Ein, Zwei, g'suffa

As Affer says in his comment on my previous post - you're unlikely to get a drunken knuckling in Munich. The crime rate in Bavaria's capital is hilariously low. The city police post incidents they've attended on their website, and last time I was over there, they claimed to have been called out for 3 emergencies over a weekend. That's in a city of 4 million people, quite a lot of them plastered at any given time. The Polizei do have a somewhat justified reputation for cracking skulls*, which might explain why Munich seems to be off the British stag weekend circuit. Public drunkenness in Munich is by no means rare - people are swigging from Edelstoff bottles wherever you look - but what is definitely frowned upon is being epically hammered in public.

On our visit to the Augustiner Garten last week, we walked through the gates behind a mixed buffet of British, American, Canadian, Aussie and Kiwi yoof who were being led on some sort of drinking tour. Their leader was wearing a T-Shirt bearing the ominous slogan "The Best Night You'll Never Remember", and led his group off to a corner near the steckerlfisch hut where as he put it "We can get pissed without annoying anyone", to a chorus of cheers. By the end of the night some of their number were staggering around spilling their beer to a lot of frowning and muttered "ach, typische Engländerin" from the locals. Unfortunately, my Tarzan German doesn't stretch to "Hang on mate, they're not all Brits". It didn't help matters when we later saw one of the party bare her charlies at an astonished cyclist.

The German authorities are clearly worried by how much their own youth drink, which can only explain this graphic poster I saw in the Ostbanhof. But how come it's in English?



* The sinister "Black Sheriffs" who provide security on the city S-Bahn system have discharged their pistols 3 times in a decade. Twice to kill mad dogs, and once to shoot an Irish fare evader. I noticed on this trip that the Sheriffs have had their uniforms tweaked slightly so they don't look quite so much like SS tank crew.