Last week, we posted a list of the Top 10 oddities I saw in Berlin. After a few more days in the capital city and nearly a week in Heidelberg, the list of German curiosities just kept on growing. Here are the latest additions.
Beer Horns — I didn’t say you couldn’t love an oddity, and I certainly love drinking beer from a horn (minus the cruelty-to-animals part). There’s a bar on Hauptstrabe serving draft beer in large animal horns, and along with some German red meat, you’ll feel like a Viking warrior (I know it’s a different country, but I always wanted to be a Viking). Interestingly, the prices are comparable to brew by the glass, though you actually have to buy the horn if you want to drink it outside due to theft issues. That’s sad, because if you can’t trust a horny drunk to be honest, who can you trust?
Filet-O-Argh — I am a guy who’s boldly tried such foods as sheep brain, warm lamb’s tongue, grilled grizzly bear and pig’s hoof (sorry I keep going all Sarah Palin on ya), but I draw the line at the raw fish sandwiches I saw in Germany. When my local friend Casey told me about them, I imagined something like a tuna salad sandwich or sushi on crackers, but this looked like they simply hacked off the head and tail and stuck the carcass between a pair of Wonder twins (as in the bread). From the people whose delicacies include the pretzel, ladies and gentlemen!
FU Academy — Is this, like, a branch of Yale’s Skull & Bones? I assume BS University was already taken.
Stop Means Stop — Here’s something to drive New Yorkers bananas, namely that the foot traffic actually waits at red lights. Seriously, even if it’s a single-lane, one-way street with nobody coming. I crossed on red once, and my friend Nina thought I’d just shot Bambi’s mother (the Palin just keeps coming outta me). To think, a few days earlier, I crossed a huge street in the middle of the block with traffic coming in both directions and didn’t think a thing of it. Still, the cops apparently ticket like crazy for jaywalking. Speaking of which…
The Bird — I’m told that flipping people off is a serious offense that can also get you a ticket. If you saw some of the concert posters for those German fetish metal bands out there, you’d be amazed the police are stressed about jaywalkers and finger flippers. Not that I wanted to flip anyone off, but there was this one camera-happy security guard at Hahn Airport…
Business Up Front, Party in the Back — That’s right, Germany is bringing back the mullet in a big way. In all fairness, they’re wearing them in much cooler ways, including one Billy Rasta Cyrus dude who turned his “back party” into dreadlocks.