Thursday, August 2, 2007

Back in Bavaria

I returned to Bavaria for a quick visit this week - less than 24 hours, but I did manage to experience a couple of firsts. I met up with some of my co-workers at a local McDonald's for a coffee. I have not been in a McDonald's for years and I wasn't planning on getting anything, much to my surprise there was a McCafe inside - essentially a gourmet coffee and pastry bar. I had just had breakfast so I didn't have any of the pastries but the coffees were all made fresh and the selection of was similar to what you find at Starbuck's. The best part was all of the coffees came with a little chocolate, yum.

On the way to the customer I was puzzled at some of the crops I saw growing. Before I had a chance to ask my co-worker asked if I knew what was growing. Turns out it was hops - I should have guessed being that Bavaria is famous for their beers. It was very similar to being in wine country with the acres and acres of vineyards. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me, so I wasn't able to take a picture (I know it was stupid of me not to bring it). I did manage to find this one on the Internet though.

Who knew that German keyboards were very different than a standard American keyboard? I know a lot of keyboards have a few differences on them such as a pound or Euro symbol instead of a dollar sign. I expected the German keyboard to have a few extra keys for the umlauts, what I didn't expect was for the "z" and "y" keys to have swapped places. It took me a couple of times typing the wrong letter for somebody to tell me that the "y" wasn't where I thought it should be.


OK show of hands who clicked on the link about hops thinking they were going to see hops growing in a field. I thought so. Here's a real picture.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I will be the first to raise my hand adn find the beer pictures. Interesting about the Macdonalds.