Zum Brünnstein

Tonight, a couple co-workers and I went to a new place for me called Zum Brünnstein.  This place is a traditional Bavarian restaurant with quality food and a lot of local regulars sitting around playing cards.  My eyes were a little bigger than my stomach, so I ordered a bowl of goulash and a Wiener schnitzel.  I don't regret it though because both were delicious!  The place was also decked out for Easter.  They had Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, and lambs everywhere.  I also saw an Easter bush (decorated with eggs) and an Easter nativity scene, where Jesus was replaced with an Easter bunny baby.  It was great.

Paulaner am Nockherberg, Erdinger Brewery, and Nymphenberg Palace

This week marked the beginning of Starkbierzeit (Strong beer time) in Munich.  Strong beer time began back in 1651 when the Paulaner monks started brewing their starkbeir named Salvator.  They referred to the beer as "Flüssiges Brot" ("liquid bread") because it was so calorie-dense that it helped them to survive their 40 days of Lenten fasting.  This Salvator beer, which people today commonly refer to as a doppelbock, has a gravity of 18.3% and an alcohol percentage of 7.5%.  Traditionally served in 1-liter ceramic steins, 1 liter of the beer is equivalent in calories to 1/3 of a loaf of bread.

The tradition of strong beer spread around the city and the first public strong beer festival ("Starkbierfest") was held 100 years later.  The biggest and most traditional celebration takes place at Paulaner am Nockherberg, Paulaner's large beer hall in the southeastern part of the city that can hold up to 2,500 people at one time.  When we went last Friday night, it was packed wall to wall and we had a hard time finding a place for 6 people (me and the other PW people).  The atmosphere was very similar to Oktoberfest, or so I was told, but with far fewer tourists.  Loud Germany music, large soft pretzels, bratwurst, men and women dressed in tracht (dirndl and lederhosen), and, of course, lots and lots of beer.  I had a great time and am really glad that I got to go!

Paulaner am Nockherberg for Starkbierfest

In keeping with the theme of beer this weekend, on Saturday the same 6 of us got on the S-bahn (suburban train) to head out to the small town of Erding northeast of Munich.  In Erding is the world-famous Erdinger Weißbräu, where we had signed up for a tour.  The tour started off with being served a beer (The "Champ")  while being shown a video about the brewery.  We then went on a fairly quick tour of the brewery itself, which was pretty similar to other breweries I've been too.  Brewing beer is a pretty straight-forward process with not much variation, so I wasn't expecting anything different.  They did have a huge bottling line though, but, as it was the weekend, no one was working.  That would have been cool to see.  After the tour, and included in the price of the ticket, we were allowed an hour and a half to hang out at the bar.  They served each of us two pretzels and two weisswurst to go along with as many samples of their 9 beers as we wanted.  Now, in the US, when a brewery offers samples on a tour, you typically get around 3 7-oz samples.  Here, on the other hand, they served us full beers (your choice of a small 0.3L or a large 0.5L)!  I tried three "small" samples of the Dunkel, the Original Weissbier, and the Pikantus before calling it a day.  Friday and Saturday was enough beer for one week, never mind one weekend.

Erdinger Weißbier

Sunday, after dropping off my laundry at the laundromat, I went across the city to Nymphenburg Palace.  This palace, whose construction was completed in 1675, was the former summer residence of the Bavarian ruling families.  The entire grounds consist of a 490-acre park that, apparently, has beautiful gardens in the summer.  Unfortunately, today was cloudy and cold, so it wasn't as pretty as it would have been on a sunny, summer day, but it was pretty nonetheless.  I took the English audio-guided tour through the palace, and was blown away by the ornately decorated rooms and living quarters.  Although the amount of rooms you could see on the tour paled in comparison with the amount of rooms overall in the palace, the size of the place was just enormous.  In addition to the palace and the grounds, the museum included a display of the former carriages and sleighs of the royal families.  These were amazing carriages plated in gold and fancy fabrics.  Nymphenburg Palace was a pretty cool place to go.

Nymphenberg Palace

The ceiling in Nymphenberg Palace's great hall

King Ludwig II's coronation carriage

 More photos here!

Mercedes-Benz Museum

I didn't do too much last week, so I had nothing to write about.  Yesterday, however, I drove 2.5 hours to Stuttgart to visit the Mercedes-Benz Museum.  I was told by the guys at MTU that it is a very well-done museum, and they are right.  Just like the BMW Museum, the building was visually stunning on the inside.  The difference between this and the BMW Museum, however, is that Mercedes has a historical timeline throughout the museum that intertwined the history of the company with major world events.  It was pretty cool.  The cars were also pretty cool, but I think overall the cars at the BMW museum looked better, with a few exceptions.

Mercedes Simplex

Mercedes-Benz 500K

Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Gullwing

Lot's more pictures here!

Neuschwanstein Castle

Today we went outside the city again, this time to visit the famous Neuschwanstein Castle.  Neuschwanstein is a castle that was commissioned by Bavarian Kind Ludwig II in 1869 as a personal retreat.  After he died in 1886, the castle was opened to the public and has been ever since.  The castle, an example of Romanesque Revival architecture, has been the inspiration for many other castles and buildings around the world, most notably the Disney Castle.  The castle is located in the town of Hohenschwangau on the edge of the alps.  When you get into town, you have to buy tickets at the base of the mountain and then walk up to the castle.  It's about a 30 minute walk uphill the whole way, but it wasn't too bad for us.  The view from the castle was incredible, both looking up at the mountain and down into Bavaria.  We tried to get to the bridge where everyone gets the picturesque photos that you see of the castle on Wikipedia, but it's closed till May for maintenance.  Also, the weather was cloudy and slightly rainy, but the views were still spectacular.  The tour was pretty short as well, but the inside of the castle was very ornate and beautiful.  As we were walking back to the car, the clouds finally parted and the sun came out, leading to a great picture of the castle sitting atop its perch.  Definitely worth the visit.

View down into Bavaria.

View from behind the castle, almost from the bridge.

View from the town once the sun came out.

On the way back to Munich, we stopped off at Kloster Andechs, a monastery brewery well-known for its strong Dopplebock Dunkel.  Everyone at work told us we should go there, but that we should be careful because the beer was really strong.  However, the beer is only 7% ABV, which is lower than the stouts I usually drink back at home, so it really didn't have any effect.  For German beer though, it is stronger than most, since they are typically between 4 and 6%, so I guess I can't blame them for the warning.  The beer was good and the pretzels were the best I've had so far.

I love beer and pretzels.

More pictures here!

Busy Week

This week was very full of activity, but I was too lazy to write about any of it.  But now I'm back, and I've written.  Tuesday was the last night of Fasching/Fastnacht/Karneval in Germany, which is the Christian celebration leading up to Lent.  Germans treat the last night of Karneval as a huge celebration, with people dressing up in costumes and going to big public celebrations.  Apparently kids even go door-to-door getting candy, so the whole night is very similar to how we treat Halloween.  Zach and I planned our dinner near Marienplatz so that we could walk through to see the celebrations.  It was wild.  Marienplatz was packed with people shoulder-to-shoulder and people were just standing around drinking beer in costumes (seemed as though live music had just ended).  The one very odd thing, though, was the prevalence of full-body animal onesie costumes.  It was almost like a Furry convention.  We ended up going to a new (for us) restaurant called Weisses Bräuhaus, which is right next to Marienplatz.  It was extremely busy, as expected, and full of more people in costumes, as expected.  The food was not very good at all, and neither was the beer.  So that was pretty disappointing, but the costumes, music, and people singing were enjoyable.

The next day was Ash Wednesday (Aschermittwoch).  Zach and I had a late review to get approval to test our engine (we passed), but I was still able to make it out in time to get to church at Theatirenkircke at 19:30.  The church was very big inside, with lots of ornate decorations and architecture, but there were probably less than 50 people at the mass.  Everything was in German, of course, so I didn't understand much of what they were saying, but I was able to pick up a few words like "Jesus Christus," "Mein Gott," and "Gesundheit."  I did know what was going on, since it was the same format as any other Catholic mass, but it was difficult to even think the prayers in English when everyone else around me was speaking German.  I did totally nail the Our Father though!  One thing that was distinctly different, and maybe it was just this particular church, was how the congregation went up to receive ashes and communion.  Instead of filing out of the pews row-by-row, everyone went up as one large group to the altar.  Along the entire front of the altar is a long kneeler where everyone kneels, the priest goes from one side to the other giving ashes/communion, and then more people fill in on the kneeler until everyone has had their turn.  Overall, pretty cool experience, even though the homily and readings were meaningless.

Interior of Theatinerkirche
(Not my photo.)

Thursday was a wild day.  Work was pretty busy because we got a lot of hardware delivered, so there was a lot more work than there has been.  On our way back to the hotel after work, we turned onto the hotel's street and immediately saw that the street was full of police and news vans.  A police officer stopped us, but let us through when we informed him we were staying at the hotel.  He told us the only place we could park was at the hotel's parking garage, so we headed that way.  As we turned into the garage's entrance, another police officer stopped us, asked for our IDs and then made us get out of the car to search it.  We had absolutely no idea what was going on and were a little uneasy because it was unclear whether something bad had happened.  Once the officers cleared us to enter the garage, I decided to ask them why they had stopped us, and they told us that there was some big international Security Conference going on in Munich, and lots of politicians were staying at the hotel.  Once inside the hotel, we were amazed at how full it was with TV cameras and people in suits.  It was crazy.  I'm so glad the hotel warned us that this would be going on.

We successfully made it out of the hotel once again for dinner, and headed south, past Sendlinger Tor to a Greek restaurant called Thalassa.  The reviews online were great, and we totally agreed!  We both got plates that had an assortment of Greek foods that were all very delicious.  Mine had souvlaki, souzouki (meatball), gyro meat, a lamb chop, rice, tzatziki, and a salad.  It was a lot of meat, but it was all so amazing!  I was stuffed, but once I got back to the hotel I felt like I wanted more.

My Greek dinner at Thalassa.

Today at work, we were sitting in our office when one of the MTU Test Engineers came in, a little excited, and said, "Your pet arrived from Florida!  It's a baby alligator!"  We were both a little confused, until we realized she was talking about a lizard that had made its way into one of the shipments we had just received from Florida.  It was alive, but moving and breathing very slowly.  Everyone in the department was very excited and kept referring to it as a baby alligator.  It was really funny, especially when we saw Melanie (the one who told us about it) carrying it around in a box showing it off.  I told them they should kill it so it doesn't invade their local populations, but I think they all thought I was joking.  Oh well.  I tried, local lizards.  I tried.

Our pet baby alligator from Florida.

Tonight, we made it back to the hotel without police checkpoints (unexpected) and then headed into the city to get some souvenirs and dinner.  Since Zach is leaving Monday, we wanted to get one last dinner a Der Pschorr.  By the way, it's not actually pronounced Derpy Score, it's Der Peeshore.  We had a very huge meal, starting with a cheese plate, middleing with the beef medallions, and ending with the apple pie/fritters dessert I've raved about before.  Such an awesome meal and a great way to end the work week.

Derpy Score Again?

Yes.  It's the greatest place, so we went again.  This time I got the Bayern Ox Spare Rib.  When I say "rib" I mean "rib" not "ribs."  That might not seem like much to you, but, believe me, this rib was enormous.  The oxen must be humongous around here!  It came with a side of rosemary potatoes, grilled onion, tomatoes, bacon, horseradish, and a delicious BBQ sauce.  The meat fell apart at the touch of the fork and was extremely tender, as a good rib should be.  Definitely one of the better meals I've had thus far in Munich.

My spare rib at Der Pschorr.
(The lighting was bad at this table.)

Dachau, Flugwerft Schleißheim, and BMW Museum

We had another busy weekend the past couple of days.  We started with dinner at Alter Hof on Friday night.  I ordered a rainbow trout, with cucumber salad, lemon butter, and potato rösti.  As it turns out, I got an entire fish!  That was interesting to eat, but it all tasted very good!

My Rainbow Trout from Alter Hof

On Saturday, Zach and I went to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site (KZ-Gedenkstätte).  It was an extremely somber experience to see the conditions in which so many people were held before and during WWII.  Overall, the entire memorial was very well-done, with a good audio guide as you walked around and a very thorough museum in one of the original buildings on the site.

Dachau Entrance Gate

"Work Sets You Free"

Dachau Concentration Camp
Camp Road

Afterwards, we headed into the shopping areas around the center of the city to walk around and window shop for souvenirs.  Nothing really caught our eye, but we did eventually go through the Viktualienmarkt, which is a huge outdoor market with lots and lots of food and fresh produce.  Unfortunately, we were on our way to dinner at that point, so we didn't eat anything.  We plan to get lunch there next weekend though!  Then we headed down to Paulaner Bräuhaus for dinner, where I got the "For Fellows" steak.  It was a 250g Bavarian steak seared on the outside and cooked to medium-rare perfection on the inside.  It had a red wine onion sauce with mashed parsnip carrots and potato fritters on the side.  What an excellent meal!  Kind of want that again right now...

Anyway, today we went north to the Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleißheim, which is an extension of the main Deutsches Museum with a focus on aircraft.  It wasn't super large, but it did have a pretty wide variety of airplanes to see.  My pictures didn't turn out too great, but I did get a couple good ones that I put in the Flickr album.  Since the Flugwerft museum didn't take a very long time, we then went to the BMW Museum nearby.  It was pretty cool to see a lot of nice-looking cars all in one place.  Too bad they're so expensive to own and come with a negative stigma in the U.S.  Oh well!

Flugwerft Schleißheim

BMW Museum
BMW 507

More pictures here!