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Disclaimer

Munich Friday/Saturday Beer Gardeners
(& indoors in cold, wet, & winter etc)

This page http://www.berklix.org/bg - by Julian Stacey

Every Friday or Saturday & odd extra days too.
Indoors when too cold/ wet & in winter.

2005 08 26 michaelibad bg by frankie cook If you also fancy a beer in the country or up a mountain, you may also want to join the walkers groups &/or ski groups.
No Smoking Do NOT Bring Smokers !

INDEX

No Questions By Email

Please do Not mail the author questions, Read the page below for answers. Author has no time for repetitive email questions, when he should be doing paid computer work, at his screen, sorry ! - Please ask the organisers or others At the Beer garden, over a beer, when we're happy to chat, de-focused from screens!

WHO CAN JOIN ?

  • SUMMARY: Exclusively English speaking, multi- national, lively, young thinking, intelligent, non smokers, no drunks, etc.
  • SELECTIVE: You want to socialise with people you'll get on with ? Us too ! Various types don't suit you ? Us too. So both you And the group retain rights to decline or withdraw membership now or later. smiley face
  • NOT GEA. Please do NOT recruit GEA people !
  • There's Lots of other English clubs people can join.

  • INTERNATIONAL:
    • Some of us are English .
    • All of us can speak English .
    • Some can speak German.
    • Some are German,
    • Some are of have been eg: American, Austrian, Canadian, English, French, German, Iraqi, Irish, Scots, Singapore, Spanish, Swedish, Syrian, Welsh, etc.
    • Most of us are Not fluent linguists (a few are).
  • Just ENGLISH SPEAKING Not German Speaking
    • Speak English with us. You don't need to be a native English speaker though; natives of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, etc languages all welcome.
    • Germans who join us also want to speak English, not German.
    • If you want to speak German, we are Not the group for you:
      • Native English speakers who want to inflict their German on us are Not Welcome !
      • Native German speakers who can speak English, but don't, should also join other groups.
      • Talking in German for long, would dilute the group, (just as GEA was long ago Germanised).
      • To speak German, don't join us, join innumerable other clubs run in Munich Germany, where about 80% of toward 2 million people are native German speakers.
      • Disagree ?
    • Fluent English Speaking
      • Flakey English grammar is not so bad: Better you get the grammar wrong, than bore us waiting, searching for the right phrase.
      • We do not correct people. That would break up conversation. We're Not an unpaid language school. There's plenty of English teachers in Munich you can employ.
      • We do not make speeches. No ! We're not toast masters.
      • Do not bring friends who can only speak German, that's not fair to them or us !
      • Can you switch to German if stuck ?
        Yes, if really stuck, & others listening happen to want to understand German, (not all do). But German is Not the group preferred language, any more than Russian or Turkish, so revert to English as soon as possible.
      • Disagree ?
    • Thoughts on [German] grammar
  • NON SMOKERS. Exclusively ! Do NOT bring smoker friends !
    Disagree ?
  • INTELLIGENT
    • We are mostly professionals, mostly intelligent (debate any implied associativity, or assert any lack of logical connectivity over a beer ;-)
    • We're not ``politically correct', Mental strait jackets imposed by others are not blindly accepted.

      We speak real English un-crippled by transatlantic & politician's political correctness, We call a spade a spade, (Which BTW is An English noun, nothing whatever to do with American derogatory racial slang) We talk about the sex (not gender) of a thing (if anyone gives a flying monkey's ;-) & if anyone asks for a rest room or bath room, they may well be told if they need to rest or bathe, that's best done back home, ;-) Pubs & gaststatten have toilets, but no baths & beds to rest.

    • We are not burdened with people bringing kids & babies making a racket & interrupting & & distracting sensible conversation to the mundane.
    • Disagree ?

  • NO DRUNKS,

    • We do Not drink to get drunk,
    • `Head bangers' groups are available elsewhere ;-)
    • Abusive behaviour not tolerated, drunk or sober.
    • We're not averse to a lively debate/ argument but only if people remain intelligent & Listen too, & no one monopolises conversation.
    • Motor mouths not needed. Alcohol lubricated non stop talkers are Not needed.
    • We do Not encourage (or discourage ;-) alcohol consumption, most drink beer, author sometimes drinks Alkohol- frei beer , a few drink wine, a few drink Rabarba- schoerle (Rhubarb with fizz) etc
    • Disagree ?
  • LIVELY
    • Come with an open lively mind,
    • Don't be stuffy, If you want "Sie" rather than "Du" (Not that we'll be speaking German anyway), Join some other group, not us !
    • Move seats a few times during the evening. Make _your_ contribution to enlivening topics & debate ! Sitting at the same seat all evening can be stultifying both for you And your neighbours - move around !
      • You may not be bored yet.
      • Others might not be bored with you yet.
      • But others may. Or maybe they want to talk to someone else too, & you more later.
      • Those stuck against a wall can't circulate.
      • Make your contribution: don't just sit there, Move On !
      • Get up & you should Expect your seat to be `stolen' by someone else, they are Supposed To! It makes for variety for all, If you don't like it, Don't come.
      • "That's my seat!" Is Not acceptable! Expect to rescue your beer or say "Please pass my beer & beer mat"
      • Disagree ?
    • Do Not phone us each week for venue
      • Are you too lazy to get your own email ?
      • Sorry ! You'r not mentally lively &/or adept enough for the group.
      • Please join some other group, not us.
      • We have no time to SMS people with info,
      • We have no time to update a web page each week.
      • We do Not want you phoning us each week, interrupting us, just just for the venue announcement. Get yourself email, or join another group.
      • Disagree ?
  •   No Smoking NON SMOKERS ONLY
    Do NOT Bring Smokers ! Not even outside ! Some of us eg are allergic &/or hate smoke.   Most of us do not want to be near, even outside.
    Do Not Smoke just before arrival, Do not nip out for smokes & return breath stinking of smoke. (It's impossible to avoid the dead breath of a smokers sat next to you, that turns to talk to you on same bench). Smokers should buy nicotine chewing gum for the evening, or not come, or leave for the evening if they must go to to smoke.
    Disagree ?

    (Restaurants that were smoke free before Bavaria's half hearted ban.

  • SEE ALSO the introductory email after subscription robot sends you when you subscribe list bg-announce@ )
  • DISAGREE ? Want to argue we should accept everyone without choice ?
    Don't bother, we don't need you, (or every last person who might want to join us). Join some other group instead, (we organisers saw an old club (GEA) decay from it's open door policy, which was later abused to tolerate the malign & too many misfits. The BG organisers have invested too much time organising our group, to allow a similar mistake) ) Some people have on occasion been removed from the group. We retain & occasionally exercise the right to decide an individual does not fit the group, just as individuals retain the right to decide the group does not suit them.

OTHER NOTES

  • Mark Your Beer Mats Avoid mistakes, , Remind your neighbours too, especially if waiter does not do it for you. In every big group, some drinkers sometimes forget to pay enough, occasionally some rogues may deliberately not pay enough, occasionally some waiters cheat too, (had one tried to bill us for a spare cheeseburger !) Most drinkers & waiters are honest. Cheats exist too. Mistakes happen too, Mark the mat.
  • Join the mail list where we announce this week's venue.
  • In dodgey weather or crowded venues, be on time &/or note the organisers mobile number from the announcement. We go when we want.
  • Most other beer garden indexes are little to no use for us. as most other indexes:
    • Full of hype & gloss, & prioritise history, culture & other irrelevance, (sure may be nice to know, but first we want to choose by our own Beer Garden Criteria).
    • Others don't warn if short measures
    • Others in German language, well not all our people speak German, or want to read yet more German. One index is in faked mis-spelled Bavarian, indecipherable if you'r new/ only read Hoch Deutsch.
    • Fraudulent short measures are Very common in rip off Munich, where even government is on the Ofest rip off, charging way over 100 mass of tax per 100 litres of beer sold, instead of ensuring proper measures served. The locals are so used to be ripped off, most indexes don't mention it.
    • Most indexes don't list if a Beer Garden delivers bad service while priding itself on being Bavarian, some have obnoxious staff one example
    • Do they serve Wrong beer or bad beer ?
      Breweries merged to lessen choice for customers. (Same complaint we had in UK, when CAMRA started), Jim (an organiser) dislikes Franziskaner beer, (& I've chucked away much of 2 dunkles beers at Stigl- maier), so some F. places marked to aid selection
    Hence this Index is Not verbose enthusiastic gush to promote tourism, written by PR weenies, paid for breweries & drinking trade. It's the opposite: It's notes on what's right & more importantly Wrong with places.

WHERE IN THE BEER GARDEN / PUB ?

  • Listen ... we speak English.
  • (OK, That won't help you much in an Irish pub, so ...)
  • Ask the waiter for reservation name BERKLIX.
  • If you don't know what organisers look like, check organisers web sites, & or use a mobile phone.
  • At most beer gardens, we sit over the back, in the self service area, near the Kid's Play Area (KPA) if there is one, unless otherwise announced. Near the kids area started 'cos a few people have kids with them occasionally, but it's usually also easier to reserve more space for unknown quantities of people, in what is usually the quieter KPA. Don't let the frequent mention of KPA in mails scare you with thoughts of a child oriented group of parents - we're not ! There's usually only a few kids, We are semi allergic to kids, certainly in bulk, but there's usually none now. We often sit near the KPA for more space, less smokers, & less busy surroundings, & because some used to sometimes bring kids.

START TIME

Default nominal approximate start times (unless otherwise announced):
  • May & June: 18:00
  • July & August: 18:30
  • September: 18:00
  • Winter / Indoor Starts: 20:00
Some arrive earlier to help reserve space, & some later. We're many of us English , we don't expect to be exactly on time, it's a beer garden after all, not a business appointment ! If you happen to arrive before the organisers, just keep an eye out for us, & other likely beer gardeners.

Bad weather Start Time

If the weather has been bad all day, if the announcement included a fallback indoor venue, we may automatically go there rather later than the preferred outdoor beer garden. If on the other hand the weather turns nasty at the last minute, & we divert en route or fresh from the Beer garden, we'll likely be at the alternate venue pretty much on time. We're not easily dislodged from a beer garden though, a few spots of rain may of us are used to, from growing up much closer to the Atlantic than here :-)

LATE ARRIVAL

Question: "I'll Be Late, How Long Will You Be There ?"
Answer: How Late ? - Don't Ask Me ! - We're Not Going To Commit Ourselves !

  • Some of us may be there most of the evening if the weather is fine, but if the Beer garden is announced in advance of unpredictable weather, we will have no idea how long we or others will want to stay.
  • We usually leave when it's cold or dark, but sometime we leave early; occasionally we're still there even if it's raining intermittently, but we don't wait forlornly for people to arrive, when we're thinking of leaving.
  • If you want to encourage us to wait for you, send a friend in advance to keep us company, maybe that'll encourage people to stay on ... if the weather's good !
  • You're allowed to bring your own food to most or all Munich beer gardens we announce, so you don't need to eat at home first !.
  • Try to avoid always arriving late & expecting us to wait, half bored at a largely empty table. At least sometimes, arrive near-ish to time, & give organisers the benefit of your company at the beginning, rather than the end, when we've had enough, & are waiting for late-comers to drink up.
  • On good evenings, it's some times a problem defending our table space when beer gardens fill up. Try to arrive before we are likely to be pestered by strangers after our spare table space.
  • Do not follow the example of one person, who told no one he'd be coming, arrived over an hour late, to a beer garden closed by the Wirt (Landlord) on a cold day for lack of business, where we could buy no more beer. That person was actually indignant that we'd gone, & hadn't waited just in case someone we neither knew nor expected turned up ! We're not daft - we don't wait on the off chance, particularly in poor weather.

MAIL LIST, SMS, WAP, & MOBILE PHONES

Mail List

  • Most beer gardens are announced at short notice on the email list, there is very rarely time to update this web page.
  • Which Address To Subscribe ?
    • Click to subscribe to bg-announce@berklix.org
    • The organisers usually try to announce venues on Thursday afternoons, as it's convenient for those who only get email at home.
    • In spring & autumn it's hard to plan ahead, sometimes we delay announcements to Friday, while waiting on the weather, deciding if a more sheltered beer garden, or different inside fallback options are needed.
    • It's best, at least for spring & autumn, if not for summer too, to [also] subscribe your work address rather than [or as well as] your home address.
    • If you stick to just a winter home based subscription, you'll also miss spontaneous short notice mid week beer gardens

Mobile Phones

(`Cell Phone' to use the original American name, spuriously renamed as `Mobile Phone' in Britain, & mistakenly called a `Handy' by Germans using wrongly adopted English ).

Yes we have mobiles. No we don't want numbers listed here, ask us personally if you feel the need.

People who claim mobiles are essential for finding friends in a beer garden are out of their tree, mobiles are merely a convenience for the caller, but non-essential, & disturbing to table conversation of others adjacent to person called.

The beer gardens started before people had mobile phones. When we didn't know where the group was, we simply walked methodically, slowly & sequentially up & down rows, looking at faces, this method works well even in the very biggest Munich beer gardens, (IE Hirsch- Garten, Chinesicher Turm, Augustiner, etc). You might also by chance meet others of your friends who may want to join us, or even people you hope may become friends ;-)

SMS (Short Message Service)

If you want to know where we are: phone us, don't SMS us, some (inc. this Author) do not respond to SMS.

If you are interested to find a gateway we could use to automatically (not just manually) gateway email announcements to SMS announcements: Do realise, SMS's cost, so who will pay ? There's more to this than just being an MS-Windows end user who uses some SMS gateway to send one off SMSs. SMS gates make money by forcing people to read adverts, so the entry format must change periodically to force you to read adverts on line. It would be a thankless task to keep updating the robot interface. Also no doubt German operators would declare it illegal.

I have no free time to write & maintain the required scripts to interface to a gate, but if some other programmer wants to do the programming, I can provide the 24/7 Internet connected server base (FreeBSD Unix), with whatever Perl/Java etc type stuff is necessary.

WHERE NEXT ? VENUE SELECTION

  • Venues are decided where possible at previous beer gardens, by all who intend to come to next week's venue, failing that (& when weather changes) by the Beer Garden Organisers to this schedule:
    • Organisers normally start discussing/ deciding next Friday/Saturday's venue on Tuesday.
    • Sometimes when the weather forecast is indeterminate, we delay till Wednesday.
    • We normally announce by early/ mid Thursday afternoon.
  • We try to spread the selection geographically. More weight attaches, if the venue nominated is from a regular, &/or not particularly near the home/work of the nominator, it being easy, but not so helpful if people just nominate their local beer garden.
  • If the weather's good, we often go further to a cooler open park location, if the weather is marginal, to a more sheltered one in town.
  • If you have a suggestion for a future venue, best suggest it on a Friday/Saturday to one of the organisers
  • It's hard in the dark at the end of an evening, to recognise & remember who & how many will commit to coming to which next venue, so it's helpful if those involved subsequently mail the organisers saying EG "Include me in the list of faces for people to look for at next venue [XYZ], - I expect to be there roughly on time"
  • In the very rare liklihood none of the numerous organisers will be available to co-ordinate a decision, we would try to forecast & announce that in advance, & invite list members to step forward & announce something, so that an opportunity is not missed.

History: ALL YEAR & BAD WEATHER & WINTER VENUES

2002 Autumn, after beer garden weather ceased, we continued to meet each Friday in a variety of venues, some of us going on to GEA Stammtisch later, (but many not).

We became an all weather group.

2006 we dumped smokey dives inc GEA Stammtisch, & used smoke free venues.

Then the law changed (2008 ir 2009) & most decent places became smoke free, & our venues widened, here's some more venues:

  • Ricks Cafe 1 block from Rot Kreuz Place, Wendl-Dietrich-Str. 5 80634 München. - Smallish hedge enclosed outside tables too. Good food & prices. Not Bavarian.

2010, January, We switched from Friday to Saturday, as avoiding pubs with Football on TV & avoiding pubs with Franziskaner Weissbier became too much trouble, & more people preferred Saturdays. What we'll do when the weather warms remains to be seen.

Short Measures Fraud - Betrug

  • Muenchen is rightly proud of the Koenig Ludwig Erlass (when the King of Bavaria granted Munich brewers permission to sell their beer under the trees they'd planted to keep their cellars cool, on condition they allowed citizens to bring their own food). Rather unique, not the case in most of Germany or Britain
  • Sadly, to balance that pride, there is the Shame of Short Measures:
  • Lots of beer gardens & beer halls often seriously short measure, particularly at Oktoberfest. Some O'fest tourists might not care, & go home boasting of having drunk more maas of beer... but if a maas is 0.9 to 0.7 litres as the evening wears on & froth replaces beer, it's an empty boast.
  • Traditional bier steins, opaque, such as at Nock- herberg stark bier fest, are ideal for short measures. Too many of mine were short measures. Better to buy stark bier from a bottle, poured into a glass, a half litre you can trust.
  • Magazine articles in 2008 estimate Ofest fraud is worth around 5 million euros, or .75 cents fraud per maas, & the city council don't much care, not looking to enforce an average to the mark, but just monitoring if way too short.
  • Gross consistent regular short measuring that would get any pub in England closed down promptly by the Weights & Measures Inspectorate, are tolerated.
  • On the other hand, the Reinheits- Gebot (Purity law) ensures (theoretically cleaner beer than in UK (though ask me over a beer, about a UK chemical lorry driver I met regularly delivering to a Munich brewery ;-)
  • Anti fraud club VGBE costs 6 Euro a year membership. Less than a short maas ! Prost !

Transport

All Link to S-Bahn, U-Bahn, Tram, Bus, arrive here, A further click takes you to MVV.
(To reduce number of external web refs maintained here, as MVV over years are likely to change their site, re. different transport types, & what info in English etc.)

Cycling Fines @ June 2009

  • 10 Euro. On pavement & pedestrian zones:
  • 15 Euro if obstruction.
  • 20 Euro if dangerous inc. wrong way on cycle path.
  • 15 to 30 Euro if wrong way on a road (unless allowed by sign).
  • 10 Euro: No lights.
  • 10 Euro if ear plugs for music (though disputed if illegal).
  • 25 Euro Mobile phone.
  • 45 Euro + 3 points in in Flensburg: if Red stop light for less than a second, & no one endangered. (If longer & an accident, up to 180 Euro & 4 points.
  • Alcohol > 1.6 Pro mille Drunk Driving. 30 days pay. + 7 points Flensburg. But they wont take your licence !? But they send you for a medical/ looney checkup. If an accident & above 0.3, a higher punishment & usually an MPU test. & 7 points.
  • 350 Euro.: Over a closed rail crossing.
Copyright: Julian Stacey Munich 2006 - 2009

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