Brothers in beer, kind of like brothers in law but more fun

I was really sick the earlier this week so I hadn't been enjoying Munich as much as I'd like to. In fact on Thursday I went straight back to my room and slept for 12 hours. Friday night though I decided not to let being sick stop me and I went out with the guys from my class for beers. It turns out beer is the miracle cure and I felt better the next day. Who would have thought that the morning after getting a little drunk would be the first morning in a week that I didn't wake up with a headache. So, I went out drinking beer with them again Saturday night and Sunday night and I feel a lot better now

It's an odd experience being the only girl in a group of guys. These guys are great. Gentlemen, every one of them. Always letting (in fact making) me go first (when ordering or getting on elevators, or anything really), and always opening doors for me. I go out drinking beers though and they're still complete gentleman but there's a pervasive guy tone to the whole evening. Picture if you will a 20 year old Scottish rugby player, two Swedish salesman, a Texan product manager, an Italian Swiss professor and me. Actually, don't bother, here's a picture of it. In fact several as I promised a photo montage with a narration something like this: Here we are at the English garden drinking beer, here we are at Augustiner drinking beer, here we are at the Schrannenhalle drinking beer, here we are on Marienplatz drinking beer, here we are in a restaurant who's name I can't remember drinking beer, here we are at Schloss Neuswanstein drinking beer, here we are the Schrannenhalle again drinking beer, here we are at the restaurant in my buidling drinking beer....


On the bus up to Schloss Neuschwanstein we passed a monestary and the guide was telling us what is there now (because it's not really a monestary anymore). He said, there's a meuseum, and a distillery, several restaurants and, as this is Bavaria, naturally, a brewery. That's exactly what he said, except he said it German. I know I joked about beer drinking being the only tourist activity left for me, with both opera and soccer tickets sold out, but there is a bit of truth in it. This is the beer capital of the world, origin of Oktober Fest, with 13 beer halls, where beer is often cheaper in restaurants than water. At the table next to us that afternoon on Marienplatz there was a group of elderly ladies drinking beer. Everyone, everywhere, at every time of day drinks beer.

Having said that though, we have done a bit more than drink beer the last few days. I've gotten to know some really great people this week. The group I mentioned above are actually only a few of them. There's the guys from my class as well (of which one of the Swedes, the Texan and the Italian professor are included). Mostly we've talked. We've tried to talk in German and when it failed us we've talked in English and those of us who only speak English have tried to learn phrases from the others in Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish and Japanese. The Swede from my class has become like a big brother to me. He's constantly taking the piss (you can thank the Scottish lad for the turn my vocabulary has taken and consider yourselves lucky I haven't been peppering this narative with the word fuck two or three times a sentence).

My new Swedish brother has tried to fix me up with every guy we meet and at least half our schoolmates. He, the professor and I had an interesting conversation about falling in love and being in love. They often look to me for the female point of view but I'm a bit of an oddity in some ways (than the average female point of view). According to the professor I'm very open which is true and I'm impressed that the French and Italian speaking Swissman was able to describe (in German no less - geoffnet madchen) after only a few days of knowing me, what I've only recently become able to describe about myself in my native tongue.

We also saw the castles (Neuswanstein and Linderhoff), hiked up a mountian (to get to Schloss Neuswanstein) and saw some of the Munich sights (including the river, twice). Outside the English Garden we saw a swan land in the middle of the road and proceed to cross the street (against the signal). I think a good time was had by all and will continue this week and hopefully beyond this week when we see each other in Sweden or Mexico or Switzerland or Japan or Scottland or Seattle or back here in Munich.

I'll leave you with another photo montage with a little less beer drinking.


Here we are in the English Garden looking for a place to drink beer, and here's the boys at the Chinese Tent in the English Garden, and the swan crossing, and me with my new Swedish brother, and me after a nice hike, and again with my new Swedish brother (you can totally tell in this photo that he was just teasing me, but then that's a constant so it can generally be assumed even when it isn't obvious from the photograpich evidence), and me on the bridge by Neuswanstein, and the Schloss.