At the start of the shift, around 6PM or so, someone walks in who is clearly a metalhead. The place is rather dead, so I’m pleased, as I suspect he might sit down for a beer, and we’ll get to have a chat. (Yes, sometimes it’s the bartender who’s dying for company.) To my chagrin, he wants only change for the meter. I acquiesce.

Later that same day, around 11PM or so, he walks back in the door. I walk over to the register, thinking he needs more change, but this time he heads for the fridge and pulls out three bottles of Heineken. Says that’ll be all. I ring him up, and while stuffing the bills in the drawer, ask him, “Where are you coming from?”

This question made a lot of sense, because there’s a venue just up the block from the bar, and when shows are over, the bar I work for typically gets overflow. I wanted to know which band this guy had chosen to see.

He misunderstood the nature of the question, however—damn present progressive tense!—and answered me in an adorable Swedish accent, “From Sweden, actually.”

“Oh, really? That’s awesome, man. What kind of music are you into?”
“Well, you know… metal, mostly.”
“Awesome. What kind of metal, though? I mean, if it’s from Sweden, it’s probably melodic death metal or something, right?”
“Yes! Yes, it is! Melodic death metal, yes. Actually, I play in a band.”
“Cool, man! What do you guys sound like?”
“Um… have you ever heard of Arch Enemy?”
“Ha, yeah, man! That’s awesome. Do you guys have a website?”
“Er… yes.”
“Great! Write it down for me, I’d love to hear your guys’ stuff.”

It was at this point that he writes carefully, deliberately, in all lowercase letters, arch enemy, and then excuses himself to piss.

I’m standing there, staring at this slip of paper, reading “arch enemy” over and over again upside-down, trying to piece this together. Maybe he thought I wanted to know the name of the more famous band? No. Maybe they’re a cover band! But with the same name, instead of some lame pun? Unlikely.

Then his girlfriend walks in and stands near the register, waiting for him to come back. As comprehension percolates through my mind, I grip the edge of the bar.

“Who was that?”
“That? That was just Chris.”
“WHAT IS HIS LAST NAME?”
“Amott. Chris Amott.”

This is the moment in the movie when the woman, wearing a corset, swoons. Fortunately, I had left my corset at home that day, and so was able to soldier on through consciousness despite my absolute certainty that the universe was playing tricks on me. I swear there was a second when I entertained the Lovecraftian suspicion that I had fallen asleep at the bar, was already fired, and merely dreaming of meeting Chris Amott.

When he came out of the bathroom, I nearly attacked him, shook his hand, told him I’d been listening to his riffs since I was a kid. All in all, I played it about as far from cool as a guy can get. I even mentioned that our bar was having an open mic night on Wednesday—he laughed, flattered, and his girlfriend poked him, meaningfully—but he didn’t come.

He did, however tip me a dollar.

\m/

This weekend, to be sure, will be spent in Freiburg, just for the hell of it. Baden-Württemberg is one of the few states in Germany I haven’t been to, and Freiburg is supposed to be the only city in Germany prettier than Munich. (Judging by the date in the Wikipedia article, it’s also officially been a city for 38 years longer than Munich. Thanks, tour guide job.)

After that, I’ll probably wind up back in Munich for a day and maybe do a tour. If I’m here, with nothing else to do, why not? It’s good money, and free beer and bratwurst, which means I’m partly saved the trouble of converting the money into beer and bratwurst.

I’ve quit at all my jobs, though I have one shift left at O2 tomorrow. “Quitting” in Bavaria apparently means that other people make you drink. After my last shift at Joey’s, the guys dragged me to a bar where we ordered three buckets of zombie and some beers. Then that bar closed, so we went to another. Rinse and repeat. Made it home slightly after sunrise and overslept so badly I almost missed the tour that day. Then I had to drink more on the tour.

In terms of plans for the weeks to come, I don’t really know. I guess I’ll buy some beer and mosey around for the two weeks until my flight.

I hear Finland is nice.

First I had to read my feeds. Since I was gone all weekend, this was quite a lot of reading, all utterly inconsequential to my existence. I speak of lolcats and BBC News alike.

Then some friends who have guests from abroad wanted to go to Hofbräuhaus, which I absolutely was not in the mood for. After declining, I reconsidered, reasoning that I only have another week or two left in this country, and I should be spending every conceivable moment of consciousness with my bros. Picture sorting can wait, no?

But instead of beerhall ribaldry, a cake was baked, so the evening was spent unwinding in the kitchen. My metal friend Sascha dropped by, after hearing my persistent cackling from the balcony beneath his room, and we started talking. Opened a few beers. Kept talking. We drank all the beer we could find, so moseyed upstairs quick to scout for more.

We brought a guitar back, and had another beer together. It grew late, and the kitchen gradually disgorged its occupants, leaving Sascha and me out on the balcony, thumbing chords and mumbling about oblique motion.

We played songs to each other long into the night. The guy knows Omerta like the back of his hand, although he doesn’t like the range of the vocalist—which is actually quite comfortable for me. He can play Road Trippin’ immaculately. (His technique on acoustic guitar is far beyond what I can hope to achieve in even the next six months.) We of course played many renditions of Fiddler On The Green, which neither of us can sing, even after tuning down the halfstep that the song demands.

Windows all across the courtyard slammed shut as we sang into the night, and clanked bottles together, and laughed. After several hours, the guitar was set down, and we began to talk faster, yet more slowly. “What are you five favorite things?” I asked. Then he asked me. We argued about whether civilization is fighting against, serving, or merely operating within the grand structure of, biological evolution. We disagreed about the voicing of the G chord in the bridge to Omerta, and whether there’s a resolution for the minor second during that calculatedly laidback solo. Tits or ass? C++ or Java? Clapton or Iommi?

All the same shit as any night, but tonight with someone I deeply, truly respect. I’m not yet tired, but I really should get to bed.

The wisest person I’ve ever personally known, an ex-girlfriend named Julia, used to tell me that I am a “people pleaser.” I concern myself far too much with the happiness of others about whom I care little, and this can interfere with the happiness of those whom I love, perhaps myself included.

The slamming of those windows tonight was the heaviest riff I’ve ever heard. The windows that opened and stayed open were like the smile that creeps across one’s face while listening to the opening chords of Road Trippin’.

Baudolino answered: “Concern with pleasing humans causes the loss of all spiritual growth.”

Is it then too much to wish that the entire world sleeps tonight as smoothly and thickly as I already do?

I ended up staying at the bar with the tour group until 7pm. I met up with my boss, gave him the money from the tour, received my cut, then kept drinking. People on the tour bought me many drinks, and even kept tipping me at the bar—long after the tour, and long after they had already tipped me.

After leaving the bar, on the walk home I passed an electronics store, one that I know has a pretty decent selection of metal CDs. Because of the extra pay, I figured today was the day, and I bought the new Arsis CD.

/

I was quite drunk upon arriving home, and there, many friends gifted me beer. This means my buzz is still going, even as I write this. I’m afraid I won’t be able to give this CD a fair listen while so intoxicated, and tomorrow I work a double shift. That means it’ll probably be Friday night before I give this album the focused listen it deserves, and probably several days (or 10 minutes) after that before I craft a post about it.

The bros in the building are grilling outside tonight, and I’m going to join them. Beer is plentiful, and bratwurst also.

It is a good day to be alive.

Because it was a holiday, every store was closed, excepting in most cases restaurants. As a tour guide, though, I was still scheduled for work, and today I had an absolutely killer group.

Pretty much every day, there’s a healthy mix between Americans, Brits, and Aussies (even now and then you get a Kiwi). My desirable molarity of Australians is generally around 10%. Any less, they don’t serve their vital role of getting the group pumped and ready to drink. Any more, however, and the group becomes impossible to control. They’re almost as bad as Scots.

Today I had about 35% Aussies.

Rough stuff, right? You cannot imagine. As has been the case for the past week or two, there was not a cloud in the sky. Absolutely gorgeous weather, OK? The weather definitely has a very large effect on the enthusiasm of a group, and today was no exception. While riding through the Englischer Garten, some of the Aussies leapt off their bikes and into the Eisbach. This was after they stripped off their clothes and biked across the Nudists’ Meadow. Hooboy.

I was able to chase them all down and wrangle them together for the rest of the trip through the Garten. The problem is, the next stop was the beer garden at the Chinese Tower, which means everybody had a Maß or two, and then we had to get back on the bikes.

Hooboy.

Riding along Prinzregentenstraße was brutal, and worse yet was the home stretch on Tal. Tons of traffic, and tons of serving, hollering Aussies.

We were indeed able to make it back to the meeting point for the afternoon tour, despite several flat tires, which definitely hurt our punctuality. I think it might have helped the tips, though, because fixing a flat made me look competent, if a bit slow.

I then drank like crazy, for free, at the bar afterwards, and chatted up the lot of them. I got contact information for a dude in Dublin, and now have a place to stay there, should I ever have the financial worth to convert to sterling and take a trip out there. We’ll play that one by ear, I suppose.

I hope you had this much fun today.

While at the river surfers, I pulled out my phone, which is my sole timekeeping apparatus since my watch got ripped off my arm at a concert. Because I was perhaps a little tipsy, as I flipped open the phone, it leapt out of my hand and went kerploosh in a pool of water on the bank of the river.

This is only funny because right before coming to Germany, I’d let my American cell phone go kerploosh in the Wissahickon, when I myself went kerploosh in the river—sober.

Having learned from my mistake last time, yesterday I promptly snatched the phone up, bobbled it, but did not let it fall into the river proper, and ripped the battery off the back.

I left the battery out for several hours until I was all parts were adequately dry, and then gave it a shot.

It works.

Hoof!

We have a little saying around these parts. It started among the Americans, actually, but it’s since spread to the Germans. The saying is, as you can guess, “six Maßes later.”

If you don’t know what a Maß is, here’s a little help.

The Maß (“measure”) is an old Austro-Bavarian unit of volume, now typically used for measuring beer. Originally it measured 1.069 litres, equivalent to 2.259 US pints, or 1.881 UK pints. Nowadays, a Maß is defined as exactly 1 litre.

OK, so now we’re clear on that much, I hope.

This little ditty of a saying cropped up around the time of Oktoberfest, and has remained in the vernacular due to our would-be-alcoholic-in-any-part-of-the-world-except-Bavaria lifestyle. “Six Maßes later” pretty much means “fucked up beyond all belief,” that the world is in a completely different state, and the laws of the universe now longer necessarily hold true.

If you’ve somehow made a grave mistake, you can invoke this face-saving adage and all is well. I’ve relied upon it several times myself.

Theory in practice

As can be expected, there are some epic tales associated with this expression.

Tale the First: Craig astray

There was a night a while back, let’s say a Friday, when we decided to go drinking. Because a Maß at any beer hall will usually run you about €7, the standard protocol has become to buy a case at a beer store and pregame with that. (A case will be €15-20, for 10L. Hella cheaper.)

We had pregamed. Then, since there were a bunch of visitors in town that weekend, we decided it was an appropriate night for Hofbräuhaus. More Maßes were consumed, and although I didn’t make it to six myself, good ol’ Craig did.

Craig is a rugby player. Big guy. We didn’t realize how drunk he was until he tried to tell us a story on the tram on the way to Hofbräuhaus. Then, once there, he dumped in two more, and that made for six.

As we were all sitting around the table, laughing stupidly, clomping our glasses around and punching one another if any spilled, someone noticed that Craig was missing. We checked the bathrooms and everything, but he was nowhere to be found. We concluded that he’d had enough and had decided to go home, which was reasonable. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon on the following day that we heard the true story.

Poor, muscular, wasted Craig did indeed decide it was time to go home. He was able, even six Maßes later, to compute that in order to get home, he had to take public transportation. Unfortunately he selected the subway instead of the tram, which didn’t make a lot of sense for where we were in the city. He even got on the wrong subway line, one that didn’t lead in the direction of home at all.

As he explained to us, his reasoning went like this: He noticed that the stops on the subway weren’t ones he wanted. So he decided to stick it out until the train went somewhere he needed to be. This wasn’t such a good idea. He ends up at the end of the line, somewhere in south Munich, and has to get off. He starts walking around that area of town, looking for something he recognizes. Craig wasn’t wearing a coat, and as this happened in February, he gradually (once again, Craig is a big guy) grew cold. He decided to start jogging in order to keep warm.

While jogging, he of course covered ground more quickly. This only led to exasperation, as he realized that he had no idea where the hell he was, and couldn’t find a way back home. So he began to run. (See what I mean? This decision doesn’t make too much sense without the six Maßes.) He was drunk, so ended up slipping on wet cobblestone, fell hard, and cut up his hand.

He was still freezing at this point, and now a little sore, so he went up to an apartment building and pressed every single button until someone buzzed him in. He lumbered into the lobby and slept underneath the stairs there.

When he woke up, he was sober enough to find his way back home and relate his adventures to us.

Tale the Second: Conor goes whoomp

OK, so this one time I got utterly plastered and kinda sorta fell asleep in a weird section of a bar and woke up way past closing time and the bar was locked so I couldn’t leave so I just kinda went back to sleep and then when the owner came in at 6am to open up I scared the hell out of him and asked if I could go and he said yeah so I left.

I didn’t think anyone would believe this story so I took a picture of myself shortly after coming to.

Let us never speak of this again.

There is no escape

The motivation to write this post was last night’s shift at the pizza place. The shop owner is a great guy, OK? Just awesome. I really enjoy working for him, because he’s a total bro.

Last night my shift started at 6pm. When I got there, he seemed happy. He seemed like three Maßes worth of happy, and that’s exactly what he was. He called me over to the part of the kitchen where he prepares the pizzas, and he lifts up a tin foil container that had been resting on something. He wanted to show me the six empty beer bottles he’d been concealing.

Everyone in the kitchen knew Ben was buzzed, so we started egging him on. I told my story about the phrase “six Maßes later,” and after much disbelief (“You fucking American, you probably didn’t even taste beer until you were 14, and you’re telling us you can drink six Maßes?”), it was unanimously agreed that Ben had to go for 12 beers. (Bottles are 0.5L.)

Well, let it be known that before closing time, Ben made it to six. And he was gone. The deadline for employee orders is 10:30pm, a half hour before the shop is closed down, so I made sure to ask him to make me a pizza around that time. I had to repeat my order several times, even though it was the same pizza I order every freaking night (Odin Pizza). He said he would try.

I got stuck doing the last run, and when I was back at 11:15pm, the guys in the kitchen were dying with laughter, and asked me to try my pizza. That gustatory-archaeological expedition yielded the following pizza makeup, from bottom layer to top: dough, tomato sauce, cheese, potatoes au gratin, peanut butter, bacon, red onions, broccoli, and peppers.

And you know what? It was fucking great.

Only in Bavaria can one hope to see their boss six liters deep, tripping over invisible things, yet still pressing onward with work. God I love this place.

]]> http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/10/six-mases-later/feed/ 6 http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/02/hard-work-is-no-problem-if-your-boss-is-an-ok-dude/ http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/02/hard-work-is-no-problem-if-your-boss-is-an-ok-dude/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 23:56:02 +0000 Conor http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/?p=542 Holiday my ass

I didn’t get home until after midnight tonight. Today (yesterday) was maypole day, which is a federal holiday, so not a damn thing was open. But Joey’s was. That means we had a lot of orders. Dude. We had a lot of orders.

On any given evening, we’ll usually have two drivers on mopeds and two with cars. This is the most effective way to deal with orders at varying distances from the shop: if it’s five or more kilometers away, a car driver usually takes it, unless it’s especially busy. Using this system, we can usually keep the que of orders below five. This means that whenever I’m heading out on a delivery, I punch in on the computer that the address has been taken by me, and I see at most five deliveries qued up for when I get back. (Generally there’s maybe one left by the time I’m back, because the other drivers snap them up.)

Tonight, we had at least seven drivers for the entire evening. There were times when eight and nine people were driving. Even with that many drivers, I never saw the que dip below 20 orders. It was absolutely insane.

The guys in the kitchen kept remarkably cool, despite how hectic the day felt, but I find that very typically German. Racing in and out of the kitchen to scoop up a new order or two to deliver, I had to yell to the chefs just a meter or two away from me, because there were so many pans and things banging around.

More deliveries != more tips

I guess I let the business get to me, because I certainly seemed flustered on at least one delivery I did. It was quite away for a moped delivery, but it was ready and I was the first one back to the shop that time, so I took it. The place was nested in a maze of one-way streets, making getting to it an absolute bitch. It was also around 7pm, near the university district, meaning the sidewalks were packed and I couldn’t hop up onto them and cruise around ignoring traffic laws.

When I finally did find the building, which I’d passed back and forth several times while walking on the sidewalk, because the street address plaque was completely obscured by construction scaffolding, I rang the dude on the top floor and then took a quick nap in the elevator on the way up.

The guy answers the door, speaks very competent German, but with an American accent I can hear clear as day. I ask him, in English, “So, where are you from?” And he smiles and says, “New York.” When I tell him I’m from Philly, he’s practically ecstatic in disbelief, and we chat for awhile about what he’s doing in Germany. Not wanting to overstay my welcome, and not wanting to let that que of orders back at the shop get any longer, I bid him adieu and head out.

Back at the shop, I scoop up a new order, but get stopped by the boss.

“Were you just at [such-and-such an address]“?
“Yup, that was me.”
“The guy just called and says you didn’t give him any change back.”
“I didn’t?”
“He says he gave you a 50.”
“He did? I don’t really remember that.”
“He also says you forgot the cigarettes.”

At this point I tap my coat pocket and, feeling that they’re gone, declare that I definitely gave them to the guy, because I’d totally put them in that pocket before leaving. So if I don’t have them anymore… that means I gave them to him. Right? Right??

So now I have to drive back there, obviously, and give this guy €25. What a jerk, right? This only sucks because if he really doesn’t have the cigarettes, that means I’m out €4, which is like 10 deliveries’ worth of tips. Damn!

On the drive back, see the pack of cigarettes lying in the road, hopelessly flattened by the wheels of many passing BMWs. I circled around and scooped up the pack in a lull in the traffic. (I parked the moped at the curb and walked over to get them, so don’t picture me rocketing down Türkenstrasse and snatching them up off the ground while moving, all Legolas style or something.

So I did lose €4 on that delivery, but the dude was kind enough to tip me €2 for coming the whole way back. Still, €2 seems a little stingy for an American.

Greatest boss in the world

The night was long and arduous. By the time we closed at 11pm, we hadn’t even begun the after-hours work, which basically consists of scrubbing down every surface in the place. But fortunately with so many drivers on, we were able to split up the load and knock everything out in a very short amount of time. Then the fun began.

There is a 10:30pm deadline for employee orders. Usually each driver will take a pizza home with them after the shift, as we get 75% off. Tonight, as I was running between deliveries, I noticed the clock at 10:32pm and shouted an order before running out the door. The guys in the kitchen heard me fine, and yelled back, approximately, “No. No fucking way.” I was starving by this point and argued right away. I said, again approximately, “Dude, I don’t care if you’re busy. Just make me a damn pizza, because I am not going home without having eaten.”

One of the kitchen guys calls me over, tells me to set down the pizzas I’m carrying and take off my helmet (it was so busy, I didn’t even take my helmet off coming in and out of the place). He then leads me over to the back wall, and points to a sheet of paper taped up there. At the top of the sheet, it says “McD List.” He tells me that they in the kitchen are so freaking sick of pizza today, that there won’t be any employee orders. So I should write down what I want from McDonalds, and they’ll send someone over to pick it up for me.

I really wanted an Odin Pizza, but I understood the situation and wrote something down. I did my last run, came back and helped clean up, and by the time it was all over, the food had arrived.

The lot of us sat out in the restaurant area and pigged out. I’d just gotten my tips settled, so I pulled out my cash and asked how we were going to settle everything. I’d come a bit late to the table, so I wasn’t sure what was up, whether we had separate receipts for each order, or what. The guys at the table just yelled over to Ben, the boss, “Thanks, boss!”

I look over at Ben. He looks at me steadily, hoping I’ll understand. I kind of do, but the American and Catholic parts of me are screaming to pay someone. He waves me off, and says, “Fuck that. Just eat up.” I laugh and sit down with everyone else, take a huge bite out of my Big Mac, and shout “Thanks, boss!” Everyone laughs and echos the sentiment, yet again.

Ben laughs, too, still at the computer settling the records for the day, then says, “Go grab a beer, you bastard. On the house. Everything’s on the house tonight.”

So I did.

It is amazing how much a free burger and a beer does for employee gratitude. I want to work for these people now.

The other day, Alex came in during the daytime shift to check his hours for the week, and Ben asked whether he could fill in for someone in the evening. Alex had been looking forward to having the night off, but money is money, and favors are favors, so he said that he would. That night, at about 9pm, when things were starting to calm down, Ben sent him home, made him a pizza himself, and didn’t charge him for it.

It’s all about the little things in life. (Although I hestitate to dub anything as epic as an Odin Pizza “little.”)

I know I’ve mentioned this doppelganger thing before, but i thought this bore repeating. It really is kind of odd.

A friend, Matt, has a little brother visiting at the moment, and the little bro arrived in Munich while Matt was still traveling over break. I—among others—made sure to treat the little bro right, and got him right drunk. The next morning, he was describing to Matt the hospitality of a certain lanky fellow with long hair and glasses, and who’s funny as hell. Matt said, “But wait, I thought Alex was working last night.”

Upon hearing this story, I considered terminating my friendship with Matt, but then realized that one of the listed qualities was not “ravishingly handsome,” so it’s understandable that he thought of Alex first.

Yes, I realize that as doppelgangers, people perceive us as pretty much identical. But give me a break here, we’re freaking gorgeous, and I’m funny as hell.

The date of the feast is occasionally moved by church authorities when March 17 falls during Holy Week; this happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick’s Day was observed on 3 April in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and is happening again in 2008, being observed on 15 March. March 17 will not fall during Holy Week again until 2160.

What the hell do I know? Munich is a weird place, and apparently the German-Irish here don’t give much of a damn about Palm Sunday, because St. Patty’s Day here happened on Sunday, March 16. So it goes.

I myself was working most of the evening, and didn’t end up getting home till around 11:30pm. I checked my phone and had some missed calls from friends out drinking, but since I’m a little strapped for cash at the moment, I figured screw it. But then I read a text from a Scotsman I’d met on Saturday, and borrow a friend’s phone to call him and check up on him.

I learn that Monk, as his friends call him, is of course completely wasted and got separated from all his bros at the Hofbräuhaus. He didn’t know where anyone was, but had made it back to his hostel, which has a bar on the ground floor. He was, in typical Celtic fashion, drowning his sorrow with strong beer. Seeing as this was his last night in Munich, I couldn’t leave him hanging like that. Cue Team America.

I rally Jesse and Alex to come out with me for just a single beer, just to bid farewell to Monk. I really hit it off with Monk on Saturday, when I met him while I was working, and I know figured he’d really get a kick out of our coming out to treat him to a round.

Things did not go as planned, however. It turns out Monk was so grateful that we came, he bought us all a round. And then another. All the way to five. Apparently the pound sterling is doing damn fine against the already rather spunky euro, and to Monk it was like buying candy—in more ways than one, I suppose. By about the fourth round or so, a few of his band of Scots come stumbling back to the hostel, and drinks are once again liberally distributed.

So Jesse, Alex, and I ended up limping back through the doorway to our own place at 6am. I had to be up at 9am to head to work today. To Scots!

For the record, that’s Jesse on the left.

Now, that’s all well and good, but the thing that really amazed me about this St. Patty’s Day was the augur I saw in the sky, after hearing that I had off work due to heavy rainfall. Behold.

Is that not the most gorgeous freaking rainbow you’ve ever seen? That sucker appeared and remained vibrant for about 20 minutes, I’m sure long enough for someone to snag the pot of gold or keg or Guinness or whatever the hell lives at the end of a rainbow.

I’ll be completely honest and say that I spent the rest of the day in a state of extreme anxiety, half-expecting to hear the Gjallerhorn ring out across Munich. I didn’t hear it, though.

About 20 minutes later he got an e-mail from the company which was his last hope, and they also said no.

I’m skipping a class right now as I write this so I can put in some serious work toward preparing my study materials for Chinese (last review session is tomorrow, final exam Saturday morning), as I want to be free tonight. I talked to the guys around here this afternoon, and we’re going to take Carl out to the bar tonight, drinks on us.

We’ve already sketched out backup plans and a list of auxiliary contacts to make use of. Fortunately for Carl, he and I take a class with the head of the CS department, and I know the guy loves Carl. It will work out. Quite honestly Carl seems overqualified for the internships he’s applied for, and I don’t think companies are willing to pay him what they think they’d have to.

More fun, though. Most of the Americans have received letters from the housing agency in Munich informing us that we have to get the hell out, as our contracts only run through February. One of the guys already went down there and explained we’re here for two semesters, not just one, as the agency must be assuming, and was told to get the hell out anyway because they’ve already signed a contract with another student, who moves in March 1.

There’s possible recourse in our program coordinator, who might be able to harass the housing people on our behalf, but two factors complicate that: 1) She’s our program coordinator only for the duration of our stay as students. It’s her job to get us through the semester, i.e. end of February, and after that, we fend for ourselves. 2) We signed a contract that gives the housing agency the right to kick us out at this date. I don’t foresee any German arguing against a signature.

Add to this the fact that Franzi is still grieving about the recent death of a family member, as well as already about my eventual return to the U.S., and hasn’t spoken a word to me in days.

Only one thing to do when you’re feeling down.

There. I feel better already.

Rather recently, I finally picked up C&C3, which I play often and thoroughly enjoy, perhaps because I am utterly undefeated within my social circle. But who really knows? Now I find myself salivating over Call Of Duty 4, which looks like the absolute perfect replacement for my inexplicably persisting yet utterly characteristic fixation on Battlefield 2.

That’s like freaking Black Hawk Down right there. Of course, since I’ll never, ever run Vista, I’ll be stuck with DirectX 9 to run the game, and on my aging-with-cobwebs hardware it just won’t look this good. But I’ll know that it can. And that’s really what gaming’s all about, isn’t it?

The environments are breathtakingly beautiful, if you’re into post-apocalyptic war-torn socialist-utopia-turned-ghetto locales for your honeymoons. And boy am I. But in case all this isn’t selling you on the game, just listen to what Putin has to say about it.

As long as I’m embedding tons of crap, let’s see what Cheney thinks of the game.

I think that pretty much settles it. The problem is, I can’t find the damn thing for an affordable price around here. Steam wants $63 (10% off from $70, yay!) and electronics stores are still up at €55. I only paid €17 for C&C3, so it’s tricky justifying such a huge expense when I should be buying, you know, beer. I think I’ll just wait until I see it on sale somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll continue salivating.

Screenshots in this post from Flickr user katakonik.

I don’t feel wired at all, it’s just that sleeping isn’t an option. But I have class tomorrow and a lot of important things to take care of, so I’m going to rest for a bit. Thank god my buddy Jim was looking out for me.

04:13:52 Jim: why don’t you sleep
04:13:58 Jim: honestly
04:14:02 I: yeah jesus
04:14:04 I: what am I doing
04:14:06 I: I gotta get in bed
04:14:08 Jim: haha, ok
04:14:10 I: thanks for looking out
04:14:12 Jim: anytime
04:14:13 I: I’m not tired AT ALL
04:14:17 Jim: from across the ocean
04:14:18 Jim: with love
04:14:33 I: my bed’s got shit on it though, I can’t sleep like that
04:14:42 I: I seriously have internet addiction
04:15:11 I: there, I’ve admitted the problem. I think that buys me another couple weeks of generating an action plan to change it, which I can maybe revise for another couple weeks after that
04:15:22 Jim: true
04:15:36 I: my trick for getting up in the morning is to drink two liters of water before going to sleep
04:15:50 Jim: nice
04:16:01 Jim: like if you had the next watch for the enemy
04:16:31 I: I like the way you think, buddy.

And with that I head to bed.

Around 11pm I had a false alarm for social activity, as Sascha called me and asked whether I was still at home. “Yup!” I said. “Great, dude. Can you let me in? I’m locked out.” Laughter and sighing. So I buzz the outer door to let him in, and he drops by my room on the way to his. I inquire about his plans for the evening, and he explains his girlfriend is still in town.

“She’s here till Tuesday, actually.”

“Oh. See you Wednesday, then.”

“Exactly.”

So I spin back around to my computer, where I have LEO open so I can wade through an Erich Fromm book a German friend here lent me. I’m learning mad words from it! My favorite so far is entsprechend, a word I already knew, but that I’ve only recently realize boosts my vocabulary greatly. Check out how many English equivalents that sucker has! I love German.

A bit later, maybe around 1am, Jukka the awesome Finn comes stumbling in, back from a night at the bar with his Finnish crew. I offer him a beer, he politely declines in too-calculated English, and then we listen to some metal together. Ten minutes go by, and I offer him a beer. He accepts. It was all down hill from there.

We stayed up till about 5am, ended up in the kitchen with several Americans who were inexplicably awake as well. I presume that everyone slept late on Friday due to the holiday festivities the night before, and so no one was tired in a timely fashion. There was still some gluhwine left over, which we polished off, and Jesse for some reason baked many things as the sky lightened. Crazy.

Before retiring, Jukka promised me a cup of his trademark coffee in the morning, if we’re up together. Deal was who’s ever up first, wake the other at 1pm. We saw each other at 2pm. But then we had coffee! And man was it good. Coffee and buttered toast are the world on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Bad news is, I’m on my last beer, and it’s 8pm, so the stores just closed. Every store in the whole freaking city is closed by 8pm. Sigh to that.

Problem is, the no cover charge is at the tremendously huge club Nachtgalerie (remember Halloween?), which none of the cool Germans wants to visit, because apparently it’s for lamers and little kids. Now, I don’t quite understand how these Germans think it a viable avenue of persuasion to tell a bunch of drunk college kids that a place sucks because it has lots of underage girls, but hey, we call that cultural differences in the biz.

In other news, if anyone has massive amounts of bits they need shoved around in cyberspace, please let me know, because I’m aching to use this ridiculous bandwidth at my disposal. Bonus points if the proposed use wouldn’t result in breaking international laws.

Nonetheless, college doesn’t work without beer pong. So when it was discovered that the Germans had no idea what beer pong was, Team America undertook to give them a free lesson. We went to the cornerstore and picked up three cases of the absolutely bottom rung beer, Oettinger. This stuff goes for 5€ for a case of twenty half-liter bottles. It’s disgusting. And yet, oddly, it’s worlds better than most beers in the U.S.!

So, properly armed—we’d gotten cups, too, and there’s already a ping pong table in the basement of our building—we set up shop and started schooling the silly Germans. Unfortunately, they were pretty good, and it wasn’t nearly as funny as “Team America versus Germany” in American football that one time.

All the same, though, it was 1337, and late in the evening Sascha and his boys showed up to join us. Since we’d pretty much blown through all the beer by that point, I left with them to spend an hour or two in a beer up the street, and played some pool.

I think my favorite moment of the night was when Gregor the German scolded me for pouring the beers badly. He snatched the bottle out of my hand and began to painstakingly distribute the beer in clear plastic cups, taking care to meter out the head appropriately. The Americans roared with laughter.

More pics.

I’m off to bed so I can get up at 5am or so in order to catch my plane to Florence. I only have 2GB for the better half of a week in Italy, but I’ll do what I can to make sure everybody’s happy with the pictures.

To bed with me! Enjoy the pics from tonight.

On Saturday, I left the winetasting early in order to meet up with my pal Sascha and go scope out some guitars with him. (I didn’t buy one, so don’t skip to the end to find out!)

We were able to catch each other with enough time to hop on a train and head out to the closest thing Munich has to a mall, which was really just several stores in close proximity to one another. It’s called Olympiaeinkaufzentrum (Olympic Shopping Center). There is a McDonalds there.

The only dedicated guitar store there closed at 7pm instead of 8pm, so we didn’t have a chance to check that out. Fortunately, though, there was a decent electronics store that also sold low-end guitars and amps, and I definitely found an axe I fell in love with. Cheap as all hell, too. More about that later.

After shredding for about 45 minutes or so, it became clear that we should head out, as the store was getting ready to close. Where we were was actually north of home, even though we had had to travel to the central train station in Munich’s centercity in order to get up there. Since we had to overshoot home anyway to get back to the central station, we figured that once there, we would take a different train and head out west to a neighborhood called Pasing, where Sascha’s old apartment is.

He still has his old drumset out there, locked up in a cellar room, and he knows people in the neighborhood from whom we could borrow a guitar and an amp. So we did just that, and had a fantastic jam session together, drinking copious amounts of beer and riffing ourselves stupid. Sascha says he likes my lead runs, and he’s a much better drummer than I, so we’ve made a deal to teach each other what we know. He already had my up to snuff on several hard rock beats on the drums, for when he had to show off some rhythm guitar riffs he’d written.

After about an hour or two of that, we were sweaty and pretty drunk and hungering for a metal concert, though we didn’t know of any in Munich that night. So instead, on a recommendation from a friend of Sascha’s who’d come with us to attend the jam session, we decided to hit up a Munich club called Rockstudio, which I see posters for freaking everywhere.

It was great. For nine bucks, you get three beers and three shots of Jäger or tequila or vodka. Unfortunately the beer was Becks, but you can’t complain about the price. So in turn, each of us threw a ten euro bill at the bartender and treated the others. Oh man, what a blast.

Come see all the pics.

The party was 7€ admission, which is a bit ridiculous, and the beers were 2€. Well, I’m pretty sure the Augustiners in my room cost me 50 cents each, so that doesn’t really work. And plus I saw an awesome RPG at the electronics store the other day for only 5€, and it promised 9 hours of spoken German. The C&C3 game I bought? Tons of spoken German in HD video. It’s awesome.

But really the story is that the DAAD/SIP crew cooked chili for dinner and pigged out, had a couple beers, and I have an 8am lecture tomorrow morning, which I really shouldn’t miss. So 11pm raves on the other side of town are not a wise move at the moment.

Oh, and tomorrow is a late night out for me, the Dark Tranquillity, Soilwork, Sonic Syndicate, Caliban show! After that I have to rush home to catch what I can of DJ Nite madness.

At the moment I’m out on my balcony, enjoying what has proven to be an unusually warm night. It’s raining softly, the huge trees are swaying lazily in hope of a storm, their silhouettes impressive against the dull orange overcast city sky.

Even without an acoustic guitar, this is pretty perfect.

The Chinese class was spectacular and I’ll dedicate another post just to that. In the meantime I’ll mention that I was able to take a trip to Saturn, which is kind of like a Best Buy, I guess, and scoop up some vitals:

• a set of headphones, Sony MDR-V150s (way too bassy, oh my god)
• a mouse! didn’t want to spring for the Logitech G5 (I have some restraint!) so I instead got a knockoff copy that feels absolutely great in my hand. I’ll test it later on, of course, and know for sure whether its performance is up to par.
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. This has me really, really excited. The game itself should be a blast, and quite nostalgic at that, as this iteration returns to the old storyline about Tiberium and global conflict between GDI and Nod. But it only occurred to me after I bought the game that the entire game will be in German. How cool is that? Even all the cinematic live-action cutscenes will be dubbed! Incredible. I’ll try to post some nice audio clips over the coming weeks.
• a winter coat! It was 20€. It looks freaking sharp, and it fits great. Pictures later. (This was purchased not at the Best Buyish store, of course)

So that was great. I was not able to decide on a set of speakers, which I achingly crave, and which cost only 30-50€. I didn’t have the balls to spring for the 50€, so I deferred the purchase till a time when I’m hopefully operating on slightly less impulse.

This electronics store also happens to be in the famous part of town, with the huge city hall with the Gothic façade and the Munich Cathedral and all that. This means it’s pretty much the beer capital of the world. So all the DAAD/SIP scholars decided to convene there tonight and have dinner together, which was an excellent time. At my behest, we went to an Augustiner house, and the beer was just as wonderful as expected.

Everybody got their usual (it’s funny how regular we are already), and the food was fantastic, too. I got a wurst platter because I thought it would be socially untenable (if rather convenient in terms of funds purgation) to order several different plates of various wursts. I chose right, all though I was still hungry afterwards and got yelled at for being cranky.

That’s about it. I just got yelled at for not being social, so I’m going to head down to the kitchen and have a beer with everyone, then come on back here and enjoy the ridiculous bass in these headphones. I actually had to open my equalizer and reduce all the lowend frequencies, ugh.

\m/

Oh, and I tried to buy a cell phone but failed miserably. Maybe that’ll get its own post someday, too, if I ever feel like talking about it.

I had some scouting around to do, like hunting down a classroom building in a different part of town. On my way around, I thought, what the hell, and checked at a Deutsche Bank ATM. It worked. There are 3,301€ just chilling in my account right now, aching to be spent on beer. I withdrew only 200€, because, you know, I didn’t want to go crazy or anything.

Sad thing is, the Radioactivity class went till 7:45pm, and all stores in the city close at 8pm. So I didn’t get to do my spending spree to trick out my life tonight, which is probably a good thing, as hopefully I’ll be a little more in control tomorrow. But before I went to the class I was able to pop into the upscale grocery store across the street from our dorm to pick up the necessities, like a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, and a case of Augustiner. I splurged and got Augustiner Edelstof, because, well, I could.

Tonight I live like a king.

Oh, AND MY SISTER WROTE ME A LETTER. I checked my mail when I came home tonight, because I wanted to laugh at overdraft notices from my bank, as the student housing department in Munich has been trying to withdraw our rent for September and October, as well as our housing deposit, but instead all I found was a letter. To me. From my sister.

THANK YOU!

One of my favorite things about Munich is that buying a bottle of beer is always cheaper than buying a Coke. How cool is that? I’ll have to get a pic of the two of them side by side in a drink case, prices displayed.

I am fed–gorged, in fact–and could not be happier. I’ll probably stay in tonight, as the stipend isn’t due till next Wednesday, and I don’t have too many bux to throw around just yet. (Dollar to Euro conversion is painful!)

I have much work to do. A little for Simone, some reading for my classes, and innumerably many other projects to work on. I might go out for another stroll, soak in the crisp autumn air, then get cracking.

Who cares what I do? I have food and plenty of it!

You go to the Aldi with your friends, and you scope around for some dece food. You’ve already been to Penny Markt this week, naturally—just yesterday, in fact—and so you’re pretty well provisioned already. For example, you have these badass balls of meat that you just plop into boiling butter you smeared around on the bottom of your skillet, they’re like a buck fifty for 500g of them, I mean, that’s street price, so, you’re good to go, if you’re so inclined. It’s hard to say. But then at Aldis, like, maybe there’s better junk, for less, because there’s a party in the kitchen tonight that you’re hosting and your friends don’t speak German too well, so it’s on you.

Then Carl spots the Sangria 1,5L bottles for a buck fifteen. Here’s the best part: we already live at the Haus der Blinden. So we’re good to go.

I mean, I’m game.

Then when your buds come back from the bar where they’re watching the Bavaria rape Cologne in the soccer match you roll over to the cornershop where you scoop up a couple cases of beer. It’s a party and we’re hosting, so we buy cheap, like Löwenbräu or something. None of that “I’m a classy erudite student, check me out, I don’t understand wine but that’s for pussies anyway so whatev” Augustiner stuff, not for tonight.

Actually, today Nico explained to us the above sentiment in his charming Irish accent:

Nico: “So, like, we’s heffing dis partee, right? Boot like, we just buy da cheap beers, it’s OK. When you drunk, it’s just beer, you know? So it’s OK, we buy da cheap stoof, an’ people, dey drink dat. Cool?”
Carl: “Actually, we picked up some Sangria at Aldis today. A buck fifteen for one and a half liters.”
Nico: “You guys uh ugly.”

So tonight should be pretty badass. We’ve invited pretty much everyone we’ve bumped into on the street while drunk, which, you can imagine, is a lot of people already. I can remember inviting the dude who worked at the McDonalds at 2am on Thursday night. He knew I was American because of my accent, and said maybe he’d show up at the party, I mean, as long as there were Americans to meet. (We are so cool over here, it’s great. Like n00b cool. But that’s still a kind of cool, you have to agree, although it is hard to say.) And Nico has mad, mad connections, beyond ours, which extend to the reaches of this dorm building, meaning that we’ve invited approximately four German people. But they’ll come, at least!

Maybe some pictures tonight. After we pick up the cases I want to come home and get some work done—hard drive maintenance chores, nothing exciting—and thereafter there should be a nice levee for those new to the dorm building. (Please try to understand that this category doesn’t really include me or the other Americans I’ve been talking about.) As always, I’ll try for pictures. I know that I’m behind on posting them.

Prost!

I met more Americans. No exclamation point because I was really hoping to be in a housing assignment where I’d meet tons of Germans, seeing as I’m studying in Germany, but hey, I’ll take what I can get when it comes to friends. (Burn to any and all reading this.)

I now know Carl, Craig, and Sarah. They vary in language ability, but all are very interesting, very funny people. And Carl and Craig both picked up a case of beer this afternoon. Rad. So in exchange for a beer, I’m going to walk them both to the internet cafe (Coffee Fellows, as I’ve mentioned before) where we can use our laptops. Sarah unfortunately has clubbing engagements, but said she’d meet up with us tomorrow. She was kind enough to hang with us for an hour or two already tonight, just to get to know us. This really is a great group, but I guess traveling abroad to a country kind of refines the selection of people.

Anyway, the night probably will be fairly chill, because everyone’s saving up to go traveling later in September, which I give a hearty thumbs up to. (I should mention that both Carl and Sarah are on the same DAAD/SIP program that I am, whereas Craig and the others from his university, whom I’ve yet to meet, are straight up exchange students.) Maybe I will yet get a lot of sleep, even though my heat doesn’t work. Apparently it doesn’t work well in their rooms, either, so I don’t feel too screwed.

Craig just asked me what that “Haus der Blinden” sign outside our dorm means. I told him it means pretty much exactly what it looks like. (I have no idea why our dorm is built so near to that, but it shares an address, which is really freaking funny.) Oh, well. At least they know me.