Tag: beer

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Once & Future Frankfurt

Frankfurt was the first city I visited outside the U.S.  That was almost thirty years ago.  Time flies.  Things have changed in Frankfurt, but not that much.  I use Euro instead of Deutsch Marks and the city seems more international than German.  There are a lot of immigrants and Irish pubs.

I met three Irishmen in the youth hostel when I was here in 1979.  They had checked into a hotel and went out to get drunk.  That night, none of them could remember where their hotel was located and they still couldn’t – three days later.  It didn’t bother them too much.  They seemed to have money.  During the day, they walked around the city trying to recognize their erstwhile lodging.  At night, they went out and got drunk.   Maybe they got stranded permanently and founded one of those Irish pubs.

The Irish wandered Europe and the world in those days looking for work.  Germany was booming and they could find unskilled work.  Today the Irish economy is one of the most vibrant in the world and the Germans envy their low unemployment rate. Ireland used to have high taxes and a government unfriendly too business.  No more.  It is now easy to set up shop in Ireland and the country has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world; it around 12% compared to the Germans’ (and ours) of around 35%.   Some things change. 

BTW – I heard that number on the debates today AFTER I wrote this.  I guess I am topical.

But a picture is worth a thousand words.  Below are some pictures with captions of less than a thousand words to explain them. 

I was hungry most of the time when I visited Germany in 1979.  I didn’t bring enough money, so I lost weight.  One of my favorite dishes was goulash soup at Weinerwald.   IT was cheap.  I loved it.  Hunger is the best cook and it doesn’t taste as good now as then, but I still eat it when I can, for old time’s sake.   Below is what I like to eat now.   This is breakfast at Courtyard. Much healthier food, but still enough fat to make it good. BTW – Courtyard Marriotts in Europe are great.  They are usually in nice, wooded locations and they are not too expensive.

Even with my meager funds in 1979, I still could afford beer – liquid bread, cornflakes in a bottle.  My favorite beer was Heniger, a local Frankfurt product.  It still is good.  The picture is from the old town square.  It is great to sit in the sun on a cool day and drink a cool beer. 

Es gibt kein schoneres leben

You can tell a good beer by the “cling”.  Cling is the foam that adheres to the sides off the glass as you drink it down.  It should look foamy, with small bubbles.  If there is not much cling, the beer is too light.  If the bubbles are too big, it probably means that the cup is a little dirty.  Don’t order anything containing mayonnaise at that establishment.  Below is good cling.  The beer is Bitberger, with the slogan “bitte ein bit” – please a bit(berger).  It doesn’t translate so well.

Germany has a good street culture, with lots of sidewalk cafes an food shops.  This is typical of the bread and pastry shops.   I couldn’t stay in Germany too long.  The beer and chocolate would be too tempting.

This post is getting a little long.  Let me continue in the next post.

P.S. It may seem like I drink a lot of beer.  I don’t …usually.  The Marines (and me) drink not a drop of it during deployment.  I do like beer and during my time in dry and beer free Al Asad I developed an aching hunger for the liquid bread.  As luck would have it, I spent a day in Germany on my way home.  I saw my chances and I took ’em.

Im Himmel gibt’s kein Bier,
Drum trinken wir es hier.
Denn sind wir nicht mehr hier,
Dann trinken die andern unser Bier.

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Beer

I suffered from Red Sky, which prempted my trip for a bridge opening in Baghdadi, so I was just thinking about and remembering times past and people gone.  It can be a little melancholy, but remembering family gatherings also brings along many good memories and some interesting insights.  At my family gatherings, we always had lots of beer.  I don’t suppose that comes as much of a surprise in a German-Polish Milwaukee family.

Drinking Beer is a tradition in my family.  I have been drinking beer since just a little before it was legal for me to do that.  (BTW – in those days Schlitz was the leading beer.  It soon went downhill as they fooled around with the brewing process.  Now Schlitz is owned by Pabst and they are bringing back the old Schlitz formula.)  As I travelled around, I learned to appreciate different sorts of beer.  The Germans have a superb Beer culture, but the Belgians have a wider variety of beer and the Czechs are the world’s most dedicated beer lovers.  I even learned to like English beer served at room temperature, which, BTW, is not warm.

Beer connoisseurs generally have little love of American beer.  Paradoxically, American beers are among the world’s top sellers.  In fact, this paradox is easily explained and doing so help s explain the general paradox of American culture, which is simultaneously coveted and reviled.

Major American beer brands developed in a large market with lots of diversity, choices and competition.  Like other producers in such a market, beer makers had to appeal to a variety of tastes. Beer drinking is usually a shared-social event.   The beer consumed must appeal to everybody in the group. It is a kind of consensus system that leads toward a lowest common denominator.  The beer that everyone accepts will tend to be preferred over one that a couple people love but others cannot stomach.   The more diverse the group in question, the less extreme the choices are likely to be.   Five guys with similar tastes might agree on a very dark bitter beer; a hundred people from diverse backgrounds will not.

For example, most people find Budweiser (the King of Beers from St Louis) inoffensive, although few love it.  Some people love Budweiser (from the Czech city of Budvar), but most people find it a little heavy and “skunky”.  Beer lovers might object, but most casual beer drinkers prefer American Budweiser, which is even making inroads into the European beer market. 

America is good at producing products with mass appeal, which annoys those who consider their own tastes better than the ordinary people’s.  This means that many intellectuals and artists disparage the U.S. and its consumer culture, even as they live off its largess.

Adding insult to the injury they perceive, as the global mass market develops, the world is becoming more like America.  This does not mean that people are copying America in all or most cases.  It just means that the large mass market that helped shape American tastes and habits is now acting on people worldwide.  In the beer world, for example, we see the ascendancy of Corona, which follows the same pattern as innocuous American mass brews.

BTW – when Corona executives took their beer to be analyzed by a chemist, he told them that their horse had diabetes. 

Beer connoisseurs and lovers of distinction in all fields are encouraged by the counter trend, ironically made possible by globalization and new technologies made possible by the mass markets.  It used to be called mass customization.  In a very large and rich market, especially with the help of computer technologies, it is possible to assemble market worthy groups for all sorts of things.  Maybe a million people would like to drink some dark and heavy beer, but if they are spread across the whole U.S. they were so thin on the ground that nobody could afford to cater to them under the old paradigm.  Now there is more choice, as the marginal costs decline for producing variety and marketing it widely. 

We have passed through the mass undifferentiated market to a mass customization, with more choice and more variety.   The cooler of even local beer outlets now has a dizzying variety of brews.   The days when it could be technically accurate to say “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer” are over.  The scary regimented socialism of the 1960s Sci-Fi never developed.

I am not sure we need all that choice, but that is not my choice to make.  That is the way its going to be for beer and everything else.

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Happy Birthday USMC

In heaven there is no beer; that’s why we drink it here … NOT.   If Anbar is heaven, we have been seriously misled in Sunday School, but General Order #1 prohibits drinking by U.S. military in Iraq.  It shows respect for the local customs and probably saves a lot of trouble.  As a cruel hoax, the chow hall features coolers full of nonalcoholic beer.   It looks like real beer, but that one word modifier says it is not worth drinking.  If there is any real beer on Al Asad, I have never seen any sign of it, and I have looked – until today.  Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps and every Marine gets two beers – two real beers – on this happy day.  This includes honorary Marines like me.  All joking aside, it is an honor to be among Marines on their birthday.

First we got a half hour lecture about the history of 2nd Marine Regiment.  It was an interesting history, very heroically told by true believers.  More than the usual number of people showed up for the meeting.  After that, we all filed out and got two OPEN beers.  Nobody can share a beer; nobody can save a beer for later.  It is two beers for everybody and only two beers. Officers, enlisted men and FSOs all get exactly the same numbers.  Colonel Clardy promised to crush anybody who drank more than two beers.  He seemed serious and probably could do it, so nobody risked provoking his wrath.  There was some choice among brands.  We had Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Special Draft and ordinary Budweiser, I took the Miller.  Bud Light is no better than that ersatz stuff they have at the PX and Coors Light just a baby step above.  Budweiser is brewed from rice.   Need I say more?  Miller Special Draft really is decent beer and its flavor was significantly enhanced by its being in this here and now place.  We were a little worried there would not be enough beer to go around.  According to the Airforce, several cases of beer were “damaged” in transit and could not be delivered.  I am told their story is true.

As long as I am on the subject of beverages, let me say a few words about my favorite beverage, which is Coca-Cola.   I drink a lot of the stuff – more than 2 liters a day.  Until a couple of years ago, I drank ordinary coke.  I used to run a lot and burn off the calories, but nobody can outrun Father Time and after he trips you, his cousin Mr. Fat comes around.   I switched to Diet Coke in Poland.  In Europe it is called Cola Light.   But the interesting thing about Coca Cola, the ubiquitous symbol of the homogeneity of globalization, is that it tastes different in different places.  The best version of ordinary Coke, for example, is found in Brazil.  Western Europe’s Coke has a peculiar taste, but in Eastern Europe Coke is more like the U.S. variety.   European Cola Light is much better than Diet Coke you get in the U.S., even though the cans look similar.  What tastes like Cola Light in the U.S. is Coke Zero.   So when overseas, I drink Cola Light, which now I like even better than sugary Coke.  In the U.S. I go for the crisp taste of Coke Zero. 

Unfortunately, my switch to Diet Coke proved a temporary fix.  Father Time has delivered another kick in the keister and Mr. Fat moved right in again.   I will have to cut down on the chocolate now.  Life is tough all over, but with the proverbial couple of beers softening the blow, today who cares?

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Dulles & Frankfurt: Good Beer Makes it Okay

Dulles & Frankfurt exert gravitational pull on my life.  Dulles has been the jumping off point and Frankfurt the landing spot for most of my overseas adventures.  In spite of dozens of stops in Frankfurt, I have left the airport only twice: during my first international travel in 1979 (when I hitchhiked down the road, promptly got lost and spent the night on a park bench in Heidelberg) and last year when I made some local appointments.  Frankfurt is an interesting place, but most of us see only the transit airport.  We arrive tired, dirty, cranky and eager to go someplace else.  We leave with a bad impression.  Too bad.

The State Department generously gave me business class because my travel time is well over 14 hours, so I got some rest on the flight over.  Now I have the 8+ hour wait before I leave for Amman to await milair to Baghdad. 

I am sitting in the Business Lounge in FRK.  Snacks and Coca Cola are free.  I can plug in my computer.  Other than that the place has little to recommend it.  I arrived to a rows of unattractive grey chairs, crowded with unattractive grey people surrounded by dour grey and blue walls.  Sadly, this is the place where I belong.  We all tend to see FRK through grey filters.

However, things are looking up.  After a little while, most of those crowds moved along to their final destinations (what an ominous phrase) leaving the place quiet for us happy few long-term residents.  It is not so bad w/o the tumult.  I managed to sleep a little and although I have the stiff neck to prove I can sleep sitting straight up, I feel refreshed and in a much better mood than when I walked through the door a couple of hours ago.

I have also found another thing that discerning travelers appreciate about Germany – beer.  They have a splendid little machine that dispenses Beck’s beer the German way – with the proper amount of foam in the proper type of glass.  It may be mere psychology, but the stuff we get in the bottles back home just is not the same.  The properly tapped beer is an art form, with froth just above the rim, so that you enjoy the visual beauty, feel and smell the flavor before you taste it.  Some people appreciate fine wine.  That’s nothing but grape juice in old bottles to an old Milwaukee boy like me who prefers beer.  Since I will not be seeing much of the golden liquid grain in Iraq, I do not mind drinking it here.  The grey surroundings have brightened.  They are even some big pretzels and what looks like goulash soup.

Es gibt kein schoneres leben, even if it is only an airport and only for a moment.  On the road to Iraq, I take it when I can, because when I am gone from here, everybody else will be drinking all the beer.  FRK is not all that bad, once you get to know it.

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Chickenfest 2004

Returned from the annual family get together “Chickenfest”. Jerry and Tony Bozich do the cooking. My cousin Dorothy organizes the party. It has become a big event that a lot of people look forward to (how about that for great grammar dangling.)

It all starts with the chickens. Jerry seasons them from the inside out and then puts them on long pipes. They kind of get their heads stuck up their asses, a kind of Abu Ghraib for chickens. You can see from the picture. The machine is a local design. Jerry got some old man friend of his to make it. It is literally made of junk – pieces of metal that the old guy scavenged up. But it works well. The chickens cook slowly and the meat remains juicy. The result is chicken as good as I have had anywhere and better than most.

I personally still feel the pain from last year’s Chickenfest revelation when I learned that my grandfather was NOT a brew master, as I had always believed. He was, in fact, a candy maker. Beer . . . candy? Candy is not as cool. It wasn’t even famous candy like M&M, Three Musketeers or Milky Way. He made caramels and hard candies of dubious trademark. I really believed he was a brew master. Why? I thought he was a brew master because when he took the glory road he left a bottle of “Meisterbrau” (or brau meister – don’t recall exactly) beer in our fridge. My mother never threw it out and it dwelled permanently in the space between the catsup and mustard for at least twenty years. When we replaced our gas fridge with a new and improved electric one, the beer moved too. It was a fixture of the fridge. For as long as I could remember I saw that bottle every time I needed some cheese or coke and I ate a lot of cheese and drank a lot of coke. Meisterbrau was grandpa’s beer. I started associating Meisterbrau – brew master with my grandfather. We lived in Milwaukee, the most famous beer city of North America. The leap of imagination was a short one. Grandpa was a brew master. Meisterbrau, as I learned later, was not a good beer and not even made in Milwaukee. Its little known claim to distinction is that it was the precursor of all light beer. Meisterbrau tried unsuccessfully to make a light beer in the early 1970s. Miller bought Meisterbrau, tweaked the formula a little and created Miller Light. Anyway, I blame Meisterbrau as the source of my confusion. A lot of family histories are like that, I suspect. I am thinking of going with the original legend, maybe even embellish it with scandal to explain how we lost whatever great fortune we once enjoyed. Why tarnish the beauty of the thing with unnecessary accuracy.

Whether the old guy was a brew master or not, Beer was and is still a big part of family gatherings, but beer drinking is a declining art among us. The older generation failed to pass the torch. In days of yore, the men (they were real men in those days) would sit around a keg of beer and drink prodigious amounts of the liquid bread. Past, present and future blurred into a soft amber glow. In the parlance of the time, they would all get a snoot full. Now the our gatherings are relatively sober affairs. We still have our share of characters, as you can see from the pictures. Everyone is healthier, however, and that is a good thing. The beer now comes in bottles and cans and there is greater variety. You count cans and bottles individually. Bottles slow the drinking. The keg tended to facilitate sluckin it down, as cups held more than a standard can and you tended to fill it up again before it was empty. In other words, you never really knew how much you were drinking because you had a bottomless cup.

Milwaukee was especially pleasant during my visit, with highs in the seventies with low humidity and a breeze off the lake. I drove around a little and ended up near Whitnall Park. I used to ride my bike to Whitnall Park along Grange Avenue. I don’t recognize most of the way any more. What used to be a country road is now a suburban street, but some is preserved as park. Just past 76th Street stands Jeremiah Curtin’s house and an old lime factory. Jeremiah Curtin was a moderately famous linguist, who wrote a history of the Mongols and translated Szienkeiwicz (for those less up on Polish culture, he wrote “Quo Vadis” and won a Nobel prize in literature about 100 years ago.) Above are pictures of the old lime farm. It is that quintessential Wisconsin style. The house is made out of crème city brick, the kind you can find only around Milwaukee. The other building is stone. It would be nice to make a community in a place like that.

I went down to my old running trail in Grant/Warnemont Park. It is a really nice running trail with a little roll but nothing a reasonable person could call a hill. I ran the distance in 24:21, which is 25% slower than I used to run it when I wore a younger man’s shoes, but it was still fun. That trail was a solace through the worst of my unsuccessful job searching back in the early 1980s. I think I applied at every major firm in North America. They were amused, but not interested. The more rejection letters I got, the farther I ran. I was probably in the best aerobic condition of my life. Sometimes I ran all the way through Grant Park to the Root River Parkway, about 12 miles. I am fatter now and I can’t run that far. I blame the economy. The economy has not been that bad since then, so I have no compulsion to run very far. The trail has changed a lot since I started there. A very big oak tree that used to guard one of the kinks in the trail died some time back. Most of the birch trees have died and even the stumps have rotted into compost. A birch forest is ephemeral everywhere, but especially around here. Individual trees don’t live long and won’t reproduce naturally in southeastern Wisconsin.

The trail used to run through a mixed meadow and forest that looked like the ecosystem you would expect 100 miles farther north. Whether through indolence or design, the park system has let some places return to nature. I used to think that letting things return to nature was an unmitigated blessing, but on reflection I recall a beautiful view of the lake around the second trail bend, kind of a v shaped field with wild flowers framed by tamarack trees. It looked natural, but was not. It takes a lot of planning to be spontaneous and somebody planned it well.

Tamaracks are not native to this part of Wisconsin, so they must have been planted about forty years ago. They backed up against the native basswoods and maples and looked really good especially in the fall, when their gold needles burned against the crimson of the maples. The park system also planted some Austrian pines “randomly” in the fields about the same time. They stayed dark green through the year. It was a work of art. The tamaracks and pines are still there, but you can’t see them unless you look closely in the bushes. The exquisite interaction of tamarack, maple and pine is now replaced by the pea green banality of the box elder. Some of the box elders and ash reach about 20 or 30 feet. Box elders are nice in their place (generally next to rusty railroad tracks and pushing up through the ruins of abandoned warehouses next to rusty railroad tracks) but I never did like their unique fragrance and they block the view. That’s not good. I loved to watch the lake and the joys and sorrows of its changing face. Natural succession won’t stop, of course. The box elders are transition species. Some of the ash trees will remain but in about fifty years maples, basswoods and maybe a couple of beeches, will cover the whole place. I won’t see that and nobody will see the lake through them.