How to Visit a Bavarian Beer Garden

There's nothing quite like visiting a beer garden (Biergarten) in the summer. They're largely found in southern Germany, especially Bavaria, and they are a wonderful place to hangout and have a beer with friends. At a traditional beer garden, you can bring your own food, the beer is self-serve, and it is drunk out of a Maß (pronounced "mahss").

While we were in Munich last week, we visited the Hirschgarten, which is a big public park with tame deer (aka, Hirsch) and one of the largest beer gardens in the world. It has over 9,000 seats! Here's how it works:

Step 1. Grab a table.

At a traditional beer garden like the Hirschgarten, you have two choices of where you sit: a picnic table where you can bring your own food or a regular table where a waiter brings you food from the restaurant. The tables with waiters will have tablecloths, while the picnic tables are bare.

We have always sat at the picnic tables, where you'll see families with picnic baskets from home as well as groups eating food purchased at the beer garden. Some people bring their own tablecloths to make the picnic tables more festive. If you're a smaller party (less than 5) then you may need to share a table. This isn't a big deal--aside from asking if the table is free and then saying thank you, you pretty much ignore your table mates :)

Step 2. Grab your beer.

This is the fun part. First, get a glass from one of the big stacks near the drink station. You can choose from two sizes: a Maß (1 liter) or a half Maß.

Next, rinse your Maß off at the sink station. There is no soap, but we haven't gotten sick yet and we just assume that the alcohol must kill any bad bugs. Even if germs make you nervous, just go with it--it's part of the beer garden experience!

Once your glass is ready, head over to the beer station. Here you have two choices: beer or radler (lemon soda + beer). If you want radler, add the lemon soda first--about a third of the glass, or to taste. Then fill the Maß from the beer spigot, and pay the barman at the end of the line.

Augustiner is the brand of beer served at the Hirschgarten, and it ran about 6.50 Euros for a Maß when we visited earlier this month. Augustiner is one of the oldest Munich beers, and it's stored in wooden barrels rather than metal. Once you've got your beer, take it back to the table and proceed to step 3...

Step 3. Grab some grub.

If you didn't bring your own food, there's a cafeteria-style counter where you can pick and choose what you'd like to eat. They have many traditional German dishes such as halbes Hendl (half a roast chicken), wurst with sauerkraut, potato salad, cabbage salad (crunchy and fresh!), and soft pretzels. This beer garden also has a stall where you can buy smoked mackerel on a stick and another where you can get crepes, ice cream, and other desserts.

Step 4. Eat and enjoy!

You can hang out as long as you like--the only rule at a traditional beer garden is that you buy your beer there. When you're ready for another round, take your Maß to the sink station, rinse it out, and fill it up again!

many thanks are due to my patient husband and our friend Mr. M. Hatton for their help in producing this post!

The Mont + Country Cottages in the Loire Valley

During the last part of our trip to France in June, we visited places known for less for important historical events and more for their beauty and opulence. Our last stop in Normandy was Le Mont St. Michel, a lone island and UNESCO World Heritage site on the border with Brittany. A monastery built in 800 AD sits at the top of the island's hill, with layers of stone houses and shops below it, and a shallow bay all around it.

the camouflaged guardian

clever monks designed a crank-powered
system for bringing supplies up the hill

We arrived in the evening after driving down from the D-Day landing sites, and it was rainy and surprisingly cool so we felt like we had the island to ourselves. Apparently, the island is normally packed with tourists, so we didn't mind the rain too much. Previously, you could drive all the way down the causeway and park at the base of the island, but now the causeway is closed and buses ferry visitors from mainland parking lots. This is all part of a really neat project by the French government to restore the area around the island and prevent sedimentation from joining the island to the mainland. They are using a clever dam design and the force of the river to move most of the sediment from the bay. We decided to walk rather than take the bus so that we could soak up the beautiful vista from different angles, and we also really enjoyed reading about the project on signs all along the causeway.

We arrived pretty late, so the monastery and most shops were closed, but it was magical to see the island lit up at night. We had to hang around until 10pm to see this, though! Touring Europe in the summer is perhaps more expensive and crowded, but you definitely get a lot more daylight hours for sightseeing.

Back from Belgium

We returned from a 5 day trip with a friend, during which we visited Munich, Bamberg, the Rhine, and Belgium. We rented a car in Frankfurt and drove to Belgium since it came out to be cheaper than 3 train tickets. One of the perks of having a rental car is that we got to stock up on all our favorite Belgian beers (except Karmeliet, which wasn't sold at the grocery store we raided)!

Can you guess our favorite? It's such a treat to be able to get this much high quality beer--the bottles of Rochefort 10 sell for $10-$16 in the US and 5 Euros in Germany, so they were a huge steal at 1.50 Euros in Belgium!

Once I wrap up the last post about our visit to France, I'll share a bit about a trip to Belgium and a lot more about beer.

It's all in the Name

We love Magnum ice cream bars. There's one called Infinity that is so delicious, with caramel, dark chocolate, and nuts. We're going to miss these ice cream bars when we're back in the US, but there's no way we're going to find them there since they share a name with a very different sort of product in America. Just seeing the ice cream bars in stores made me giggle when we first got here, which is why we tried them in the first place. It turns out that the company did attempt to market this product in the US, but the bars just didn't sell. In marketing (and so many other things), it's all in the name.

Some stores get creative, though. Take TJ Maxx, for example. In Germany, they have renamed the stores TK Maxx because of differences in how letters in the German and English alphabet are pronounced. "Teh yoht max" just doesn't have the same ring as "tee jay max," so they changed the name to TK Maxx--proununched "teh keh max"--which is much less silly-sounding and a lot closer to to the original. Inside, the stores are exactly the same (and still have killer deals that get me in trouble every time!).

okay, maybe TK Maxx isn't exactly the same...I have never seen
dirndl dresses and lederhosen for sale in TJ Maxx

Anyway, J and I found these little differences in marketing due to lingual and cultural differences pretty interesting. This week we're traveling around Germany and Belgium, but we'll be back soon with more stories!

Word of the Week: Luftschlangen

The German word of the week means, literally, "air snakes". Many friends and relatives who have received gifts from us in the past few months already know that the word doesn't refer to actual snakes, but to long, spiraling pieces of colorful paper -- streamers!

Luftschlangen are really cheap (50 cents for a package of 3 rolls) and they contain a lot of streamers that make any party more fun. It took us a while to figure out how to use them, but once you get the hang of it it's very easy to make a nice, big celebratory mess! They were blowing all over the streets during Karneval in January, and since then we have tried to put at least one roll in every birthday package we send out.

1. tear off a circle (1 streamer)
2. hold it in front of your mouth
3. then blow to send out the streamer

And they are a big hit! Once the party is over, they make great packing material, cat toys, and last (but not least) dog decorations.

photo of Nora from her Auntie Deet

Our Visit to the D-Day Beaches

source: Army Signal Corps Collection, U.S. National Archives

During our trip to France, we spent almost an entire day driving along the Normandy coast to see important sites from the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944. We started out in Bayeaux, east of most of the landing areas, so we worked out way west. Here's a map of our tour:

Click to view D-Day Tour, Normandy Coast, France in a larger, navigable map

Our first stop was Arromanches, where the Allies built a false harbor by floating concrete and steel barriers across the English channel. We could see part of the harbor still intact in the distance, and pieces had also washed up on the beach. The story behind the harbor's design and construction is really fascinating, and explained well here.

Greetings from the Fat Cat

The formerly obese feline who started it all sends summer greetings and wishes for extensive relaxation in the sunshine.

She absolutely loves the balcony looking into the garden (so many birds! hours of entertainment) and the European-style tilt and turn windows that open all the way. We really love our sunny apartment, too, and have been spending as much time as possible out on the balcony. While a heat wave hits the northeast, our 'hot' days are in the high 70s and low 80s--we finally broke out our shorts today. We could get used to this!

Road Tripping through Normandy

After touring Paris for two days, we rented a car near the Louvre and--after managing to avoid colliding with the terrifying hordes of scooter-riding maniacs that plague that fair city's streets--we hopped on the highway and headed for Normandy. I loved this part of our trip for several reason. But first, a brief geography lesson...

Normandy is a region in northern France, known for its creamy cheeses, Calvados, and mussels. It's not a small region either, but encompasses several largish cities and many small towns and villages.

And it turns out that Normandy has a lot of really neat places to visit in addition to the D-Day beaches! Here are my favorites, in no particular order:

1. Cute coastal towns

Places like Honfleur give east coast towns like Rockport a run for their money in terms of cuteness. This pretty little harbor was a favorite of Monet's and other painters. Us, too--we ate a box of delectable macarons while people watching and enjoying the sunshine.

2. Beautiful chalk cliffs

After seeing postcards of dramatic cliffs while browsing shops in Honflour, we decided to take a little detour to Étretat. The postcards and my pictures just can't do it justice. The view from the beach is stunning, with the white pebble beach curving away towards a church set high on a hill above the sea.

But the most magnificent view is reached by walking up the cliff path. Wildflowers cover the tops of the white cliffs, leading down to dark turquoise waters. It reminded us very much of the west coast of the US.

But the west coast isn't littered with so many bunkers! These things were everywhere, tucked into towns, poking out of shrubbery in back yards, and greeting us at trailheads.

Happy 4th from Cologne!

Our local grocery store (Aldi) brought in a ton of 'amerikanische Lebensmittel' the week before the 4th, so I stocked up on peanut butter, hamburger buns, marshmallows, and other items that we normally don't see around here. It was pretty funny to watch people turn over the packages in their hands, trying to figure out what some of the items were, sometimes consulting other shoppers. The most mystifying items appeared to be the packaged baked goods (slightly squished brownies and whoopie pies, I believe).

mysterious "sandwich sauce," an original American recipe!

I also grabbed a disposable grill from a different grocery store (there are 6 within a 10 minute walk of our apartment!), so we'll be spending the afternoon in the park trying out this contraption and hopefully grilling some tasty burgers.

Hope y'all have a safe and fun Independence Day!