A missed connection brings an unexpected schnitzel in Bavaria

I was supposed to be 34,000 feet over the North Atlantic, but a tight connection and a forgotten bag in the labyrinth that is Munich airport instead brought me to in a bar in Freising, Germany, where students sang along with decades-old American music.

“Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong …”

I took a seat at the bar, greeted the older bartender in German and asked, in English, for a beer.

He served me a Spaten and apologized for the noise.

“This is a town of 8,000 university students,” he said, competing with the loud music.

I had no complaints.

After walking all over the town, this is the atmosphere I was looking for.

When the last flight of the evening pulled away while I was still haggling with security, Lufthansa booked me a room at the Holiday Inn Express Munich Airport. I checked in around 5 pm and enjoyed a German lager in the hotel lobby while I charged my phone.

As much as I would have liked to have gone into Munich, I feared I would spend more time and money getting there than it was worth. The woman at the hotel front desk recommended Erdling, a 12-minute ride away, but I instead opted for Freising, figuring that a university town would be bustling with activity.

With my phone fully charged, I jumped in the front seat of my Uber, hoping to have a conversation about restaurants and bars in the area.

But the driver didn’t know Freising, didn’t speak English and added seven minutes to the trip by missing an exit.

I had simply entered “Freising” as my destination, and when we arrived, I found myself on a mostly desolate street.

I didn’t want to deal with asking him to take me to a commercial center so I walked about eight minutes to what I thought was the center of town. I found lots of shops and a long pedestrian plaza but the only life stirring was three young men on a street corner.

“Entschuldigen,” I said. “Do you speak English? Can you tell me where I can find a good restaurant or bar?”

They said they had just come from the Park Cafe 20 minutes ago. It was a five-minute walk, and there I would find some good German food.

I asked why it was so quiet.

“This is Germany, it’s Monday night,” they said, as if they were talking about Boise.

Park Cafe was a cute spot but a sleepier atmosphere than I was looking for.

The waitress helped me order something I never knew existed, “Braumeisterschnitzel vom Schwein in einer Senf-Meerrettichpanade,” or pork schnitzel in a mustard-horseradish breading. It was amazing — as were the two Augustiner Pils I downed.

I still have not been able to find schnitzel like this in the United States, but I have since made it several times at home.

I spent some time on Google Maps looking for another stop to make before heading back to my hotel. The Hofbrauhauskeller was 15 minutes in one direction, and Weihenstephan was 15 minutes in the other direction.  She recommended the latter, and Google Maps led me on to a desolate path up along the ridge of the hill. I looked ahead at the path and said “should I really be doing this?”

And then I looked up and said half in disbelief, “I’m in Germany right now, Germany, looking up at a starry sky with towers of a medieval cathedral behind me. Absolutely I’m doing this.”

I only saw one other person along the 800-meter walk.

I arrived at the brewery to find not a bar but another sit-down restaurant. This was not going to work for me.

Plan B, the Hofbrauhauskeller, was a good 20 minutes away on foot, and, after double checking on the map, I saw that it was closed on Mondays.

Plan C was a little tavern I spotted near where my Uber had dropped me. So back I went, 800 meters down the path, passed once by a runner.

Where the path ended and met a street corner, I found a bar that had not turned up on my Google searches. What the heck, I thought, for one beer if nothing else.

And that is where I spent the better part of two hours. It was small, crowded, loud and full of Germans enjoying the evening — exactly what I was looking for. Students filled three large square booths along the windows in loud conversation, occasionally singing along with Abba, Wham, or whichever American tune was playing.

Yes, John Denver, too.

I wanted to be a part of their conversations, not the odd quiet one sitting at the bar, half looking around, half looking at his phone.

Opportunity arrived when someone spoke to me in German, and I had to explain that I only spoke English. With that, three of them bombarded me with questions:

What was I doing in Freising? Was I here for work? What do I do for work? In America, when you finish high school, you go to community college? And how long does that last? And then you go to university? What do Americans think of farmers? Do Americans like German beer? Do you like Abba? What kind of music do you like?

They were students from rural Bavaria who had grown up on farms and were in in a farming apprenticeship program.

No wonder they liked John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads.”

They were in Freising for two weeks to learn welding. And had to be back in their dorms by 11.

This was fortunate for me, because I was getting to the point where my beers could go down too quickly, and I had an early flight back to Newark the next morning.

At ten minutes to 11, as the bar emptied out, I ordered a large glass of water and requested my Uber back to my hotel.

The next morning, I was on a flight to Newark in an Economy Plus seat, not realizing the world was about to shut down, and that it would be my last international flight for more than a year and a half.