Cocktail palms, drag reindeer, and early intervention: a weekend in Munich

No, silly, no one did an early intervention on me!! Although maybe they should have. Anyway, for the work part of this weekend, I attended a two-day block seminar on early intervention, conducted by our own esteemed colleague Peter. It made for some long days, but I also learned some pretty interesting stuff, especially about German laws regarding prenatal interventions for fetuses/babies that show signs of having disabilities.

Nerd time over! Following the seminar, Amie and I decided to head out to Karlsplatz, where there is an outdoor skating rink for the holidays. We knew that they would be taking the rink down at the end of the weekend, so we wanted to make sure we got our skating in! Oddly enough, I got carded when we paid for our ice rink admission, because apparently you get a free glass of prosecco. Awesome! Another cool thing about the rink is that they have these little ski-bears to help people stay on their feet if they're new skaters. I didn't need a bear for skating purposes, but I *did* need to get my picture taken with the FC Bayern Munich bear!!

As we skated around, Amie and I noticed that the people at the rink were almost all men. All of a sudden the free prosecco made sense:

It was HoliGay on ice!! We were so lucky that we just happened to skate that night, because otherwise there was no free prosecco (although since it's Munich, there was a two-level bar built on to the side of the ice rink), and we would never have made our new friends:

Yes, friends, that is a DRAG REINDEER. I think the other creature is a drag giraffe? We were never sure.

On Saturday, we spent the whole day at the block seminar, but then met up with my friend Michaela, one of the German students who visited UNC during the fall semester. We also got to meet Michaela's very nice boyfriend and three of her other friends. Michaela and her boyfriend had a lot of studying to do on Sunday, so we decided to go out for cocktails instead of going to a club. After seriously trying about five bars to find one at which all seven of us could sit down, we ended up at Drugstore, then moved on to Peaches. There I learned the following:

Fact #1: Everyone will order a pastel drink, even the men. They're all just cocktails, none of this "girly drink" nonsense.
Fact #2: If you order correctly, your pastel drink will come with one of these:

Little cocktail sparklies!!! I was so ridiculously excited by these that everyone gave me their sparklies, although I lost more than half of them on the subway home. Oops! Guess that just means more cocktails needed to replenish my collection! Anyway, apparently they're called "cocktail palms," and just about any cocktail bar in Munich will stick them in your drink.
Fact #3: David Hasselhoff music really *is* played in German bars (although there was a debate at our table whether or not Germans actually like him). This debate was not resolved.
Fact #4: Germans think Americans are really awesome bowlers. We're supposed to meet up with Michaela and her friends again to go bowling next weekend, so I feel like their world view will soon be shattered.

So. much. fun.
(And see, Mike, I did take my camera out of the box!)

Thoughts on Munich, part 1

- I love flying to Europe because I always sit next to the most interesting people. (When I flew to Austria, I sat next to a Norwegian man who told me that the Norwegian government ate the reindeer from the movie "Prancer".) Today I sat next to Christian, an Austrian gunsmith. Yes, the dude is a craftsman who makes guns. He said that he thought it was a stereotypical profession for a European. I was like, what??? He was fun, though. We had a long conversation about Native American reservations and policy because he'd just visited a reservation while in the U.S., and then we both laughed about the fact that there was something called "Humperdinck" on the plane's music selection. He offered me the piece of cheddar cheese from his snack plate because he knows Americans like it and he was worried that it would be difficult to find in Bavaria, and expressed his love of Nature Valley granola bars (also on the snack plate).

-I watched "The Town" on the plane, unfortunately 24 hours too late to be useful at trivia on Tuesday night. I also wanted to watch the Bundesliga program, but I fell asleep.

-Wine is still free on Lufthansa international flights! I was a good panda and only had one glass, but the lady ahead of me seriously drank like 7 glasses. I think she was a nervous flyer. Lufthansa also hands out warm hand towels a lot. Christian felt that the frequency of warm towels was ridiculous.

-We drove past the Bayern Munich stadium on the way from the airport!! It was very impressive. Franz (who asked to be called Peter, and hence will be referred to as such) suggested that I write a letter to the club explaining my limited stay in Germany to try and get tickets, as all the games are sold out for months. I think I'm going to try it.

-The bungalow is super cute, and fully equipped, including a fruit basket and post-it notes. So I'm not starving, despite the state holiday. And I have sheets and towels and toilet paper and even an iron! Plus we got complimentary messenger bags from Ludwig-Maximilians University.

-And, I already ate a krapfen!! We went to a bakery for pastry and coffee, and I picked out a krapfen. It was very delicious. The bakery also had some kind of cookie (?) that appeared to have a marzipan pig in a bathtub on it. I might have to try one of those next time.

-There are at least 4 bakeries within a 5 minute walk of the bungalow. This is so bad for my health.

-The city slogan of Munich is, "Munich loves you." I think I'm going to like it here.

Besooooooooos!