be. Below you will find the room “Momo” where we stayed, which roughly translates to ugly pink room in Czech.

Easily the best aspect of this hostel is not the accommodations but the people that stay there. Almost all of the guests of the hostel were English speaking, mostly Australians, Kiwis, Brits, and Americans. What was interesting to discover about the Australians we met was they tend to take very long vacations. Some girls we met were one month deep into a 6-8 week European vacation. I generally don’t like to be away from my day to day routine for more than 2 weeks, so taking 2 months to bum around Europe seems really crazy to me.

The way the Hostel is setup is really conducive to meeting people in that they sell really cheap beer in the basement bar. Not just any beer was on tap though, the original Budweiser was on tap in the basement for what amounts to about $2 a pint which by itself makes me want to visit Prague again very, very soon.

We spent our first morning just walking around the city killing time waiting for a walking tour, came back to the hostel and literally just missed the tour. Sweaty and annoyed we ended up walking around the city some more and came to the following obvious conclusions: Prague is really old, and really beautiful. So you combine that with cheap beer, cheap food, and the club scene and you pretty much have a great way to spend 4-5 days.

One of the coolest things about Prague is you have to walk through maybe 5-10 kilometers of really beautiful, old city the whole time looking up towards the obvious destination of the castle and cathedral at the highest point in the city. Once you get there you will find this:

One of the most beautiful piles of money I have ever seen. There is so much stained glass, and religious iconography crammed into St. Vitus.

Granted, I have only scratched the surface of Europe, but I feel like Prague should be a stop on everyone’s trip to Europe.

september trip, part 4: munich

Munich was essentially the main reason for taking the trip, and if you can not already guess why let me educate you in one word: Oktoberfest! Every year in late September, Munich Germany is host to the world’s largest beer festival with 6 million attendees annually. I mean, beer and sausage are already two of my favorite things, and you throw Bavarian culture (search for dirndl on Google image search and you will see the kind of culture I am talking about) in to the mix, and I can’t wait to go back!

Unfortunately due to bad planning, or rather late planning our Munich accommodations were actually in a city south of the festival, it was essentially a 45 minute ordeal to get to and from the city. That didn’t keep us from having fun though.

Our first night we went into the city and made a b line for the Hofbrauhaus. The Hofbrauhaus is perhaps the most notorious beer hall in Munich. The place is massive, we started in an outdoor area, watched several people take part in some loud drinking songs. After eating some pretzels, cheese and sausage, and we moved inside where we found a traditional, half-timbered interior where a small, traditional, German brass band was playing. Finally we moved to a large concert hall upstairs and watched a Polka band play, and socialized with some really obnoxious teenagers the whole time enjoying delicious pilsner. This place is great, and totally captured what I imagined Oktoberfest should be like. Which isn’t to say I necessarily enjoyed it more than the festival itself, but it just somehow felt more authentically German.

The next day, we made our way to the festival by maybe 8 or 9 in the morning. Apparently how Oktoberfest works is either you have reservations in a tent, or you get there super early and wait to get into one. Or you can do what we did, get there a little late in the morning, give up on getting into a tent, and sit at a table outside of a tent and hope for good weather. The morale was pretty low early on. It was a little brisk, cloudy, and some Italian guys joined us at our table (fun fact about the second weekend of Oktoberfest: it is “Italian weekend” when all the Italians come up). Normally, I would have been fine with this but if I am going to spend a whole day sitting there I was hoping for some more “interesting” people. Lucky for us they were not interested in continuing to drink and the beer frau kicked them out.

The people that replaced them where much more interesting. They consisted of a Polish guy, an Italian girl, and… some other women, I can’t remember exactly. Once we all had a met a certain threshold of drunkenness the conversation started to flow and then the sun came out! The rest of the day I can only describe as a magical drunken experience that I hope to repeat again this year. I was having broken German conversations with Germans, meeting all kinds of Europeans, dancing, singing at the top of my lungs, and eating smoked meats. This is the party, and it is 16 days long!

We also did a bit of walking around, checked out the BMW museum, and other less interesting stuff on the next day. Actually Munich is quite beautiful, and worth checking out, I think spending a 3-5 days there in the summer with a heavy dose of Hofbrauhaus would be an excellent vacation.

september trip, part 3: heidelberg

I left Amsterdam and resumed Euro trip ‘08 in car. The plan was: get a couple days of work in, and rejoin my friends somewhere between Amsterdam and Munich. Unfortunately there really aren’t that many great places conveniently equidistant between these cities. We ended up settling on Heidelberg. Which is relatively close to Frankfurt, and of course much closer to Munich than Amsterdam.

Getting down to Heidelberg was it’s own adventure. The most direct route involved taking a ferry ride across the body of water that separates Denmark from northeastern Germany, which was pretty cool. Once inside Germany, I encountered all kinds of traffic and when it finally opened up it was quite exhilarating driving on the autobahn. I was never entirely sure when and if the highways ever became limitless. You always hear about the autobahn as being sort of an automotive playground full of BMW’s and Porches. My experience involved driving as fast as I possibly could and having a blast in the process. It was quite amazing though driving at top speeds and still being passed by sports cars.

I had intended to pick my friends up at the Frankfurt airport train station, with no familiarity of the airport, or where at the airport the train station was, no cell phone, and no real ability to estimate when I would arrive having never driven from Denmark to southwestern Germany. After spending two frustrating hours of driving around the Frankfurt airport I gave up and drove to Heidelberg. Luckily everything worked out and the vacation resumed.

I don’t really have much to say about Heidelberg itself other than in most respects it totally represented what I thought classic old Germany should look like. Lots of brick, half-timbered, old architecture, I can’t really put it into words, but this place is definitely worth seeing for a couple days perhaps leading up to or just after Oktoberfest.

september trip, part 2: amsterdam

As someone who has watched several movies, and has absorbed plenty of pop culture over the last 27 years I had a pretty strong impression of what to expect from Amsterdam. As far as a city itself is concerned, it seemed kind of jammed together, and busy. There is some beautiful architecture here and there, but of all the cities I have seen, I wasn’t that impressed. As far as the city’s reputation is concerned though, it totally lives up to it! This city is fully crazy!

We didn’t stay overnight in Amsterdam, we took a train in from my friend’s place in The Hague. The first thing we did was take a boat tour of the city through the canals. This was pretty cool and more importantly it killed two birds with stone. The boat tour allows you to get a good feel for the city, as well as see a bunch of landmarks throughout the city that I was content to see from a boat. For instance, I have zero desire to tour the Ann Frank house, but seeing it from a boat is pretty cool.

The two days I spent in Amsterdam were a blast, everything you read is true, our approach was to try and experience a big a cross section of crazy as possible. I won’t get into any details, but will leave you with this, on our first night a car exploded on our way home.

September Trip, part 1: The Hague

I am gearing up for another trip in a couple weeks but before I post about that, I thought it might be appropriate to finally post about my last big trip that I took in September.

The trip started off in Holland, where a friend of mine at the time was working in The Hague. This was cool, because up until this point the only parts of Europe I had experienced were various parts of international airport terminals, one city in Sweden, and of course Denmark. The general feeling I got from The Hague is it was a lot more spread out, residential, and suburban feeling of a city than Copenhagen. The first night here was pretty crazy, we walked around a bit, ate pancakes for dinner then went to a bar on the coast.

Along the western facing coast that The Hague finds itself located is a series of restaurants and shops along the beach. The area is somewhat touristy but we still managed to have a great time. The bar that we spent the most time in I want to say was called ‘Crazy Pianos’ or ‘Dueling Pianos’ or perhaps ‘Crazy Dueling Pianos’… I am not sure but in any case they had two really hammy guys playing piano music. They were both quite talented and could generally play any song you threw at them regardless of how inappropriate a given song was to perform on piano.

One of the pianists was an American from Michigan, the other I want to say was from the UK maybe? Apart from being great performers, they both were a blast to hang out with as well, we ended up going out with both of them after they were done with their set. We took in some performance art, and participated in other essential American tourist in Holland activities. So bottom line, if you are interested in taking in a more laid back, measured glass of crazy, The Hague is pretty awesome.

Malmo, Sweden

If you ever make it to Malmo and appreciate Scandinavian design, it is definitely worth making the trek to the northwestern coast of the city. There is a massive development project which is basically a dense neighborhood, meticulously designed and organized around an aesthetic which I can only describe as… IKEA, but cool. This area surrounds a spectacular looking building called the Turning Torso. So basically walk towards that, check out the Maxi on the way and pick yourself up a *3.5% ABV beer and some salty licorice, walk around and be amazed by the modern architecture.

* Swedish law limits the alcohol content in beer by classing beers into 3 or 4 categories based on alcohol percentage and taxing the different classes of beer at different rates. 3.5% (if memory serves) being the most alcoholic beer you can find in most grocery stores.

Way back in August

Well, I have found that having friends and maintaining a blog don’t mix, that and I am lazy. Here is what I was up to back in August…

8/14/08 FC København vs. Lillestrom SK:

Not really much to say here. FC København is the local football club in Copenhagen. It was pretty cool watching soccer played live, much better than watching it on the TV. If I somehow find myself in Europe in good weather I would definitely go again.

8/15/08 Malmo Festival, Sweden

The largest festival in Malmo just happened to coincide with the weekend a friend was in town so we decided to check it out. Nothing too spectacular, it was your standard festival consisting of food stands, kiddy rides and live music. What was particularly interesting was the tradition of eating piles and piles of crayfish on the first day of the festival (the day we went). All kinds of people were having crayfish picnics around the hundreds of tables set up in the square in front of the main stage. The music being played I could only describe as folksy, cajun, zydeco stuff. It was weird to hear the music, American in genre, coming out of Swedish performers. Nothing else too exciting to report, the food was really good, and if I were to do it again, I would go later in the day probably on Saturday when there are less families and old folks.

8/17/08 Carlsberg Brewery

I had been excited to visit the Carlsberg brewery ever since I found out I was going to be working in Copenhagen. Unfortunately you don’t actually tour the brewery it’s more of a museum of the history of brewing and Carlsberg with a sweet bar at the end. It’s definitely worth going; with your admission (costing roughly $10) you will also receive coupons for two beers at the bar at the end of the tour. You have the option of trying all of their big sellers as well as a pretty decent selection of craft brews. I have gone through the “brewery” twice and will only return to go directly to the bar at the end.

Booze Update

I have drank so many beers since my last update, unfortunately I was so concentrated on drinking the beer that I forgot how most of them tasted. So in the interest of keeping my alcohol review standards high and maintaining the scientific integrity of my process I will limit my reviews to the following:

• Any Beer widely distributed in Swedish 7-11’s: Horrible and for some reason (probably Swedish law) limited to 3.5% ABV.
  
• Freixenet Carta Nevada: A dry, rich, sweet champagne that is quite delicious, it kind of tastes like a promotion.
  

Also of note in the above picture, the Dark Chocolate with nibs (which I have learned recently are bits of cocoa bean). Too good for words, better than a crunch bar any day… particularly on a day you get promoted.

tilfældig kundskab tre

• A pair of of Chuck Taylor All Stars on sale will cost you $70.
  
• Radio is uncensored, and you will be subjected to extremely explicit innuendo.
  
• Danes love Cisco’s Thong song.
  
• Really gross, salty, black licorice candy is massively popular.
  
• “Fart” in danish translates to “Speed” in english and makes driving around Denmark more entertaining.
  
• Colorful, footless pantyhose are quite popular with women folk.
  
• The word for “Danish”, as in the delicious pastry we all enjoy, ironically translates to “bread from Vienna” in danish.
  

porgy

Given my success with Willemoes Porter I decided to try a bunch of porters all at once, a porgy if you will… as well as some more Fur.

• Fur Renaissance:  Still as good as I remember from last time.

• Fur Bock:  Too sweet, but packs plenty of punch, I will probably stick to the Renaissance in the future.

• Næsgaarden Porter:  Ok, a little too much of an alcohol taste.

• Fuller’s London Porter:  Featured on wikipedia as the most Porter of Porters, and its good, but not quite as good as Willemoes in my opinion.

• Willemoes Porter: Still the reigning champ of Porters that I have yet to try here.

  

• Carlsberg Porter: Superior to Carlsberg Elephant in taste and matching it’s ABV somewhere between 7-8%. Despite this Carlsberg Porter is a failure in that it does not come in a sweet, gold tall boy and on Porter merits alone is a mediocre entry in the beer style.