Munich has always been one of my favorite German cities. It’s weird, because Germans tend to liken Bavaria to Texas, as it’s the conservative, nationalist, vaguely separatist part of the country, but whatever. I always have a great time in Munich. It was with this in mind that I woke up in Zurich determined to have a pretty good day. We hopped on the tram and cruised through Zurich’s quaint little rush hour down to the train station where I got a sandwich that was salami worked into a crazy blanket in the middle of a soft pretzel lattice. It’s hard to explain. Imagine someone cut a pretzel in half horizontally and then put a blanket of salami over it and then used the pretzel as bread in a sandwich. It kind of had that “fat lady in skimpy lingerie” vibe, but whatever, it was tasty and it was a lot better than Dan’s fucking sandwich, which he had to wait in a godless, heathen line to get. He came out sweaty and irritated, clutching his sandwich angrily, pointed to my pretzel lingerie and said ‘ah fuck, I shoulda just gotten that.”

We got on the train and ate our sandwiches and chilled. The ride was uneventful as far as I recall. We spent most of the time discussing huge beers and sausages and how we were extremely excited to consume both en masse once we got to Munich.

As we exited the train, Dan used his map to try and figure out where the Brauhaus was. We were looking specifically for the Hoffbrauhaus, which is famous for a few things. Firstly, it’s where Rusty gets the girl to pull out her tits in European Vacation and secondly, its beergarden is where a plucky young lad named Adolph Hitler first clued the world into his bold new ideas about National Socialism. Overall, I think you’ll agree it’s got historical cache that dudes like Dan and I were interested in immersing ourselves in. So, we found a brauhaus and began walking from the train station with all our lame gear, up this dumb hill, through this dumb park only to show up all sweaty at this shitty place that looked a lot like a giant TGIFridays.

“Uh, this isn’t the place I was thinking of. Is this the place you were thinking of?” Dan asked. “No. Not at all.” I said. We decided to take a cab. Our cab was a cream colored BMW. Our cabbie was a handsome Turkish man who drove like a complete fucking asshole to our endless delight. At one point he went to the right around a huge line of cars attempting to make a left across 3 lanes of traffic, only to turn outside of the guy in front who was already edged into the oncoming lane, and I said “wow. Bold move,” he shrugged and said simply “eh…taxi driver.”

We got out at the Brauhaus, strolled into the biergarten, ordered 2 large beers from an Italian guy and sat and relaxed for the first time in days. It was early afternoon, beautiful blue skies, and a weird Japanese family eating gigantic beef knuckles was sharing our long table. Shit was damn near perfect. We ordered some sausages and things got completely perfect.

After we ha stuffed ourselves, we went to the giftshop to get stuff for our families. I purchased a rubber ducky in lederhosen and a stuffed horse, also in hosen. Dan asked if they had any of the beer wench outfits for kids, as he wanted to get one for his daughter, to which the woman replied “ve have nothing for kids. Ve are a beeeer hall” ignoring that I’d just bought a fucking rubber ducky. Whatever. It was funny. Dan felt bad until I reminded him “fuck that lady.”

We walked out and a bunch of fat old Americans started going “hey, look! The band’s here! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

A young Adolf Hitler readies to wow the world with his radical ideas about....oh, no. My bad. That's just Dan having a beer.

which was every bit as funny to us as it was to them. That’s what separates us Americans from the rest of the world folks, our unbelievably prescient sense of humor. Anyway, we jumped in a cab to go to the club and our cab driver was A) Italian and B) fucking hammered and high on cocaine. He was dancing, screaming, punching the steering wheel, going fucking nuts. He was telling jokes and generally he was a great time except for the fact that he was driving. Had it not been casual city driving, where you’ve really gotta get weird to fuck yourself up, I think we would have been terrified, but as it was we were just mildly concerned (I sat shotgun once again, so I had the concern of this guy just randomly leaning over and biting me and me getting hepatitis. In that way, I had more worries on my plate than Dan did).

Anyway, the coked up, drunken cabbie dropped us off at the club and we set about getting our bearings. This was another compound type place. We were playing in a small basement room and across the way was a dorm zone where we were gonna sleep. We soundchecked, snacked, and generally sort of lounged around for a while.

this helpful sign kept us from getting lost. We played at Sunny Red

This place was kind of off the beaten path, so there wasn’t a ton to do. I watched a kid on a razr scooter ride in the skatepark for a while, but generally it was pretty tame. People eventually showed up and there was a good audience so I played. The show was cool. Dan played next and again, good vibe, good folks. This show DOES mark the first and only truly German compliment of the tour which was “I’m a big fan of you guys and I’d love to buy a shirt, but I don’t like the designs.” Beyond that, the night was pretty uneventful. We hung out and drank a few beers and then we retired up to our dorm where we sat around watching Hannibal Burress standup comedy clips on our phones like a couple of real rockstars on tour in a foreign land. Then we passed out. Sigh.  Tomorrow is Koln.