being beer drunk in munich
and why i'm not cut out for the german life
I hate beer. It tastes like the worst man you know, bloats me to the point of pregnancy, and the buzz isn’t even worth it. I mean, how many beers does it even take to feel something? That was an unanswered question for me before I found myself in Chinesischer Turm, the second largest beer garden in Munich. With a one-liter mug filled with foamy piss-colored beer in hand (holding it was a real wrist workout), I slipped my ten euro note to the cashier. There were many things I would rather spend ten euros on than a liter of beer. But I was in Germany and I’m fond of doing things for the sake of cliches and irony so of course I had to buy the giant mug of beer at the beer garden rather than going to a bar and ordering something I’d actually enjoy. Hugo spritz anybody?
My girlfriends and I sat at the picnic-bench style table with our mugs and pretzels, pausing to take clink our mugs together before every sip because again, I love cliches, and also we needed all the encouragement we could get. Did you know that the tradition of agressively knocking beer mugs together and sloshing drinks around between cups was a custom because it showed men that the other was not trying to poison him? Me and the girls couldn’t exactly macho clink hard enough to the point of sloshing our beers into each others glasses, so I was really living on a prayer hoping there wasn’t a secret nemesis within my circle.
Anyways, we worked our way through those mugs like champs with a mixture of sipping, gulping, and chugging. I was on a budget for dinner after spending ten euros on that liter, and thinking back maybe having only a pretzel sloshing around in my stomach with all that damn beer was not the smartest move, but in this economy you really have to cut costs anywhere you can.
So there it went. Suddenly all the beer on that mostly empty stomach caught up to me and everything was funny and I felt warm and effortless except for the fact that my stomach was bulging and hard as a rock and I kept burping like an imbecile every few minutes. Even through my drunkness, I was acutely aware of how gross I felt. In fact, being drunk magnified this feeling. It was then that I learned being beer drunk summons all my inner insecurity and self loathing.
I thought in despair about earlier that morning, when my friends dropped the bomb that they’d booked a bike tour and I had to begrudgingly admit to the tour guide (who somehow happened to be from the same small Northern California town as me, and had even gone to a rival high school) that I couldn’t ride and seeing that pitying look on her face made me want to crawl into a hole, that is until her co-guide remembered they had a tandem bike and I ended up on the back of that bike with him while everyone else pedaled freely like the grown adults they were. Might as well have given me a tricycle and training wheels.
This had been a laughable incident during the day as I try not to take myself too seriously, but at that picnic table in the beer garden as I swallowed my third burp in five minutes, I felt humiliated and disgusting and childish. Who the hell doesn’t know how to ride a bike? What was I thinking wearing such an unforgivingly tight bodysuit to a beer garden? Why do these Germans stare so damn much? Does my ex ever miss me? I think you get the idea.
So in conclusion, I discovered what I already knew: beer is not the drink for me. All the mug-clinking Germans and deadbeat dads and keg-standing frat boys can keep their fermented yeast while I sip on something that gets me wasted in a classier manner, thank you very much.
