Random Facts and Things Learned
1. The Autobahn isn’t nearly as cool as I thought it would be.
2. We most likely saved a girl from being raped.
3. Hitler’s house was the shiznit.
4. Beer is the devil.
5. Don’t ever f*ck with German police.
6. Germans don’t appreciate good Garth Brooks karaoke.
7. I shall henceforth refer to our football as infidel football.
It was Sunday: God’s day… or was it The Devil’s? In retrospect, it seemed more like a combination of the two, a new sort of diplomatic agreement established after eons of distrust to ease both sides into a new era of cooperation — an intervention on behalf of the universe, perhaps. All I know is that whatever awkwardness or animosity was felt on behalf of those on-high (or on-below, even), it was felt doubly so by we mere mortals on Earth. Or at least by we mere mortals in Munich.
The ten-hour flight from Dallas to Frankfurt didn’t have a very godly feel to it, nor did the subsequent five-hour drive to Munich or the several-dozen beer-shits throughout the week, but getting to hang out with my cousin Steven after having not seen him the past few years didn’t have that foosball tinge to it that Bobby Bouche’s mother often warned about; not to mention that we were cruising the Autobahn in a new BMW, so that held a certain air of awesomeness to it that helped elevate it above my typical Sunday routine of sleeping until noon and scratching my balls until sleepy time agreed to roll back around.
It was me, Steven and his friend Kaiser that had also only recently gotten back from Iraq that were to undertake this unholy trip. Whereas Steven had been in Germany for the month since they got back, Kaiser had spent the past three weeks in the States, also just stepping foot off of a flight before we hit the base, grabbed their shit and departed. So here was Steven, well-rested and raring to go, and Kaiser and I in a bit of a need of a nap. Since we also got lost upon hitting Munich, and spending the next few hours walking around with a GPS device in-hand, not finding our hotel until after dark, combined with the fact that two out of three of us were more than marginally sleep deprived, we concluded that our first night should be one of a slow-paced, minimally alcohol-fueled nature. We each took one-hundred Euros, saying that if we spent more than that, we had problems.
Enter the Devil.
Two-hundred Euros each and a sunrise later, we finally called it a night (or a morning, as it were). Later that afternoon, as we compared fragmented memories and fit puzzle-pieces together based on photographic evidence, things started to make sense. How could we have spent so much money? How could we have stayed out all night? Why the fuck were so sore (not in the ass area)? These are the Cliff’s Notes of the evening:
1. German beer is delicious.
2. German girls are very good at ignoring you.
3. Oktoberfest closes at midnight.
4. Turkish bars stay open until around five in the morning.
5. Strip clubs are in really shady parts of the city.
6. German beer is delicious.
Oktoberfest is basically the Oklahoma State Fair, only with tent after tent filled to the brim with beer, food and festivity. A mug of the beer — these are house beers, some of which are brewed specifically for Oktoberfest — was probably in the area of 44 oz. and tasted like God’s vagina. They also cost almost 10 Euro a piece. We have somewhere in the area of five mugs and a few Jager-bombs before the place is about to close, which leads everyone walking drunkenly toward the exits in a massive last-call situation, during which we decide to work the American angle on the unwitting German girls who would surely be intrigued by three drunken foreigners — and they may have been, given the right sophistication of approach — but we flew the obnoxious American flag well (me, in particular), and there were no takers. A running joke with us had already become the well-known “mi scuzi” line from Eurotrip, and that was basically the contents of our social toolkit at this point, only I added three words to fold, which I couldn’t see failing.
In my “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” shirt, I annoyed and flabbergasted on the upwards of at least one-hundred German girls with the seemingly smooth pickup-line: “Mi scuzi. American. Huge penis.” The propensity of German girls to ignore drunken Americans astounded me. At the very least, in my drunken state, I expected to get a laugh, and a laugh, however insane the line that inspired it, is a good first step. But in all our insatiably beer-drenched humor and raucous behavior, we may as well have been the invisible drunks because we barely warranted the smallest of glances — which, of course, is what led us on the Great Stripper Hunt of ’09.
Before the GSH ensued, however, we did happen upon a quaint little Turkish bar that was nearby. Here, we decided that more Jager-bombs were in order, and that people who passed up giant mugs of beer were reserved a special seat in hell, so we spent an hour or two observing these moralities before the cab-rides began. Another thing that warrants mention is that cabs are ungodly expensive. We probably spent at least 75 Euros driving around that city, listening to cabbie after cabbie telling us where the best after-hours establishments were, and often finding that these drivers must have had a proclivity toward leading drunken Americans to their death because we ended up in some of the most shady neighborhoods that I could have imagined, one an entire block of strip clubs, oddly enough, and we looking conspicuously American. At this point, we could have been raped and killed quite easily, altogether too intoxicated to put up much of a fight — though I like to think that, regardless of inebriation, I would be a rather difficult man to rape.
Due to some cultural misunderstandings, which I still don’t really understand, we made a rather quick egress from this Hamlet O’ Whores before the stabbings could commence, and thought it best to head back toward our hotel. On the way to our hotel — which was only two blocks from the site of Oktoberfest — we once again passed our new favorite Turkish bar and figured “what the hell”.
We resumed our drinking ways for another couple hours before Steven noticed this girl who was just so ridiculously drunk that she was unable to put up a fight to this guy who was all over her. We weren’t really quite sure how to proceed here: on the one hand, I’m informed that Turks can be a sneaky bunch with an appetite for prison-shanking, and, on the other, maybe this wasn’t necessarily out of place. Maybe this was his girlfriend or a thousand other maybes. So we asked. Steven asked one of the waitresses, and she responded with, “no, not alright.” Basically, we were right: this dude seemed like he was in the process of some date rape. So we all grabbed our beers, went to his table and sat down. No words were exchanged; I don’t think the dude spoke English, anyway. We just spoke the international language of the mean-mug. We stared this dude down for a couple of minutes while the waitress took that girl outside and got her a cab, and after she had left, we got up and went back to our table.
Hear-tell, I was really pulling for us to go back to the table and kick the shit out of this guy, but cooler heads prevailed, especially after he got out his phone and started making phone calls. Seeing as our hobo-stab insurance wasn’t up-to-date, we decided that it should be called a night… until we saw another bar was still open on the way to the hotel.
That’s about the last I remember of that night, though I have no knife-wounds, so I feel pretty confident in my assumption that I wasn’t stabbed. It was also a bit disappointing that we didn’t have a Carlos or a small Chinese man, but, other than that, the morning was somewhat similar to The Hangover.
Night #2
I’ve only got bits and pieces of dialogue from this evening, so this is the Sportscenter version.
We got to Oktoberfest around six that next evening, a fact that has been assumed by the fact that we’ve got pictures of the place during daylight hours. Once again, we closed that bitch down at midnight and went looking for other forms of entertainment. This night, though we swore we’d take it easier, we accomplished some impressive drinking feats. Mug after mug of amber nectar of the gods — if we had stumbled upon an actual Beerfest, I feel pretty good about our chances. I remember watching a bunch of drunks stumble around, many of which just leaned against the wall and fell asleep in something that looked like a hobo city. Apparently Germans don’t have the same sort of civil rights that we do, and the polizei can nightstick your ass at will; and, while that was a moderately scary thought, I was kind of hoping we’d get to see it happen to some of the more unruly drunks that started mouthing off. Sadly, we witnessed a few arrests but no beatings.
I also saw a couple girls get picked up when a dude bought them a pretzel. A fucking pretzel. I decided that maybe there was something to this pretzel trick, so I sent one over to a couple girls across from us; apparently, though, there was a “fat American” clause established somewhere during the annals of proper pretzel etiquette that mandates the girl’s right to refuse the pretzel invitation if the sender is either A) annoyingly fat or B) annoyingly American; and, as I was in violation of both, said invitation was refused, and the pretzel contract rendered null and void.
Later, I remember we were talking to these German dudes, and the only reason I remember this is because one of them introduced himself as “Julius… like Caesar.” What a great introduction. I replied with “Waylon… like Jennings,” but, not only did they have no idea who Waylon Jennings was, but they also couldn’t even pronounce Waylon. Then we started making up great little stories to tell everyone about how we were rich and very important people, someone’s sons, but those didn’t impress the girls either. I began introducing myself as Rick James, Kaiser as Rusty Shackleford (Dale Gribble’s alias on King of the Hill, for those not in the know), and Steven, we called Danger (you’ll see why in a moment). We did get the chance to break out some colloquialisms when they were telling one girl about war, and I’m pretty sure that the point we lost her was when she asked about it being dangerous and Steven responded with the always-classic “danger is my middle name.” Steven also spent thirty Euros on a German hat because the hat girl told him it made him look sexy. Such a great saleswoman.
We started to suspect that we were putting off some sort of gay vibe because they only people that would, not only talk to us, but also just outright come up and hang out with us were dudes. I’m pretty sure that one guy was hitting on Kaiser, actually, which was pretty funny. If only we were gay, we would have been knee-deep in dick. Even the German strippers were rude to us. I’m hoping that a lot of it has to do with everyone hating America in general and not just us because, while we were some assholes at times, I think we’re good dudes. We save people from getting raped, for fuck sake!
Later on, after Oktoberfest closes again, we go back to the Turkish bar. Where we’re greeted like rock stars. Apparently everyone was all worried about that chick from the night before, but no one wanted to do anything until our crazy asses showed up; it also became apparent that the dude that we cock-blocked may have been some sort of scary bastard. I really hope that we don’t get tracked down and killed some day, which may be made more difficult due to the fact that I lost my license that night, hopefully somewhere, anywhere else but there.
So it was back to drinking again. And upon leaving, the owner asks if we’re coming back the next night. He was bummed when he learned that this was our last night in Munich, and even asked when we were coming back again. I’d like to back next year, just to see if he remembers us.
All in all, night number two was rather tame in terms of the first, but we sat the bar high that night, so there’s no shame in a moral victory at this point.
The next morning, we leave Munich for a military resort in a little place called Garmisch, which was not only fucking pristinely beautiful in a valley below the Bavarian Alps, but steeped in history. It used to be a Nazi vacation spot, and actually held the winter games there in ’36, I believe. I was literally just blown away by this place. Here in Oklahoma, we’ve got the Arbuckle hills, but these were big ass mountains that we were at the foot of in this little town. Just so cool. Not to mention that, while we were waiting to check in, Steven hits a jackpot in the casino and wins over $1,000.
Tuesday night was also rather tame. We had a few beers at a bar at the hotel, hit up a local bar for a few, had a few more at the hotel and called it a night. I didn’t feel so badly about this one, though, because we had to be on a bus before 0700.
Though it sucked getting up that early, we did get to see the Eagle’s Nest, which is probably the coolest place on earth, scenery-wise — though I was really angry that I didn’t get to shit on Hitler’s throne. I just literally cannot describe the view, and the pictures won’t do it justice. I can’t think of anything that could put into words how overwhelmed I felt when I stepped off of Hitler’s golden elevator (which is brass now, sadly)and looked over the rails — when Paris first saw Helen, maybe that’s somewhat of an equivalent. I’ll have to revisit this later with a thesaurus.
Four hours on the bus again and we’re back at the resort. I’m all for just staying in, as is Kaiser because he’s been sick for two days now, but Steven insists that we man up and hit the town. I acquiesce, but on the condition of only a few beers. The first place we hit is this Irish pub, which is absolutely packed because there’s a football game on — by which, of course, I mean soccer — and the beer is so delicious that I quickly come out of my vaginal shell and start a tab. Kaiser leaves at this point, but Steven and I close this bar down, ask the waitress where the next bar is that’s open, then we close that bar down, repeat said process. We get pointed in direction of this underground bar, which seemed as though it may have been marginally shady, but upon hearing something vaguely country on the karaoke, I’m convinced that we need to show these Germans how rednecks do things. Luckily (depending on either mine or Steven’s viewpoint) they’ve got some Friends in Low Places on the list, and we tore that shit up. At least I think we tore it up, though Steven contends that we sounded like dying wildebeests, but I was air-fiddling while Steven was doing a one-man two-step during one of the refrains, which seems like tearing it up to me. The crowd seemed fairly ambivalent, though, which tells me merely that we were misunderstood artists who were before our time. We would have owned that shit in a redneck bar. At some point, though, this karaoke bar turns into a club, at which time a lower-case T caught fire and signaled that it was time to leave.
By the next day, both Steven and Kaiser were sick, hurling and running, so we decided it best to take a day off. We literally got out of bed to go for lunch, then watched tv and napped for the rest of the day. And night.
The day after was back to Mannheim, the city where their military post is, and we spent another day of recuperation, with only a case of beer between the two of us at this point. Saturday night, the night before my 10:00 flight, we go over to some of his friends’ to watch some infidel football, which actually turned into a late night of drinking games. I got to watch part of the Sooners game, which I’m told was a goddamn loss, before falling asleep about five that morning. Our ride to the airport came at about 6:30. And after laughing at Steven and Kaiser for all the dinosaurs they called at various points during the trip, I finally gave ‘em a holler myself on the way to the airport, spilling my American guts onto the Autobahn in the form of dry-heaves, Bud-Light and Jager. It wasn’t pretty, but it was actually a rather fitting exit, I thought.
Germany, until next time.
