First Taste Of German Food & Alcohol

Our first day out and about in Germany started with me discovering an important fact about myself – I can’t handle alcohol at lunch!  The decision to order wine at lunch resulted in me wandering around feeling slightly drunk all day, trying everything I could think of to get rid of the drunk feeling until I gave up and went back to the hotel and passed out for a few hours!  Sigh, gotta love my Asian genes…

We had a late start because I couldn’t get to sleep last night, so the first thing we did was look for somewhere to eat.  We headed in the direction of city center, and once we got past Karlsplatz gate, the main gate leading to the historic city center, we sat down at a restaurant in the middle of a small strip of restaurants.  Everyone around us had beer or wine at their table, and we’d read that it’s bad etiquette to not order a drink at restaurants in Germany, so we decided to get a beer and a wine to go with the weisswurst (white sausage), veal meatballs, and ravioli we ordered for lunch.  Paul was served a rather large glass of beer was and I was shocked when my wine came in a small carafe that was probably the equivalent of 3 glasses!  Although we tried, it was impossible to finish the food (the portions here are much larger than France) and the drinks.  Paul really liked the meatballs and ravioli, but neither of us were fans of the weisswurst, which is a signature dish of the Bavaria region, because of the texture – it was really soft and mushy with a strong parsley flavour.  However, we were pleased to find that the whole meal came out to less than what two entrees were costing us in France!

After our rather lengthy lunch, we headed to the nearby Frauenkirche cathedral, the most notable cathedral in Munich, and had a look around inside, which is quite nice and well-kept.  We then headed to Neues Rathaus, Munich’s new town hall, which was built between 1867 and 1908 in the “Gothic Revival” architectural style, making it quite an impressive looking building.  I had wanted to come see the daily show at it’s clock tower, the Rathaus-Glockenspiel (chiming bells and life-size figures at the top of the tower re-enact two stores from the 16th century at 11 a.m. everyday), but because we slept in we missed it today, so all we got were some pictures of the exterior.

From here we walked to Viktualienmarkt, Munich’s open air market which sells a large variety of food and flowers.  Trying to get the drunk feeling out of my system, I had been drinking water since we left the restaurant, but it wasn’t doing much good so I decided to try a fresh tropical fruit juice from one of the fruit vendors at the market.  The super sour juice helped a bit and we proceeded to walk over to the Munich Residenz, the former royal palace of Bavarian monarchs in Munich’s city center.  We got totally lost looking for the entrance and ended up in the free gardens where a piano quartet was playing some really nice classical music.  In my still slightly drunk state, I found their music to be quite enjoyable so we stopped and listened for a while.  When we finally found the entrance to the Residenz (which is difficult to see at the moment because they are under restoration so you have to through a temporary bit of boarding which isn’t clearly marked), they had stopped selling tickets because it was past 5 p.m. (but they close at 6 daily) so we weren’t able to go in

We headed back to the hotel, where I ended up falling asleep for about 3 hours before waking up to go get some dinner.  Paul decided to go for take-out from the Persian restaurant again, while I got take-out from a sushi place next door to the Persian restaurant.  I decided to order a combo plate since I couldn’t pronounce the types of sushi I wanted in German and the people there spoke limited English (they asked where I was from and told me they were from Vietnam, but that’s all they could communicate to me).  Interestingly enough, they charge you per pack of soy sauce you ask for, just like McDonald’s and other restaurants in Germany charge for things like ketchup!  Sushi attempt #2 turned out better than sushi attempt #1 back in Rouen, but it’s still not nearly as good as the stuff I get back home.  What can I expect though from Vietnamese people who run a sushi restaurant in Germany?