Day 109

Also known as the spring festival, the Fruehlingsfest takes place in Stuttgart in the middle of April and early May. The city sets up an entire amusement park in an area in Bad Cannstatt filled with roller coasters, and an assortment of rides. Every year, the amusement park gets packed up after the festival ends. Seems not worth the effort to me. It looked and felt a lot like the Fair at the PNE in Vancouver where parents brought their children. But despite its German style, like the Bavarians, the bars served a maβ of beer as well. Many stayed in the beer tents of the Stuttgart Hofbraeu drinking nonstop and stood on the benches waving the giant beer mug around. Others linked arms and danced. The atmosphere felt super German. Although in Munich, my friends and I visited The Hofbraeuhaus, the atmosphere felt more tourist-like, which took away from the real German part of it. Not many tourists visited the Fruehlingsfest. My friends and I all drank a maβ of beer (and more later on) to stick with the tradition. I went to the Fruehlingsfest with some friends from Bosch and others I met from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Ironically though, most of the people we went with came from Canada or USA, with one coming from France and another from Brazil.

Around the park, it looked like any amusement park. Loud sounds coming from speakers playing music, screams coming from a roller coaster nearby, and the amazing smell of all the super unhealthy fried foods kept reminding me of all the time I spent at the PNE during the past few summers in Vancouver. But inside the beer tents, the atmosphere totally changed.

From outside the beer tent, I could already see the giant party going on inside. Watched by security guards around the perimeter, they made sure that no minor could get in. For the first time, I actually people showing their ID’s before going in. Even at 2:30 in the afternoon, I already saw a man passed on drunk lying outside the beer tent.

While all the parents and their children stayed outside playing on the rides, everyone else stayed in the beer tent to drink the day away. We stayed in the beer tent for about an hour before we walked around the park. I went home at around 10 pm, after an eventful day of taking part in the German beer culture.

Just a collage of pictures that I took of beer.  I didn’t know I took so many.  I tried to take a picture of a different new and exciting beer each time, but I realize there’s two pictures of the same beer.

In an effort for the company to promote socializing with other interns working at Bosch, they organized what’s called a “Stammtisch”.  Literally translated it means, “regular’s table”.  It is a weekly gathering at a restaurant, cocktail bar, or club.  Together we drink beer and socialize, hence why I call it the weekly drinking day.  I met most of the interns at Bosch through this and I’ve even gone to Tubingen, Hohenzollern Castle, and Freiburg im Breisgau with them.  Soon we’ll be going to Köln (Cologne) and Paris.

At the first Stammtisch back in January, I didn’t know anybody except for the friend from Canada that I went with.  I didn’t really know what to expect.  When we got there, we found the Bosch table and introduced ourselves to the people already there.  I didn’t really know what to expect at the time.  Stereotypes of Germans told me that we’d probably end up drinking while we were there.  Sure enough, we did.  As someone who doesn’t drink a lot of beer, or alcohol in general for that matter, I was at a loss as to what drink to pick.  And so one of the interns recommended a beer called hefeweizen.  Hefeweizen is a kind of beer brewed with a large amount of wheat and malted barley.  I didn’t know that at the time, and all I knew was that it tasted damn good.  Definitely than the bitter North American beers.  A friend of mine described it as “drinking alcoholic, liquid bread”.  I am also told that it’s also got a lot of calories.  That’s okay with me, since I probably need to gain a few pounds, or kilograms as people use instead here.  I was also able to try a pale lager called helles.  This beer wasn’t as good as the hefeweizen, but that’s just personal preference.

Apart from just drinking, I also learned a bit about the drinking culture in Germany.  Like other cultures, Germans too will clink their glasses together before they drink, but one thing they must do is look at each person at the table in the eye while doing the clinking the glasses.  Otherwise, the person will be destined seven years of bad sex.  I don’t think I would have known that if I wasn’t told.

The location of the Stammtisch varies each week.  The first week I went, we went to a restaurant that had their own brewery, known as a “brauhaus” (how cool is that?).  Another time it was at a Spanish cocktail bar, that had cocktails at a discount if the party was large enough.  The most recent Stammtisch took place at a “disco”, which I think is German for club.  When I first heard the word, I immediately thought of The Bee Gees in the 70’s with their Saturday Night Fever.  I’m not a fan of clubbing, so I opted out of that one.

While drinking and socializing, I met a people from many different countries.  The group was a lot more multicultural than I thought.  There were people from Germany, France, Canada, America, China, Hong Kong, Iran, and even Mexico.  The only common language between all of us was English.  We all pretty much talked for at least 3 hours.  There were so many people that I ended up moving seats to get a chance to talk to other people sitting further away.  We went in there knowing nobody, but at the end we all weren’t strangers anymore.  Kind of like what Forrest Gump said, “Well I guess we ain’t strangers anymore!”