Germany: Bavaria/Hannover (Mar/00)

    Bavarian Alps from Newschweinstein

In a very strategic move, my company has opened an office in the heart of the Bavaria, land of some of the best beers in the planet. I spent a couple of weeks visiting customers and the new office in Ismaning/Munich and going to Cebit (the world's largest computer trade show) in Hannover.

There was a lot of snow fall in Munich and rain in Hannover, with a few nice sunny and cold days in between.

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The car behind me is flashing the lights and I can see on the mirror that its driver, using very expressive gesturing, telling me to get out of the way.

I was driving an Opel Vectra at 180 km/h (about 110 mph) on the Autobahn. There was a slow truck ahead, so I looked at the mirror, saw just a small black dot in the horizon, signaled and changed lanes to pass it. I blink my eyes and the small dot grew almost instantaneously to a full size black BMW on my back bumper.

Typical cruising speed for the fastest cars on the left lane is around 240 km/h (or about 150 mph). That is why they need BMWs and Mercedes.
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The most typical beer in Bavaria is probably the Weizenbier (or Weissbier), made of wheat, not barley. It is light and sparkling, with a cloudy gold color, always served in a 1/2 liter tulip glass. There is a spicy finish (sometimes almost medicine-like) that took me a few liters to get used to.

The largest brewery is in Erding, a small village close to Munich. In my modest opinion, the Erding Weizenbier was the best I tasted. I still like the Bohemian Budvar Pilsen the most, but the Bavarian Erding Weizenbier and the Irish Guinness Draught Stout tie for a close second.

Beer is usually drank at Biergartens, served with pretzels, sausages or leberkase (a meat loaf, with similar texture, but much better than bologna). For more on beer (one of my favourite subjects), visit my Beer Page.

While in Bavaria, I kept the 2.5 liter per day average, contributing to close the gap between the German and the Czech average of per capta beer consumption (the Czechs have recently surpassed the Germans and are approaching 1 liter/day/person average). For the embarrassment of people with me, I would steal beer glasses from every restaurant or pub we entered and came home with a nice collection.

The Food.

Most dishes are some form of meat and some form of potatoes. There is no rice and, with few exceptions (cabbage is one), no vegetables.

Typical things include the several types of "wurst" (for example, weisswurst, the breakfast sausage is made of veal and spices), leberknodl (liver dumpling soup), kalbhaxe or schweinshaxe (grilled veal or pork knuckle), sauerbraten (beef in a thick sauce).  I find the cold cuts of smoked meats the most interesting items. There are also excellent Italian restaurants almost anywhere you go.

I spent a few days in Bavaria (Cyclades' office is in Ismaning, very close to Munich) and did have about 2 free days. Explored Ismaning in the evenings and had the opportunity to walk around the center of Munich, visit the Deuches Museum (an interesting science and technology museum), walk around Karlsplatz and Marienplatz, go to the market, visit Fussen and the Newschweinstein Castle, and take a look at the Bavarian Alps.

In Ismaning, I stayed at the Hotel-Gasthof zur Muhle, which has very comfortable rooms, a great atmosphere, a great restaurant, a great swimming pool (I would not mention a hotel swimming pool if it was not really great).

Explored Munich by foot. It has the same look and feel as Wien, less the classical music and plus the biergartens. Took a great day trip (2 hour train ride from Hauptbahnhof) to Fussen (a small town on the foothills of the Alps). Visited the area around the Newschweinstein Castle (the real-life model for the Disneyland castle), which is a great place to hike, sample the food, visit the castles, or simply be amazed by the alpine landscape. I heard the place is really crowded during summer, but it was great in winter.

During the Cebit days, we were guests at Mr. Wolfgang Kokola's house in the picturesque Wulfengen, a tiny village 30 miles South of Hannover. The house was built in 1873 (at least that was what the sign above the entrance said) and is huge, with a complete bar and reception room upstairs. Think of Albert Einstein and imagine that, instead of spending his life developing the Theory of Relativity, he had grown old drinking lots of beer and developing a respectable waistline. Now you know exactly how Mr. Kokola looks like.

Cebit is a 7-days long trade show, with very long and tiring days. We did not have much energy at the end of the day (didn't even go to Hannover). We had nice dinners and the most enjoyable and interesting time was spent in the house at night (drinking beer, listening to the conversation in German and enjoying the atmosphere) and the very scenic drive back and forth between the village and the convention center.