In the course of our European train jaunting, Peter and I spent all of six hours in Munich, but it yielded a post worth of ridiculous photos–and none of them even involved us being drunk and stupid in a beer garden. I think the Munich tourism board should be proud of that.

Directly across the street from the train station is a branch of the Karstadt department store, which Peter wanted to visit for nostalgia’s sake, and to take the edge off his childhood raspberry-jam-filled cookies no longer being available in the station itself.

We were looking at the store directory, and there among the usual departments was ‘Traditional Costume.’ Beeline up the escalators to be greeted by these fine folks:

We wandered through the racks in a daze. Astounding detail and variety. Two huge rooms full of Bavarian chic. I had no idea this was such a thing.

There were some teenage girls dressing up in crazy outfits and taking each others’ pictures. It would’ve been a little too creepy to take their pictures, so we just posed for our own, without committing to Full Dirndl:

Peter’s dad (Greek) used to own lederhosen, by the way. Peter’s mother (German) finally refused to let him wear them out of the house, after one too many embarrassing jaunts to the newsstand in them.

The really illuminating thing about Bavarian traditional costume was how much it looks like American country-western wear. Of course. All those Texans with their smoked meats had to come from somewhere.

We finally backed away from the lederhosen (even on the sale rack, we were talking at least 90 euros minimum on any outfit) and headed for the miniature trains. They just don’t have miniature-train sections in American department stores. Certainly not ones where the glass is smudged from people pressing their noses against it longingly.

After that, at a beer hall, we were nearly as dazzled by variety. German menus seem to consist of the same five words (brat, sauer, etc) in noun and adjective form, magically recombined to produce more than a hundred distinct dishes. Peter and I wound up with venison cutlets (neighbors at the table translated: “Um, Bambi?”) and spaetzle. And giant beers. And Bavarian cream for dessert. Which we were disappointed to see was not just ‘Cream’ on the menu.

Just when I was settling into the good humor around me, as if into a warm bath, wallowing in the hum of hundreds of pleasantly drunk people and buttery food, Peter mentioned, “Oh, yeah, it was in places like this where Hitler really rallied the crowds.” So weak, humanity–that people at their most convivial, most singing-along, can so easily be carried off in another direction entirely.

After a bit of walking around, sobering up and digesting, I’d shaken off the landlust gloom, and it was time to get back to the station for our overnight train to Amsterdam. Magically, we were getting a little hungry again, and opted for a sausage.

Peter bought a beer for the train. But not the biggest beer available.

You can also see in the pic that we’ve selected quite a lot of Haribo. Only later did I add it all up and realize we’d bought a whole kilo of the stuff–I guess I hadn’t sobered up quite as much as I thought. Still, the flavor of Munich stayed with us for weeks–nearly as good a souvenir as lederhosen.