Thursday, August 14, 2008
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Going Away Madness...part 2
Wednesday, work.
Going away party at work, at 6pm.
4 cases of beer.
Foosball.
Said my goodbyes to friend from work.
Beer. (and yes, partying at work after work hours is quite normal)
Lock up the place since we are the last to leave, first time ever.
Head to Bergwolf one last time for beers and currywurst.
Allen and Clive fighting and rolling on the floor.
Allen breaks a glass attempting an awesome bar trick.
Allen and Clive knock over a sign and break a bottle of beer fighting on last time.
That's this night in a nutshell.
parker
Add - In...
Thursday was my final day at work. I was able to make it out by about 2pm and make it back to pick up Alex and head to lunch. We went to a place called Lo Studente, a place that serves excellent pizza that I had been to before. After that, we did some shopping near Marienplatz for Christmas gifts one last time.
We had our final dinner in Munich in some eerie 1970’s décor place. We had visions of going somewhere really cool, but we started late, on a thursday, and low and behold it was damn near impossible to get a table anywhere. The place we found was like some old Italian mafia style restaurant. I think everyone was just tired from our long week of partying and what not, so having a nice quiet dinner where we could share some laughs and relax was nice.
After dinner I packed my belonging which I've had in Munich for the last 4 1/2 months, and threw out whatever I could to make things, lighter. Although I added in more than I took out with Christmas gifts.
Munich was cold and frosty when I left. It hadn’t snowed in Munich since November. I guess that's how I wanted to remember Munich. I think I was there long enough to really experience the city and feel like I was a part of it, not just a visitor. Plus the daily routine and sights I saw everyday will stick with me forever. I'm starting to get a little nostalgic just thinking about it...
parker
Hafbrau Haus Munchen
Tuesday was back to the grind...only to finish the evening with a run at the Haufbrau house. I wanted to take Alex somewhere we could get some good German food and beer, kind of like Oktoberfest but on a smaller scale. We first order our liters of beer, then food. Yeah, in that order, we had priorities you know. We wait forever for our food to come...beers getting empty...so we order another round of beers. This is where things start to get dangerous. Anything after two liter of German beer and you are getting into dangerous territory, especially on a tuesday night when I have to work the next day!
We spent our time chatting with some Norwegians at our table, since they are shared bench seats at big wooden tables. The guy comes back and soon admits to forgetting about our food, so we now reorder our food. It finally comes, we are starving and have finished off two liters of beer already, so actually we are kind of bloated hungry and buzzed. We order one more liter for prosperity.
Super touristy place to go to, but a whole lot of fun.
parker
Me, my girl, and Barcelona.
Sat, wake up…hung over. Ethan calls saying he’s catching a ride with the other Yankees, who have to leave early because of an incident that happened, which I am not allowed to talk about here.
Drive back to Munich on the X3. I try to use the windshield wipers but the sprayers were frozen, so all the blades do are scrape gunk on the window and screeches like crazy. The window was now worse off before I started to attempt to clean it.
After parking the car back at work, Alex and I walk to the train station, hungry and a little dehydrated. Plus is freezing out even though it's not snowing. We hadve to wait about 25 minutes in the biting cold for our train to come to take us to the flughaven (airport). We hit the airport and make it past security, and hit a restaurant for some food, but after a few bites I realize it's way to early to try and eat a big meal.
Fly in around the city, great views, and the weather was perfect. Get the train to our hotel called the Eurostars Angli. I picked it because it was a little outside the city, and had the most interesting architecture and design for a hotel I have seen. The room was amazing....but after our long Friday night partying in Aschau with the Germans, we needed a nap. Wake up at like 1230am on Saturday morning. Yeah, we got in at like 6pm to the hotel and then slept til past midnight. Not to discourage us, we head into town for food. The main strip was pretty much deserted. People were selling cheap beer all over the street, very interesting. We find some food, eat, and head back home for our big day Sunday of sightseeing.
First thing we do after getting back into town is head to an Irish bar for lunch by the Sagrada Familia. We caught the end of a soccer game, which is pretty much the only sport you can see in almost any country in Europe. But the Sagrada familia was very interesting...It is over 150 years old and is still a work in progress. But the architecture was quite impressive, plus they had an area that showed the progress of the church in pictures.
Walked around and find the Arc de triomph and other sites in Barcelona. Nothing like a trusty tourist map to get you around the city! Later turned out to be pretty cool when we stumbled on the Picasso museum. They had hundreds of his pieces of art all lined up chronologically in different rooms. I won't bore you with the history, but it was pretty amazing to be that close to the artwork, so numerous and well preserved. 
On to dinner, we went to a place called Taller de Tapas, a great little tapas bar near some nighttime shopping. Apparently it's a pretty good Tapas bar and I think they even had a few around the city. Nonetheless, a good bottle of wine, great food, and good atmosphere, all shared with someone who I was very happy to enjoy it with. 
After dinner, we headed to one bar, then on to the next which was one of those back alley good luck finds called Guru BCN. Dark atmosphere and couches, packed with people. We finished out the night there and caught a taxi home. Well, our original plan was to take the train, but when we got to the station the bars were down, meaning it was close. So we stopped for McDonalds, and then got our taxi. 
Sunday we hit the beach before heading back to the airport, and found a nice place to eat called Aqua. We were looking for another restaurant, but after that search turned up not looking so nice, we picked our favorite. The weather was just warm enough to sit outside with our jacket on, so we did, and I enjoyed some curried chicken, while Alex dined on some duck. All in all a nice two days and two nights in Barcelona...I had wanted to go to Spain as one of my trips while in Europe, and the timing was just right and everything couldn't have worked out better.
parker
RTT Munich Christmas Party...OMG.
The date was December 14th, 2007...a day that will live indefinitely. My company, RTT, does a yearly Christmas party. USA did one, which I missed obviously since I am in Munich, so we joined in with the Germans. The plan was to drive to Aschau Germany, about 60 miles east of Munich. They offered to provide transportation, a hotel to stay in, dinner, drink, and then wristbands for entrance to a club for after dinner where we can drink for free all night long. Yeah, damn. To top it off, it's at the base of a castle in Aschau.
After checking into the hotel, we head over to dinner where we drink Gluewein, a type of spiced red wine that is served hot. You can find it all over Munich around Christmas. Reijo begins the night be spilling a glass all over Curtis while trying to shake hands with someone. More to come on this topic later.
We move inside, hang our coats and find a seat. We Americans congregated together with our close friends from work, as usual. There was about 250 or so people at the dinner, which took place in a large hall, high barn style roof, decorated to the hilt, with a stage at one end for performances. It's at this point that Reijo takes another swing at some wine, again going for a greeting, but this time knocks over an entire bottle of wine that hits a glass that comes flying at Alex and I...you can see she took most of the hit in the photo below of the aftermath.
Sidenote to the wine...I spent a thursday evening at work taste testing about 10 wines with fellow employees...and I mean I really put some work in drinking this wine. We picked one, then decided on two winners, to be served at dinner, though I didn't see either on the table. Hmmm.
Dinner was a choice of duck, beef, or veggie. I of course, had the duck. Not everyday you have duck. After dinner there was a stage performance. Ludwig and Christoph, the head guys at RTT Munich, were placed in competition against each other in events from guess your employees birthdays to arm wrestling to taking shots of schnapps. All funny stuff and they were good sports and even spoke in English to the crowd, maybe to accommodate us, who knows.
After dinner, we move upstairs to enjoy two German guys playing cover songs of American bands, only they sang most of the songs were sang with incorrect lyrics. Either way it added to the whole night just perfect. We danced our asses off, did arm in arm jumping to punk music or whatever they were playing. Then Reijo got wobbly on the floor and fell over with a bunch of people and knocked over a drumset. That was our signal to move on to the club. 
On the way we got involved in an epic snowball fight. The snow had been falling hard the entire time out here, and living in California I think we all decided it was necessary to take advantage of a situation where we can act like kids again. Incidents involed: Me yielding a Christmas tree and throwing it a people, Snowballs to the face, getting tackled to the icy hard ground, bodyslams into snowbanks, etc. 
Get to club, and get our drinks, thanks to Alex. Apparently I don't have boobs so I can't get drinks very quickly, whooda thunk it. Hit the dance floor and got crazy when 'Jump around' by House of Pain came on. I think Alex and I sang every word as loud as we could...might of scared the Germans a little.
The night ended around 3 or 4 in the morning with our drunken walk of shame back to the hotel. Sure saturday morning was hard, but it was all worth it. Hands down probably the funnest party I've been to in awhile. I definitely want to be in Munich for the Christmas party in 2008.
Oh yeah this is evidence of Clive and Curtis drunk in an elevator...I'll work on getting the video, but basically they fell over and Curtis kept getting slammed in the leg with the door, while neither of them could regain the ability to stand...check back for the video, it's gold.
parker
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