Whole gardens dedicated to beer

My arrival in Munich has me very excited. I am meeting up with a couple of friends, Kevika and Carolyn, for a whirlwind tour of Central European cities. In one little week, we will take Munich, Prague, and Berlin by storm.

I get to our hotel in Munich and there is a cryptic note. "Head to the surfer's wave in the Englischer Garden," it reads. Surfin' in Munich. Apparently, yes.

I find them and we are joyously reunited. We make plans for a trip to a biergarten in the park called the Chinischesturm (Chinese Tower). There will be beer and there will be the third-place World Cup match between Germany and Uruguay.

When we get to the outdoor beer garden, we, especially Kevika, get to work on our large 1L steins.

But there's more than just beer and soccer here. There's food too!

They sell the largest brez'ln (pretzels) I've ever seen in my life. Perfectly cooked to have some crispy, some chewy and some salty sections, these are a very appropriate complement to the crisp Hofbrau Weissbier we are downing. To make it even yummier, there is a side dish called obazda. It is a cheese spread with cream cheese, Camembert, onions, and paprika. It is great for dunking the pretzels into. Our table goes through two orders of these lickety-split.

Carolyn also raids the sausage section. The sausage covered in sauce is a currywurst, which is a mildly spiced sausage doused in ketchup with curry powder. It is tasty, especially the sauce. We hear, though, that Berlin is the founder and king of currywurst, so we'll have to see how this one holds up over time. Next to that is a long and skinny bratwurst. Yum. A mixture of spices and braising differentiates this from any old hot dog. Finally, there was half of a roast chicken, which remained remarkably juicy and held forth with a lot of chicken-y flavor.

The game itself was a good one, though the teams seemed to be playing on half speed. Lots of goals and a late win for Germany made sure the crowd we were with left happy. But, really, everybody was waiting for the next night, the final.

And, soon enough, the next night it was. This time, we would head to the Augstiner biergarten not too far from the Hauptbahnhof. It was an excellent setting, essentially half a city block that had been turned into a leafy, tree-filled courtyard with picnic tables and lots o' beer.

We had to have more of the obazda, an instant fan favorite. And, the 1L steins came out again, this time filled with Augstiner Helles beer.

And for the obazda we would need more gigantic brez'ln. New to our table was a plate of radi, thinly sliced large white radish. That was nice, very refreshing and not too tart. We also had a freshly washed bunch of normal red radishes, a bit more tart and still lovely.

To new things! A smoked cured sausage was pleasing though not all that memorable.

However, the mackerel was unbelievably good. A whole fish is skewered and salted, then half-grilled / half-smoked over charcoal embers. The result was a surprisingly meaty fish bursting with flavor. We had little wooden pitchforks and we went at the fish with vigor, leaving only a skeleton.

A similarly bursting crowd watched the World Cup final between Spain and Holland. Though there seemed to be a fire-sale on yellow cards, and the match wasn't that beautiful, it was a great experience. Sadly, my team, the Dutch, could not find the back of the net. Even more sadly, the Spanish did, right near the end of extra time.

And, with that, a great month of soccer watching ended in a Munich beer garden. It took place in venues large and small, Turkish, Israeli, Spanish, and German, on big screens, computer screens, 8" tvs, and 10 foot projections. It was so much fun and I cannot wait for Euro 2012.