OK, maybe “epic” is a bit dramatic, but it certainly has been an full and eventful week, and yes, it did include some epic portions. First off, though, I would like to thank Anke, my German co-worker in Cary, once again for providing some very useful feedback to my “Dining in Deutschland” post a couple weeks ago. She wrote me and offered some insights and answered a couple lingering questions. Most importantly, as you all may have noticed, I’m making sweeping generalizations the way people eat and live here, while I’ve really only experienced a small percentage of a single town in a single state (well, a couple towns). I guess this would be akin to a visitor to the United States driving around and eating in Alabama for a week, then concluding that in Boston and San Francisco there is a Bojangles on every corner, fried chicken it the mainstay of American diets, and it is considered customary to wear NASCAR hats at dinner (sorry to my faithful Alabama readers, I could have just as easily used NC! 
) For example, the bier Prost+THUD is generally reserved for bars and biergartens, and you give a much more civilized “cheers” in real restaraunts. And getting water, Anke’s reasoning is “I can go to the bathroom and get water out of the sink, why would I ask to pay for it!?”, and I can’t say I can argue with that one. But the heavy knife usage at the table stems from the cultural value that is taught to all German children that you are always to have both hands on top of the table while dining - it is rude to have hands under the dinner table. So as long as you have both hands on the table, you might as well give them something to do, like push food around and slop gravey on meat with your knife!
But onto the last week. I think I mentioned that Alisha arrived last Monday, and we’ve been busy busy busy since then. In addition, I started German lessons 3 times a week last week, so that takes up quite a bit of time in the evenings. But last Thursday we took the night out and went up to the Munich Olympic Park in the north of the city for a free rock concert and some fireworks. We took the U-Bahn up to Olympic Park, and as we got closer to the park and the train got more and more crowded, I realized this was going to be more than a small show and fireworks display. My suspisions were confirmed when we got off the U-Bahn and walked towards the parks and saw 10’s of thousands of people in the park with a full size carnival/fair going on, complete with a giant ferris wheel, rows of art and food vendors, and lots of lights and noise. We wondered through the park a bit, tried to see what band was playing on the main stage but couldn’t really see through the crowds, so just found an open spot on a hill to wait for the fireworks, which were spectacular when they came. More interestingly, I think, though is the several bits of history behind the construction of the Olympic Park. First, if you go there, you’ll notice that it is constructed on several quite large hills, whereas the surrounding areas of Munich are relatively flat. Turns out, after much of Munich was destroyed by the Allies in WWII (and over 200,000 citizens killed in this city alone, btw) they dumped all the rubble and debris into a big open area north of the city. There was so much debris it made several sizeable mountains, so at some point during reconstruction they decided to turn the mountains of rubble into a park, so they covered it with dirt and grass, planted trees and made several lakes. Then Munich was chosen for the 1972 Summer Olympics, so they made the entire Olympic Village on the site of the former WWII trash pile. I guess that’s called turning a negative into a positive, eh? Of course, unfortnately we all know what the 1972 Munich Games are most famous for now though….. Another interesting fact about the park, though, is that the suspended translucent tile roof that spans all the buildings through the park is (or was, I don’t know about now) a world record for largest roof. As you can tell from the picture it’s quite magnificent.
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