One of the specials at the Regensburger Weissbräuhaus today was Weisswurst Gulasch, a white sausage stew, with Knödel made from Brezen (pretzels.) It was quite tasty and zippier than I expected.
…and this is the burrito at El Sombrero, in Regensburg. Flattest damn burrito I have ever seen.
Seriously, great food, but unexpected shapes.
El Sombrero in Regensburg calls these tubes tacos. They were delicious, but I thought this form factor was a flautas.
Um… Would the singular of flautas be flauta?
Q&A Time, Part 2!
A short while back, I posted an ‘Ask Me Anything’ post. Some folks used that as a chance to ask for advice in advance of their upcoming travels to the area, and I tried to answer what I could of those in regular e-mail. Some of the remaining questions are really interesting, so I’ve decided to do a series of “You asked, I answer” posts. Let’s get started!
Here’s a question from Spring: How long did the beard experiment last? What do you do for your hair? What sort of soap? I’m interested in these things because it wasn’t until I went to Saudi Arabia that my toiletries horizons expanded, starting with sandalwood bath gel.
The beard experiment* only lasted about two weeks- that’s how long it took to both look more or less complete and itch so much that it bugged the living daylights out of me. I am not a beardy person, and I prefer to be clean-shaven.
This leads nicely into the rest of your question though, because I started to use a slower and more traditional shaving system when I got here. I had always wanted to try the old style of shaving with shaving soap and a brush for lather, as opposed to the chemical shaving creams that you can buy at any corner drug store. In the US, I always found starter kits to be prohibitively expensive to try something I wasn’t sure I would like. When I got to Germany, I found that both the shaving soap and a shaving brush were affordable, so I tried it. It turns out that I like it quite a lot. It gives me a close, smooth shave and the shaving soap lasts a hell of a lot longer than the shaving cream canisters I used to get. Also, I can pack the disk of shaving soap in carry-on luggage on a plane because it’s solid, so the TSA doesn’t get all panicky. I still use the disposable blade cartridges though, because I fear blood loss with the straight razor.
As for the soap and haircare, it’s not all that much different for me in Germany than it was in the US. Some of the brands are even the same. I’ve seen products from Head & Shoulders, Axe, Redken, and Nivea here. My body wash and deoderant are both Nivea products. My shampoos are brands that you can get in the US as well as here. My conditioner is a Swiss brand, but you could easily get something just like it in the US under another brand name.
*”the beard experiment” that Spring referred to was a two week stretch where I tried to grow a beard. It started with me being lazy and not wanting to shave, and then became “I wonder how this will look.” I do this once every few years, because shaving can be a pain in the ass.
Here’s a question from Rarasaur: Despite their exceptionally long vacations, do Germans still recognize the humor of the Monday Monkey?
While I do not claim to be an expert on Germans in general, my experience has been that German Monkeys also live for the weekend. I’ve written about this before, but Germans are very fond of taking time off properly, and they’re very good at it.
Do you have anything you’d like to ask? The Ask Me Anything post is still open!
How Not To Travel
Usually, when I decide to travel to a new place, I do fairly exhaustive research. I look at information about what other people like to see in the city. I check for walking tours or hop-on/hop-off tours. I confirm information about the public transportation.
Most importantly, I do something that I’ve been doing before trips to new places for many years. I make a list with three categories:
- Stuff I absolutely must see while I’m in this new city. This category is the stuff that I’m most excited about. This category often includes the reason I went to the new city in the first place.
- Stuff that I really want to see. This stuff isn’t quite as important as the MUST SEE category, but it usually includes a lot of interesting things that I’m glad I saw after the trip is done.
- Only if there’s time. This is stuff that seems interesting to me, but if I don’t get to it, I won’t be too sad about it.
I’ve been using this three tier method for a lot of years, and when I’m traveling with a friend, I have them do the same list. More often than not, we manage to get ALL of the must-see stuff, most of the really-want-to-see stuff, and occasionally, we even get to the only-if-there’s-time level. Having things tiered this way makes it very easy to figure out a day by day plan without it becoming too overwhelming or stressful. This planning method has always worked very well for me while traveling, and I should know better than to stray too far from it.
Yesterday, I tried something different.
I’ve been feeling kind of stuck lately- I don’t travel as much in January and February because it’s fricking cold and I don’t usually want to go take pictures of things when the sky is full-gray and I’m bundled up like the Michelin man. Climbing hills to castles is not fun on snow and ice.
In order to combat the feeling of stuck-ness, I decided recently that I would try to visit some of the really close towns, places that I can get to in about an hour on the train. A Bavaria Ticket costs me 22 Euros, and that covers the train there and back as well as any bus lines or public transportation in the destination city, anywhere in Bavaria. The idea here is that if I day-trip to a new place, I don’t need to muck about with getting a hotel, packing a bag, and so forth. I just go, wander around a new city for the day, then come back.
Why did this backfire?
- It failed because I chose Ingolstadt as my first foray out this way. Ingolstadt is perhaps the most boring city in Bavaria. The most interesting things about Ingolstadt are that the Illuminati was founded there and the monster was created there in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Neither of these things is easy to see in a touristy way on a day trip. Oh, and Audi has a factory and tour there, but I didn’t think to get information about that before I left Regensburg.
- It failed because I went on a Sunday. Everything is closed on Sundays. Bus routes are cut down to once in hour in many routes on Sundays, which made getting around town kind of a pain in the ass.
- Above all else, this little day trip failed because I didn’t prepare for it. It failed because I didn’t do my list this time. Ingolstadt doesn’t have many old buildings because it was significantly bombed out in World War II. The few remaining old buildings look pretty nifty, but since I didn’t do my research before the trip, I didn’t know where to look.
This is the most interesting thing I managed to see in Ingolstadt yesterday:
That’s directly opposite the Bahnhof. I spent the rest of the day using the tediously slow Sunday bus routes to try to find cool things to see. I didn’t even manage to figure out where Ingolstadt’s “Altstadt” or Zentrum (city center) was.
I did have a successful conversation with a passerby who spoke no English, so I feel like that was a win, but I learned a great deal on this trip about what doesn’t work for me when I travel.
What lessons have you learned in your life about what NOT to do when traveling?
Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV. 