Here I am, writing about my lifetime of beer drinking. Over time I will share thoughts and experiences that result from my first beer drank in a German gasthaus when I was 14 years old through the 1/2 barrel of Genesee Cream Ale that I purchased for my 21st birthday and on to the SoCal craft beers that I drink daily. I am not certain how this will unfold but feel it is unlikely to be totally accurate nor in chronological order. The point of this is to establish my “credentials” as an experienced beer-drinker that may have an opinion or two about various brews and breweries.
Let’s start with the German gasthaus. At the time I was a skinny, pimply-faced freshman at Nurnberg American High School. The year was 1969. I was living in a dormitory with a bunch of other students. As you can imagine it was much less civilized than a zoo full of rabid animals. We spent our days attending class and spent our nights thinking of ways to get in trouble. Rudy, one of the pack of freshman boys, told us about a bar he had seen and further explained that there was no drinking age in Germany. All we had to do was figure out a way to get out of the dorm and across town to Rudy’s gasthaus. This actually proved to be quite easy. The dorm had a distracted hall monitor(off-duty teacher) whose was supposed to keep us in check and in the building. I am sure that he had good intentions.
The 5 of us snuck down the hallway into the communal bathroom and used the fire escape to leave the building. That was easy enough. Now, we had to navigate through the streets of Furth to the gasthaus. After about 30 minutes, there it was. There was a sign over the door written in indeciperable font presumably with the name of the establishment. We decided to simplify matters and from then on referred to the gasthaus as Rudy’s.
The Freshman 5 entered Rudy’s and were immediately confronted with culture shock. There were several patrons in the room as well as the owner. They were all elderly German men who were now staring at a motley group of American kids that had recently escaped from their dorm. After a long and very awkward silence the owner came over to presumably ask us what we wanted. He spoke German. We did not. One of us geniuses pointed to a beer and held up 5 fingers. That seemed to work fine. We were served our beers in 1 liter mugs and presented with a bill for 4 Deutsche marks. With the exchange rate that amounted to $1.
The 5 of us may have weighed a combined 600 pounds. I was on the lighter side at approx. 108 pounds. So, after the first beer we started feeling excellent and decided to have another. That continued for a total of 4 rounds. At this point I can say that we were not making our country proud and decided to leave the premises. We put some money on the table and for some reason lost in the mist of ancient history we jumped out of the window onto the sidewalk and ran away. I guess that we left enough money and/or the proprietor was happy to see us go since we were not followed by the polizei.
On the way back to the dorm we had a great time yelling and screaming through the streets of Furth during which we noticed a peculiarity of German license plates. They have a letter or letters followed by more letters and then a number. The first set of letters is assigned based on the city in which the vehicle was registered. Large cities received a single letter like “N” for Nurnberg. Medium sized received 2 letters and small received 3 letters. Furth happened to be classified as a medium sized city and hence received the designation of FU. Well, the next set of letters was a random 2 letter designation ranging from AA to ZZ. This was followed by a 3 digit number. Well, during our trek back to the dorm we encountered a car with the predictable license plate of FU-CK 248. That license plate somehow made it back to the dorm and was displayed in a place of honor among the detritus of one of our dorm rooms to commemorate the one and only time that we visited Rudy’s.
That night marked the first time I drank beer. I recall that it was delicious and refreshing but have no idea what brand or style of beer we were served. Over time I have become more conscience of brews and breweries, styles and other beer nuances. Put like that it sounds a little boring. Oh well…