Munchin' in München

There is no getting around it: I will be eating meat on this trip. I know, I know...my frizzy hair and joie de vivre smack of a card-carrying member of PETA, but I have been known to gnaw a beefstick in my day. Sure, I prefer leafy greens to an inch-thick sirloin, but I also know how to skin a deer. Germany is the perfect place to embrace my inner meatyness.

And so I do, starting with dinner our first night in München (which goes by Munich on English maps). We got a recommendation for a great local bierstube frequented by lots of locals--a much better option, we were told, than the famous beer garden mobbed by tourists. So we hiked through the wide pedestrian lanes heading through the old city center and found the joint. Dark wood, stained-glass windows, communcal dining (folks joined whatever table had room), lots of antlers on the walls, a high buzz of conversation in the air. A sturdy waitress in wire-rimmed spectacles brought us menus. They were in German.

And there it was--the menu in all its meaty splendor.

"I won't be translating the entire menu," warned Ingrid. Fair enough. I could make out a few items. "Salat" was salad; "vegetarischen" was vegetarian; "fleisch" was meat.

But what kind of meat? There were columns of options that contained meat, and, though I was hungry enough to just point and see what appeared on my plate, I wasn't sure I could just jump into, say, a bloodwurst sausage. I looked at the dishes being disected around me. There was some serious meat: shanks and roasts and sausages thicker than my arm. In dark sauces floated more chunks of meat. Shredded meat topped piles of meat. I think there was even meat in the desserts. I was evidently over my head.

The waitress came back and took our orders for beer. (As there was no beer list, we just pointed at our neighbors' glasses and said, "Ein, bitte.") When she realized we were faltering with our meal orders, she whipped out two menus in English. Cue sigh of relief from American girls. And there it was--the menu in all its meaty splendor. I noticed that I had been ready to order a Munich specialty that, when translated, was something along the lines of pan-fried pork pancreas. Yum. I opted for some spicy frankfurters with sauerkraut. Pace yourself, I say.

They went really well with the mustard-flavored beer. Sounds gross, but it was sublime. We had a few of those, and ended up making some new German pals--two guys who evidently went to this bierstube every Saturday night. We discussed politics (I will never get over how interested Europeans are in the American politican scene), travel, and the like. We closed the place down. A nice way to start out the trip.

Sadly, those were the last folks our age we saw while in Munich. We toured the city, visited the exquisite Nymphenberg Palace, and did the Deutsche Museum of industry (a kid's paradise of machines and cogs and aircraft sections and waterwheels and pumps and turbine engines and diodes and model ships), but saw pretty much no other young adults. Perhaps we weren't looking in the right places--the room with scale models of various bridge constructions isn't exactly where to find people over the age of 10. And though the expansive palace grounds and woods had wonderful paths for strollers, we kept passing elderly gents with canes and walking poles. Salzburg, where we planned to head for a couple of days, we hoped would have a livelier population. Or at least one not on heart medication.