(I am still attempting to play post-catch-up. Here’s a new one!)

Freitag, 21 Juli

We all met at Goethe at 5:45 to head over to the Isar River together as a group. Mary and I had met at 4:45 to go to Tengelmann’s, the grocery store, to purchase steaks and wine. We found some delicious cuts for 3 Euro each, and bought a bottle of red and white—one for the brie and baguette we had, the other for the meat—and set off for Goethe. There were a lot of people—more than I’ve ever seen assembled for a Goethe event. As a result, it took quite a while for us all to get on the right subway, but once we got out into the sunlight near the München Zoo, we were supposedly going in the right direction. When we walked over toward the river, I was surprised. The Isar (pronounced “Eeee-zar”) is—small. Very shallow and swift-moving, easy to ford with a pair of shorts. There are faster and deeper places, of varying temperatures, and this was apparently the leisurely, swim-able part of it. For the most part it’s clear blue-green water, and the entire river basin is filled with round and smooth gray rocks.

There is a park on the Isar, some of which is still connected with the Englisher Garten, and there were Germans everywhere, many with small barbecues and picnic blankets and bikes—on the rocks. The “beach” was very rocky, and then the shallow area between the forks in the rivers were even more rocky. It was on one of these rocky areas we set up camp. The guys who had brought Frisbees looked at each other incredulously. Where were they supposed to run? The girls in bikinis looked warily at the water. This was not exactly as we’d anticipated. And—most importantly for Mary, myself, and our slowly warming steaks—where was the barbecue?

I love barbecuing. Grilling. What have you. And I was eager to have my first steak in ages—it’s been wurst, fruit, cheese, and on occasion potato-something since I’ve been here, not to mention the oddest assortment of beverages (Apfel Schorle, or apple soda, is the weirdest by far). I was in the mood for a classic and ancient-seeming dinner. The Romans definitely had their bread, cheese, steak, and wine—and I was going to have mine on a river they might have forded, oh, two thousand years ago? I was beyond determined.

Mary and I sat on her tiny towel and opened the white, using the glasses she’d borrowed from her Haus-Mutti’s kitchen. We figured we might as well eat the baguette and cheese as we waited. Of course, not everyone was so patient.

Ian and Zeb came over, and all the warning I had (so I will claim) is Ian dumping a bag about a foot and a half away from me on the rocks. I glanced over to see both he and Zeb looking pleased with themselves. And at last, I saw why. There might have been a drumroll for the anticipation.

An aluminum portable barbecue. I blinked. Several times. Portable…barbecue…with charcoal…that you throw out after a single use? Ingenious! The best idea ever! I immediately wanted to hug the collective Germany for creating such a product. What innovation—and this coming from a girl from the land of bite-sized, travel-fitted, mobile, on-the-go everything. America, I wanted to scream, wake up and design this!

Out of the bag came champagne, a few beers, three packages of wursts of various kinds, a package of cups, plates, and knives. “We could only afford one kind of utensil,” Zeb explained, half-laughing. “We figured that’d be the most important one.” He had a point, naturally. I was prepared to eat my steak with my hands, of course, but I wasn’t about to show them that. I am a lady. I think. Somewhere. I was wearing a skirt, so naturally I had to be well-behaved. I have the worst luck with the one skirt I brought. I always seem to wear it to places where it’s totally wrong and awkward—like the outdoor Opera. Or the Olympia Turm. Or the Eiffel Tower. (Admittedly, it was much more behaved on the Eiffel Tower than on the Olympia Turm!) I always at least have worn my sensible shoes (so much for bringing my heels, I never went clubbing) but of course I was sitting on the gray, dusty rocks with Mary’s towel barely hiding the bruises I knew were forming on every part of my lower body, in that skirt. I took Ian’s sudden entrance as my perfect opportunity to be distracted from my complaints, moving to a stand.

Ian unwrapped it and attempted to read the directions, puzzled over the German, and set them aside. Boys, I immediately thought, because while I never read directions myself, I always am able to figure it out. (*looks around to see if anyone will call her on that*) It took Ian a few minutes to realize he ought to look at the directions. While he was busy, Zeb and I fixed the rocks, and I propped the aluminum pan on its base, grinning to myself. Easy! Now how to get them to let me use their grill…

Zeb pulled out a lighter. He explained they’d taken it from the girl at the counter, but they hadn’t paid for it because she probably thought they were going to be bringing it back. Zeb couldn’t stop laughing. He handed over the lighter and pulled out another item from their shopping excursion. Zulu Fire Sauce. The others who had gathered around—a few people I didn’t know, but who were all friendly and easy to laugh—immediately looked askance, or at least amused, at Zeb. They passed the bottle around to sniff it and dismissed it as a red curry sort of sauce. Ian managed in the meanwhile to get the lighting paper of the thing to light, which immediately erupted into quiet flames, setting aflame the charcoal.

The waiting of the next fifteen minutes was hilarious. Mary and I drank our white, and Ian, Zeb and the others tackled their champagne. “Where did you get all of this stuff?” asked a kid who came over at the smell of charcoal. Alex, I recalled. I’d met him the day before on the way to Schloss Nymphenburg; he grew up in Pittsburgh but goes to the University of Michigan, so we had discussed Pittsburgh briefly. “At the Zoo,” Zeb replied, and cracked up. Everyone else did, too. Apparently up the hill at the München Zoo, they have a shop of motley things, including things like wurst and a portable grill. As you can imagine, the torrent of animal jokes—the zoo, selling a barbecue, haha—abounded. I can’t even repeat them here. I was laughing myself, though.

Ian was impatient to get to grilling, especially when we saw Peter the Zivi coming down the rocks with Maximiliano, each carrying a heavy metal gas grill. “You have to wait for the flames to burn down,” Alex said. “At least another ten minutes,” Zeb put in. “You want the coals to be more gray than black,” I added. I had inadvertently taken up protective residence by the grill—to claim second dibs, I told Zeb—and alternately crouched and knelt by the coals, bruising my knees with the dull hardness of the rocks. “You really wanna grill your steaks, don’t you, Newark?” Zeb asked, laughing.

Zeb calls me Newark. I told him that was where I was flying into the first time we met, and so somehow he decided it’d be amusing to call a native New Yorker “Newark.” Obviously it’s because he knows the last thing a true native New Yorker wants is for someone to think they’re from New Jersey. (New Jersey is the armpit of America, so we all know where we stand with that. *nods*) They’re not truly as cool as New York or Pennsylvania, and so they’re just the inessential connective neighbor. And they smell. I explained this to Jeff one time, and he just dismissed it as bitter jealousy of the fantastic state that is New Jersey. Ah, good times.

Zeb and Ian talked about the Zulus and the British, inspired by the sauce. Zeb teasing Ian and by extension the British, Ian teasing Zeb and by extension Americans. It was amusing to speak to someone from Britain about the empire on which the sun never set—which is now, ostensibly, separate, though its influence of course lives on—and also to speak about America so casually ourselves. Zeb and I—and the other Americans at Goethe, we’ve noticed—share no especially deep love of America, merely a connection with it. It’s a country, where we and our families live, where life is good, but it’s not some deep-swelling pride of country and duty and all of that. We’re intellectuals and businesspeople and explorers, and thinking that all of the world is America is much to naïve a notion with which we can live. We don’t disillusion ourselves with the idea that America is any better than any other country, because, at least for me, on whose scale are we judging that? Ah, I sense a deeper tangent. I shall tiptoe around it.

Finally the coals were done and it was time for some grillin’ action. We grilled the wurst first, and it took longer than we expected, but when they were done, I immediately moved our steaks on. The others were experimenting with the Zulu sauce. It was amusing to watch them attempt to keep it on their wurst like ketchup or mustard, instead more often than not spilling it on the rocks or their plates. Mary was happily giddy from the wine, and I was intent on seeing my steak perfectly grilled. I had—I think I still possess it, to some degree—a sense of knowing when a steak is just at that point of being perfectly well-done without being dry. As long as I’ve been cooking it. But I was impatient, and so was Mary. “It’s going to be just medium-well,” I told her when she asked for her steak. I knew mine would be just shy of exactly perfect (for me) with the barest hint of pink tingeing the center. Of course, most people would think that’s perfect. She cut her steak and was surprised to find me correct. It was good, for all of my complaining, though. I melted a few remaining brie chunks to go along with it. Savory.

As the sun set and our food was slowly eaten, it became apparent that it was time to make our independent ways home and prepare for the morrow. Ian and a few others had the “Certificate Deutsch” to take—the national exam in Germany certifying a certain level of proficiency with the language—and Mary, Steven, and I had to prepare for Dachau. We wrapped up our trash and headed up the hill to the U-Bahn. What an interesting BBQ.