{"id":25,"date":"2004-09-21T15:56:16","date_gmt":"2004-09-21T19:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/21\/one-night-in-bavaria\/"},"modified":"2004-09-21T15:56:16","modified_gmt":"2004-09-21T19:56:16","slug":"one-night-in-bavaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/21\/one-night-in-bavaria\/","title":{"rendered":"One Night in Bavaria"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It all started on a
\nThursday afternoon in Germany.  I had just taken the train from
\nBerlin to Regensburg, and Melanie, her new guy Kilian, and her friend
\nChristina picked me up from the station.  We walked around
\nRegensburg the rest of the afternoon – what a great old town. 
\nThere is a beautiful, huge, Gothic cathedral there and lots of great
\nmedieval streets and squares.  We had dinner in one such square,
\nand then decided to go to a festival that they were having that night
\nin Regensburg.  The festival was just like a state fair in the
\nU.S., except cleaner and with better lighting.  <\/span><\/p>\n

There was one big difference
\nthough:  the fair had all these massive beer tents.  We
\nwalked into one of them and it was like stepping into this great
\nBavarian anthropological case study.  Imagine at least a thousand
\nBavarian people in a massive tent, all sitting at picnic tables
\ndrinking really tasty, really strong beer out of HUGE one-liter
\nmugs.  The waitresses wore the traditional Bavarian dresses called
\ndiendls<\/span>, which made them look just like the St. Pauli girl.  And
\nthere was this cheesy German band there that is sort of a local party
\nband — everyone in southern Germany knows them.  They were
\nsinging both traditional German songs and pop songs.  But it
\nwasn’t just the waitresses – lots of the women wore diendls<\/span> also, and
\nthere were lots of men in lederhosen<\/span>, the traditional leather pants
\nfrom that area.  I’m telling you, it was like some kind of
\nGerman-stereotype fantasyland that Melanie and her friends had put
\ntogether just for me!  And no other Americans to be found!<\/span><\/p>\n

We found ourselves a table in middle
\nof the revelry and ordered ourselves a few mas<\/span>’s, (mas = 1 liter mug of
\nbeer).  The band would play a few traditional songs and a few pop
\nsongs – lots of 80s numbers – and everyone sang along.  <\/span><\/p>\n

There were lots of toasts. 
\nFunny, I don’t remember what most of them were, although I do remember
\nthat we made friends with the folks next to us, which of course
\nnecessitated many more toasts.  I really like the way the Germans
\ndo toasts.  You say “Proust” (rhymes with “roost”), clink your
\nflagon, tap it on the table (to calm the sloshing after all that
\nclinking), and drink.  Except they have this great rule: 
\nwhen you knock glass with someone, you have to look them in the eye or
\nyou are condemned to seven years of bad sex.  It totally changes
\nthe character of a toast, making it more personal and just… a lot
\nbetter, even in the middle of really chaotic revelry such as this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, before we knew it, everyone
\nwas standing, dancing, and even jumping on the picnic benches and
\nsinging along at the top of their lungs.  Beer sloshing around,
\nlots of it going down the hatch.  Good times.  We took a few
\ngood pictures.  We took a lot of blurry pictures.  Oh, and
\nremember the song from about 1983 by Nena, called “99 Red
\nBalloons”?  Well, when the band started playing this one, the
\nplace went freaking crazy. <\/span><\/p>\n

I had 2 Mas’s in about an hour… which I was regretting later.  But overall, it was SO MUCH FUN. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all started on a Thursday afternoon in Germany.  I had just taken the train from Berlin to Regensburg, and Melanie, her new guy Kilian, and her friend Christina picked me up from the station.  We walked around Regensburg the rest of the afternoon – what a great old town.  There is a beautiful, huge, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jackstriptoeuropestories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}