BEER SPOTTING AND FISH PIZZA

First there was train spotting, and now I’ve invented beer spotting. It’s Oktoberfest in Germany and I caught this Lowenbrau riding the train illegally from Bad Canstatt to Stuttgart. Of course, although ticket collectors do come around on the trains, it’s more or less an honor system, and you always see young guys moving from car to car who are probably hitching a free ride.

The Germans would vehemently agree that beer is food, especially at this time of year. On my recent trip, I fell into the habit of having a tall pilsner of Dunkel every afternoon at an outdoor café, in lieu of a snack. I’m not personally crazy about Wiess (wheat) beer, but I love the dark beers and lagers.

One afternoon in Triberg, I had several good German beers with my new friends from Wisconsin that I met earlier at the train station. We met up at the Tick-Tack-Stube on the Hauptstrasse and grabbed a table with an umbrella out front so we could people watch. The Packers’ fans wanted to find a place to watch the Sunday game ( next to impossible in the Black Forest) so we headed down the street to a local pizza joint to see if they had satellite TV. No luck on the sports, but we did decide to have a pizza as everyone was missing the good ole U.S.A. at that point.

Tim made the grave mistake of ordering number 19…a pizza that had never been ordered before in the history of this restaurant…and when it was delivered, we immediately knew why. It reeked of fish and rotten eggs, two of the main ingredients. Tim insisted on eating it (a true macho move), but shortly after our meal, he retired to the hotel. If he gets his own Packers jersey, we think he should have the number 19 put on the back in honor of his manly epicurean adventure.