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People in Their Places....
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Everywhere we went, we met plenty of friendly people, but none were more so than the folks
and this little pub near the plant that John was working at. It's real name was
something like Charivari pub, but everyone called it "Meggie and Peggy's"
because it was owned and operated by a mother daughter duo named, oddly enough, Meggie and
Peggy.This charming fellow sat down at our table one evening, and
introduced himself, "I am called Swede." I suppose due to his Nordic blonde
hair. "I do not play this.... guitar...." he explained, "but I will
sing a song for you." he then proceeded to ad-lib a song... strumming haphazardly on
the guitar as he went...we were in stitches! Then he handed the guitar to John and
said, "Now you try..." knowing full well that John knew how to play the guitar.
Another patron (Franz... I think) that John had met earlier in his stay had told
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 It seems the Germans are rather fond of chess. There were several of these
"life size" chess boards scattered in one park we walked through in Munich.
There was also one in the hotel common area, although that one was made of plastic.
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One of the other great places for meeting people was at the Hoffbrauhause in Munich.
The guy over my shoulder is Ken one of John's co-workers, and yes, that is
a beer in my hand. ( I was surprised to find that German beer was orders of magnitude more
palatable than American beer.) The Hoffbrauhause was this huge beer garden with 8' benches
and tables. There was no "Please wait for the Hostess to seat you" here,
you just wandered around until you found a table with room on it for your party and you
sat down. We happened upon a charming older fellow, named Max, who was full of stories to
tell the foreigners. As he was telling us about his family he explained "There
are more doctors in my family than Maine farmers have cows..." This was after we had
explained to him where we were from. He was a delightful dinner companion and even
requested a few songs from the house oompah band "in honor of our American
friends".We also met a young (16) couple from East Germany
and a couple of chaps from London. Max explained that the younger East Germans were highly
in demand in Western Germany for their Russian language skills. Apparently it was taught
in the schools as the second language of choice. Our young companions, however, also
spoke excellent English, and responded favorably when we told them we were Americans.
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