How to Embarrass Yourself Abroad (Part 2 of Biergarten Adventures)

unrelated pic of beer with a flashlight under it, because
it "looked trippy"

As promised, I will tell you now about the awful thing I did. It was change your name and move to Santiago awful, not I killed a man awful, so don't worry. 

I may as well call this "Adventures in a biergarten take 2", because clearly I don't know how to handle myself in one. I wasn't drunk this time, but if history has taught us anything, it's that I am selectively and horrifically awkward in social situations. Without further ado, I present "The Worst Thing Ever", by yours truly.

Chinese Tower, Chinesischer Turm

Some of us kids, a mix of Team Pittsburgh and Team San Diego, walked through the Englischer Garten to the Chinese Tower, where the biergarten was, to meet up with the chaperons and tour guide. No humiliation thus far on anyone's part. It was a gorgeous evening, still warm from residual heat but cooling with the help of coastal breezes. Or not, but whenever I feel a cool wind blow, I assume it's a coastal breeze. A San Diego thing, I think.

But that's besides the point. I just wanted to illustrate how nice it all was, to walk as a tiny part of a greater machine, what with the masses of people coming and going, enveloping us in their sameness. To feel the pavement through the soles of your sandals, molding more to your foot with every step...drinking in the violet dusk. 

It was dark by the time we got to the Garten, and we got quite lost. I still have no recollection of getting to the Chinese Tower, having stumbled half blind behind shadowy figures. How sweet the air smelled, carrying the fragrance of sunned grass and trees and something animal. So passed the night, wrapped in this atmospheric cloak.

But I digress. I suppose you really just want to hear how I made a fool out of my fool self, yes?

Anyways, we eventually made it to the biergarten and after leaving a sentinel on a hard-won table, we set off in different directions, in search of different beverages. Warned by my drunkard conscience, I was pleased to find that the half liter was available. I asked for a stein of Weiss, a light wheat beer (come to find out, also my favorite). 

Stop. I want to make sure that you have this image very firmly in your minds. There I was, money clutched in one hand, and a half liter of Weiss beer in the other, walking carefully up to the kiosk to pay. A tall girl who looks older than she is, although she is a legal adult in the US and is therefore a grown woman. Okay, I think you've got it.

There were people in front of me, so I was just standing there, chilling, with my beer and my money and my long ass legs. A man comes to stand behind me. I don't know how old he was; the way I remember it, he could have been thirty-five just as easily as he could have been twenty-five. He's holding a stein filled to slopping with something very dark, smelling yeasty and sharp and sweet. 

"Hallo," he said. I turned instinctively, and squinted upwards at his face. He was very tall, and I was caught off guard.

"Hey," I said. I've noticed that when most other girls are startled, their voices get higher. I have a pretty deep, gravelly voice already and when I'm surprised, I swear it gets deeper. I actually sound like a man, I think. So when you hear my "hey" playing in your head in this scene I've constructed, imagine a man saying it. 

I'm getting carried away.

So we blinked at each other for a moment, then he smiled and lifted his glass. "You are from America?" I must have nodded.

 "Have you tried this?" He made a motion with the beer. 

"No. What is it?" For some reason, the whole thing was making me fidgety. 

He said something that sounded like it ended with "Dock" or "Bock" or something. I asked somebody later, and they said they thought it must have been Doppelbock, a darker, more alcoholic brew. 

"You should try it, drink like a local," he laughed. "May I buy you one?"

If I could, I would erase my memory for the entirety of the next five minutes. As you must have inferred, this is the beginning of the worst thing I ever did. 

"I'm fourteen," I said. 

Fourteen. 

Fourteen.

actually, this was taken in our hotel in
Vienna, but this is basically the position
in which I spent this night

Remember that I have my own beer in one hand and money in the other. Remember that I look old for my age, which is already a very legal 18. Remember that I am in a biergarten, waiting in line to pay for beer. There was no way I was fourteen. 

At this point, a normal, functioning human being with even the barest shred of decency would have said something to salvage the situation. Told a joke, laughed it off, SOMETHING. 

What did I do? None of the above. We blinked at each other
some more and then I fled the scene. By that point, it was thankfully my turn to pay, which I did in a very sweaty manner. I grabbed the Weiss and ran to our table, in typical "fight or flight" style. (In case you hadn't guessed, I chose flight)

"Cynthia, that man is staring at you."

Ah, is he now? Maybe he mistook me for someone else. Maybe he's just staring off into space and I'm in the way. I've never seen him before, nope, not ever, never, never, never. He's probably not looking at me at all. You're mistaken. Yes, you see? There, he's gone off. 

And I spent the rest of the night blushing, twitching uncomfortably, and keeping my head down.