Christmas in Europe 2012, part 2 - Munich

I reluctantly left England to head out on the rest of my trip, and my first stop was Munich, Germany. I just happened to be arriving late on Christmas Eve, which meant that the city was all kinds of dead when I got there. After an odd train trip into the city, I just decided to stick to what works and drink at my hotel. And oh boy was that the right decision.

First off, the bartender chicky was a smokeshow. Easily the hottest woman I saw until I got to Paris 10 days later. She was grumpy at first because a bunch of kids were causing drama in the lobby, but she warmed up quickly. We were both amazed by a Russian dude that did an elaborate ceremony for his drink, with 2 glasses, a straw, and a lighter. Apparently it was a Flaming Sambuca, but neither of us (me and hot girl) had ever seen one before.

The Russian dude didn't speak much English, so it was a chore just setting it up. I had to google it on my tablet and show it to her so she could figure it out (with the Russian dude pointing and saying "Da! Da!"). She thanked me for the help with a couple of free pints, which was nice since I fucked up when I first got there and ordered a Radler/Shandy (beer and lemonade) without knowing any better. She laughed at me for it later. She was awesome. But this is one of my stories, so obviously I went to my room alone.

The next day was Munich exploration time. It was amusing because it was Christmas Day, so pretty much the only tourists out on the street with me were Asians. And there were a lot of them. I didn't even attempt to go into the biggest Munich beer garden because it was FULL of Asians. That was odd, but whatever.

I totally understand why Munich ranks so high on the most liveable city list though - everything is seamless, just like Vienna. Local transit is ridiculously easy. You can't get lost because signage is so good. And all the tourist sites and easy to find and readily accessible. Vienna is probably my dream city if I ever moved to mainland Europe, but Munich ranked second at that point. It's just so EASY. And so nice.

I do want to go back for Oktoberfest though. I feel like that's my destiny.

My last night in Munich ended in pain though. The crazy shoulder pain I experienced in England came back and completely ruined a good night's sleep. I had no idea what was wrong with me but I was actually scared, which is rare. Luckily I got the answer (and the fix) at the airport the next day on my way to Poland. Folks, Poland is awesome. And I'll explain in my next blog.

Christmas in Europe 2012, Part 1 - England

I had it all figured out. I was going to South America! Argentina! Chile! Uruguay! Maybe other places! I booked the flight for July 2012 and had 3 weeks to do it. I was psyched.

Then I wasn't so psyched.

I hadn't accounted for the fact that those countries were way more expensive than I thought, and I only had three months to save for the trip (and pay off the flight, which was booked on credit of course). I just wouldn't have been able to see all of what I wanted to see due to financial constraints. So for the second time in my life*, I made a radical flight change - instead of South America in July, it would be Europe in December. And the southern US in July instead, which was much cheaper (and documented in my last few blogs).

*The first time was when I booked a flight to China to check out Shanghai and Beijing, but succumbed to a free refund policy on Air China to go check out the Yucatan area of Mexico instead. Why? Well, why the fuck did I book a flight to China in the first place? It's China. That seems like a better question to me.

Anyway, I had 18 days in Europe over the Christmas holidays. My first stop was England to visit family, which is always awesome. Then it was off to Munich, Germany. Then two cities in Poland - Warsaw and Gdansk. A two-day stop in the capital of Lithuania (Vilnius) was next, followed by four days to traverse Switzerland. I finished up with a day in Paris and two more days to chill in London. Yes, that sounds rather ambitious. But it was fun.

This was the first time I had flown directly from Vancouver to the UK, surprisingly enough. There was a 90 minute delay, but I had a row to myself to so it was more than okay. I was staying in the Kings Cross area of London for a night before taking the train up to Leeds, and it was typically entertaining. I chilled at a few local pubs, ate some bangers and mash in a gigantic Yorkshire pudding, and laughed at the locals' hate of everything French until I finally passed out after being awake for 30 hours or so.

After waking up typically early and laughing at some English game shows (Golden Balls anyone?), I jumped on the train to Leeds. It's only supposed to take a little over two hours, but flooding had taken out a bridge so it was delayed for a while. I was surrounded by weirdos as usual, and that didn't change when I actually got to the Leeds train station. My nephew Ryan met me there. He's not weird, he's awesome - but we were surrounded by weirdos either way. 

We drank at the train station for a bit and were joined by the lovely Louise, a good friend of Ryan's mom Shell. But there was a dude behind on with a crazy glasses and a big sticker on his jacket that asked people to remind him when it was 6pm so he could go do something. Then there was a starer. You've all seen one - every time you look at the person, they're staring at you. They might not even realize it, but they are. And it's 100% creepy.

Anyway, the train station crowd got old quick so we hitched a ride with Louise and Dave to my brother's local, the Hope. Ryan insisted that he was going to go beer for beer with me back at the train station, and he wanted to continue it here. He's 19 and pretty ripped, but he's about 5'8 and I'd guess about 175 pounds. I'm obviously WAY bigger, so I knew how this was going to turn out. I warned him many times, but he wouldn't listen. As expected, it turned into hilarity not long after we got to the Hope. 

It's probably about 5pm at this point. We walk in, and Ryan is immediately surrounded by a gaggle of old ladies. Ryan's a singer, and apparently he had performed at some sort of event (I think it was a Christmas-related thing, but I can't remember for sure) at the pub the week before for these ladies. And they loved him. To the point that they all wanted to dance with him immediately. Here's a good kid, so he was down. 

Then they started molesting him.

I was playing a "Deal or No Deal" video game, watching Ryan get accosted by these ladies. They had him surrounded, and they were pulling his shirt up and showing his abs to the rest of the ladies, who took turns rubbing them and generally harassing him. It was all in good fun, but pretty odd. It was also so funny I couldn't even play the game. I was laughing so hard that I spilled my beer and ran out of time on my turn. I'd say that he owes me 50 pence, but the entertainment value of that was worth way more than the money I lost in the game (and let's face it - I was gonna lose the money anyway. I suck at British Deal or No Deal).

He had just managed to peel the senior's division off of him when his parents arrived. My brother Terry and his lady Shell have always been awesome to me, and I felt a little bad that their son was...well, kinda drunk. In fact, he passed out in his seat within an hour of them arriving, which I profusely apologized for. As usual, they just laughed it off. After a few more beers, we retired at a relatively normal time.

The next day was good and bad. We had planned on going on a train pub crawl between Leeds and Manchester, but the local flooding made that a problem. So we just went on a pub crawl in Leeds instead. That turned out to be good, because halfway through I developed some crazy shoulder pain, like nothing I had ever felt before. I ended up finding out what caused it a few days later, but for the time being I was totally confused and felt terrible about killing everyone else's good time. 

I was able to sleep it off though, and woke up a few hours later to find out that the party had just continued at their place. We ended up staying up till 5am - I drank cider; Ryan puked on purpose to make himself feel better, then got scared into insomnia by trying to watch a suspense movie in his room; Shell passed out for a while on the couch, then woke up demanding Jack Daniels (which caught up to her the next day); and Terry and I just talked about everything under the sun, just like we always do. 

As mentioned above, Shell was feeling pretty rough the next day. You'd hardly know it though, because she's always so chipper and upbeat. We just hung out for the day, watching all sorts of different stuff on TV and having a few drinks. Terry and Shell passed out relatively early (after midnight Christmas Eve shopping for Shell and Ryan, where he bought me a bunch of socks that came in super handy on my trip with a hole in my boot - thanks again man!), but I stayed up to watch an NFL game between the Seahawks and Niners. Ryan was still up and I tried to explain the rules since the NFL has little presence in the UK. He made me laugh over and over by just saying the same thing in response to my rational explanation of the rules:

"So it's just gay rugby?"

Unfortunately I had to set off the next day to continue my trip, but Terry and Shell accompanied me to the train station for a sendoff beer. Just like every other time, they were awesome hosts and I owe them a ton. Thanks again everyone! From there, it was off to Munich.

Trip to the Southern US, Finale - Charlotte

I'm not gonna lie here, I came to Charlotte as the last stop on my southern US trip for one reason - it was the cheapest city on the east coast to fly home out of. It's known as a business city without a ton of tourist sites, and that turned out to be true. But it was still nice and I found out a lot about it from a few different kind locals.

My hotel was on a university campus, which was a first for me. The staff was made up of hospitality majors at the school who were all extremely eager to help out with whatever because their work experience grade depended on it. I had to laugh when a front desk girl asked me to ask her about local restaurants just so she could tell me, even though we both knew I didn't care. She was cute though, so I obliged. She then told me "off the record" about a good bar up the street. THAT I cared about.

I checked out the bar the first night and had some food after a long wander around. I had to cover a UFC event though, so it was an early night back at the hotel for me. The next day was when I really learned about Charlotte.

Upon return to the bar early on a Sunday afternoon, there were but two other customers in the whole place with me. My attire once again drew attention (just like Atlanta in my last blog), but it was my Canucks hat this time. One of the guys there was from Detroit and was a massive Wings fan. So it was hockey talk on this occasion. 

Turns out the other dude was from just outside Buffalo and a Sabres fan, and the two guys were roommates. They both worked for Bank of America as mortgage brokers, and explained that probably 10% of the Charlotte population worked for the bank and none of them were from NC. They seemed to find NC amusing but a bit backwards, which turned out to be pretty spot on.

After a few beers there, they explained that they had nothing else to do so they were going on a "college girl pub crawl". Did I want to come along? Hell yeah I wanted to come along!

While we went to a couple of bars that weren't that busy yet, they explained their self-professed "preppy white" perspective on Charlotte. According to them, it was one big culture clash. On one side were the outsider rich kids that had to live there for work (ie. them). On another side were white southerners, who were generally "poor rednecks". On the third side were African-Americans, who sit in an apparent precarious position on the northern edge of the south. I don't know if any of this is actually true, I'm just relaying their explanation. I didn't see much of the culture divide in my one day there, except for the music in bars. 

We finally got to a busy college bar. It was only about 2pm on a Sunday, but everyone was drunk. It was kind of weird that all the guys were on one side and all the girls were on the other, like a seventh-grade dance, but I didn't really care. We all sat right in the middle of all the chicks, which worked for me. Pretty soon there were girls dancing on the bar to country music in front of me, which certainly had my attention. They were dumb as rocks when I talked to them, but who gives a shit? They were underdressed, drunk and they had accents. And they thought I had one too. Touchdown!

My serenity was quickly shattered by a dude at least as big as me who tapped me on the shoulder and demanded my attention. I wasn't sure what the deal was right away, but I've got into fights for less than hot college girls and I was drunk already, so whatever. But it turns out that he wanted to talk to me because he saw my Canucks hat (sports gear again!). He was at the bar with his college lacrosse team, and over half of them had traveled to lacrosse camps in Vancouver over the past five years and loved the city. He tried to drag me over to his team, but I pointed at all the girls and said they should come over here. He agreed, they agreed, and the party kicked off.

The Bank of America guys were clearly a bit put off by the gathering of lacrosse meatheads suddenly surrounding them, but everyone was friendly. I had all sorts of drinks bought for me, which was great. The girls were obviously enjoying the attention too, and all started dancing on the bar. But the music was ridiculous.

Since Charlotte is pretty far north for a "southern" town, I guess this bar was out to accommodate everyone. So a country song would come on, then two hip hop songs. Then country. Then old school southern rock. Then hip hop again. Everyone had their favorites, which made it odd. One genre would be on and 1/3 of the bar would go nuts. Then another would come on and a different 1/3 would lose their shit. That went on for two hours, and I was thoroughly confused. But I was happy as long as college girls were dancing, of course.

I know what you're gonna say, and yes you're right - Timmy magically failed with the college girls. I felt every single one of my 33 years of age at that point. and a damn college lacrosse team hanging out with me didn't help my chances. I'm used to that happening though - that's just how I do. It's all good. I was more amused by the Bank of America guys failing though. 

They actually thought they deserved every girl in there because they made 60k a year or something, and getting shot down made them mad. When we finally left, they were super bitter. "Whores," they said. "I wouldn't want any of them in my condo anyway. They'd never leave."

Sure, guys.

I returned to my hotel after about eight hours of drinking, but I wasn't really done yet. So I went to the hotel bar and met a super cool bartender lady named Cathy. She was about 45 or so, but she was the epitome of the sweet southern belle that you see on TV. Which is odd, because the only other real southern girl I've ever known was named Cathy as well, and she was just as sweet. But this lady had liquor to give me, so she wins this round.

Over the course of a few hours, she explained her thoughts on Charlotte and North Carolina in general. I don't know why, but I always pictured NC as a pretty progressive state with big business and big universities. But she explained that most of it was very rural. She was from a rural part, a town called Havelock, which was apparently next to a big military base. She talked about growing up there and how the tensions there aren't that much different than they are in the "big city she is forced to work in to make money". 

It was about 9:30pm at this point, and the bar was dead. I asked if I was imposing, and if she could close and go home if I left (she commuted 45 minutes each way). She laughed and said that I was the least of her worries. She then explained that a ton of Bank of America people from out west were about to arrive, like they did every Sunday night. They stayed in the hotel during the week, and, "they're all assholes". She had been extremely proper to that point, so that made me laugh. 

But she was 100% correct. 

Sure enough, the bar was half-full by 10:30. And all of them (men and women) were extremely demanding. Nothing was good enough - their drink didn't come fast enough, it wasn't stiff enough, the food sucked, etc. She was right, they were assholes. I said that to her, and she just shrugged. "At least y'all from Canada are sweet. You being here make it easier to deal with all them. If you wanna stick around for a while longer, your drinks are on them."

"On them? How? I mean, I'll stay either way, but that's pretty funny."

"Don't worry honey, I've been doing this for 15 years. I know how to make it work," she said with a wink.

That happened nine months ago and it still makes me laugh when I think about it. I think I had nine beers, a shot, and a pizza. I paid for 2 beers. That's it. 

So Cathy is my favorite person in North Carolina. College girls ain't got nothin' on 45-year-old southern belles with connections, yo. Thanks again ma'am!