Saw this on a convenience store shelf in Italy:
Anyone have the munchies?
Tag Archives: Europe
Beer Me a Bath!
Image from http://www.chodovar.cz/
Have you heard the expression Beer me? How about Beer me a beer?
Beer me has become the cultured way of saying Give me insert item here.
Now that the weekend is here and I could use some time to relax, I feel like shouting, “Beer me a bath!”
Sound strange?
It’s not when you consider that there is a place where you can take a real beer bath.
If you’re willing to make the trek to the Czech Republic, you can stay at a beer wellness hotel and relax in a beer spa right smack in the middle of beer wellness land.
Yes, it’s for real.
So how does this beer bath thing work?
This is an excerpt from the Chordova website:
Real Bear Baths
The real beer baths are prepared in a tub from beer and mineral water and have a temperature of 34 °C. The special ingredients consist of dark Bathing Beer (WHERE CAN I GET SOME OF THAT?), which is produced in a traditional way by the main brewer (MAIN BREWER, YOU ROCK!) of the family brewery Chodovar. The bath level is covered by the distinct beer foam (LOVE IT!) of a caramel colour and the area is scented by the fragrance of freshly brewed dark beer.
Treatment process
The client is immersed into the bath whose agreeable temperature causes mild and gradual rise of the heart activity (I BET!!) and activation of blood circulation in all the vascular system. To harmonize the blood pressure, increase the outcome of the bath and enhance the relaxation experience, the guests are recommended a glass of natural non-pasteurised Chodovar (YES!!!!!), which positively works on all the digestive system as well.
The length of the stay in the bath is 20 minutes.
What?????? Only 20 minutes? What’s up with that?
Oh, and yes, you read that right. The secret ingredient to this spa treatment is Bathing Beer. It comes in one-liter bottles. The recommended amount per bath is 4 liters.
So…at the risk of stating the obvious:
No! You can’t drink your bath water!!!
More Like This:
Funny Bathroom Signs
Everybody collects something.
Me? I collect bathroom signs. A friend of mine has a motto when she travels: “First You Pee, Then You See.”
I follow that motto, too, so I’m always on the lookout for bathroom signs.
Here are a few of my favorites:
I call this sign Mr. Null and Ms. Void.
When I first came to Europe, I was perplexed by the 00 that appears on so many bathroom signs. A quick internet search gave me some answers.
Some say 00 is simply the the room number assigned to the WC. Others speculate that 00 is a shorter version of 100 which, in some places, is a euphemism for WC and may be the source of the English word Loo.
Still others say the 00 represents the holes that used to be cut in the door so you could see if the bathroom was occupied.
My favorite explanation, though, is from Germany. ‘Null’ is the word for zero, thus 00 is pronounced null-null … the English equivalent of which is null-and-void.
Kind of appropriate, don’t you think?
This next sign is similar to the one above, but suggests that nulling and voiding is only permitted from 12 – 1.
I’m not sure the word “Gentleman” is appropriate in this case:
And ladies are apparently only welcome if they bring a ball on a fork:
In some cases, people need to be told where not to go to the bathroom:
And of course, we can’t forget our doggy friends:
Now that I’m on the lookout for funny bathroom signs, I think I’ll have to change my motto:
First I’ll See, Then I’ll Pee.
The King of Bling
He’s been called mad.
Crazy.
Insane.
The Fairy Tale King.
But I think this is the first time he’s been called the King of Bling.
I can’t take credit for it.
A member of my family called him this during a recent tour of one of his castles.
Ludwig II became king of Bavaria in 1864 at the ripe old age of eighteen. Two years later, his country was taken over by Prussia.
So what’s a king with no kingdom to do?
Collect bling.
And when you have a lot of bling, you need a place to put it. So you build a few castles, bathe everything in goldleaf, drench it with lavish color, and bejewel the rest.
Crazy King Ludwig even built his own cavern, complete with stalactites, a boat, and creepy painting…
How Ludwig financed his projects is a matter of debate. Many say he bankrupted his country, others say he used his own wealth. What’s not up for debate is that because of his rising debts, the government declared him legally insane.
And the very next day he was dead.
He died in a boating accident. A few weeks later, his granddaddy of castles, Neuschwanstein, was opened to the public.
Was King Ludwig mad? Crazy? Insane?
One thing’s for sure: he’s had the last laugh.
Neuschwanstein is the top tourist destination in Germany. I think the Bavarian region has more than recouped any losses through the tourism that Ludwig’s castles bring in. Not to mention, Neuschwanstein has been immortalized by Disney through their theme parks and logo.
This begs the question… Why do we travel in droves to see Ludwig’s legacy?
Are we mad? Crazy? Insane?
Do we secretly admire the man’s incredible vision? Do we envy the way he made his dreamworld a reality?
Or do we just love a little bling?
No Longer the Longest
Germany has had a rough time.
After enduring the darkest winter in 43 years and floods from record-setting rains, the country has just experienced its worst hit yet.
Worse even than the great Nutella heist in which a 5 ton shipment of Nutella was stolen on its way to store shelves.
(Thieving Nutella is like snatching peanut butter sandwiches out of the hands of hungry kindergartners…
Germans can’t function without their daily dose of the chocolate-hazlenut spread.)
But now… the worst has happened.
Germany has lost its longest word.
Why, you ask?
Because it was outlawed.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
It means: Law on the transfer of monitoring duties for labeling beef.
Of course it does. What else would it mean?
At 63 letters, it beats out the longest word in English (pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis) which boasts a mere 45 letters.
So why is Rind…whatever-the-heck-it-is no longer the longest?
It has to do with a law created to protect consumers from mad cow disease. The European Union repealed the law, hence the word is now defunct.
Sad days.
Fortunately, there is a solution. The reason Germans have such long words is because theystickabunchofsmallerwordstogether to make one big one. They call them tapeworm words.
So the hunt is on to find Germany a new longest word.
We are now taking nominations!
Click here if you want to find out how the last word to hold the honor was pronounced.
Can’t think of any? Click here to see 8 more ridiculously long German words.
See! 