"Hey boys, where's the nearest Biergarten?"

Hefeweizen and Bratwurst and Wienerschnitzel, Oh My!

With just a few short days in Munich, we had just one goal: to eat as much German food as possible. The good, the bad, the totally weird, we were devouring it. To add to this culinary missadventure, my calorie conscious mother had joined us for this part of the trip.

After a 3:00 a.m. flight from Istanbul and an arrive-at-the- wrong-airport fiasco, we were ready for some serious Bavarian beer and food. We stopped off in a lovely park in the middle of the city for some hefeweizen and goulash.

German beer is not only bigger than we are used to in America, but they are stronger and tastier. If you are too drunk to handle another liter of regular beer, ask for a radlermass (translation: “a mug for the bike”), which is made up of half beer and half lemonade. Preservatives aren’t usually added because of the high number of beer drinkers here, it does not last long enough to need them.

The next day, we headed off to Munich’s open air market. We walked past many Metzgerei (butcher shops) with pig heads in the window, full ducks and chickens hanging and miles of meat galore.

We came, we saw, we Pigged out.

Lunch was a kind of “Bavarian fast food”, which consisted of a few communal tables and a cafeteria style line where you choose your favorite wurst and side dish of German potato salad or boiled cabbage. Almost all wurst includes pork (and sometimes beef or veal), spices, and peppercorns, but the other ingredients make each wurst distinctive. There are over 1,000 types of wurst.

Munich has wonderful cakes, pies and pasteries. We stumbled upon a heavenly shop dedicated to gingerbread and must have spent close to an hour in there. It was the best we ever tasted and we loaded on souvenirs that never made it home. We also visited a honey shop and sampled warm honey wine.

Did you know that pretzels orginated in Germany? Neither did we. They even eat pretzels for breakfast and pair it with weisswurst sausage. We opted to pair ours with some red wine from the Rhineland.

We wanted to conclude our adventure with a cliched German restaurant, complete with a beer wench. We found such a place with an extensive menu of all things Bavarian. We decided to get a little crazy this meal. Among the things we ordered were pigs tongue, cow utter and hog knuncle. They were all pretty good, the group favorite was the utter, which was breaded and fried. Guten Appetit!

Just in case you’ve always wanted to know, here’s a quick guide to German wurst:

• Bierschinken—a large slicing sausage with chunks of ham and pistachios
• Bierwurst—coarse-textured slicing sausage flavored with juniper berries and cardamom
• Blutwurst—blood sausage, which comes in many varieties; it is eaten sliced and cold or fried like black pudding
• Bockwurst—smoked and scalded, usually made from finely ground veal, spiced with chives and parsley
• Bratwurst—a pale, smoked sausage made of finely minced veal, pork, ginger, nutmeg and other spices
• Braunschweiger—a spreadable smoked liver sausage enriched with eggs and milk; the most well known of the liverwurst sausages
• Cervelat—similar to Italian salami, a slicing sausage of pork and beef, spices and often mustard or garlic
• Frankfurter—the genuine German variety (not the same as an American frankfurter) contains finely chopped lean pork with a bit of salted bacon fat, and is smoked
• Knockwurst; knackwurst—a short, plump smoked sausage needing poaching or grilling; contains finely minced lean pork, beef, spices and, notably, garlic; often served with sauerkraut
• Wienerwurst— beef and pork flavored with coriander and garlic
• Weisswurst—German for “white sausage” and is very pale and delicately flavored; made of veal, sometimes beef and pork, cream and eggs; a specialty of Munich and traditionally served at Oktoberfest with rye bread, sweet mustard and beer