no zombies here

I'm a little whistful, thinking of those packed shelves in Hamburg, laden with German craft beers.  Oh sure, there are German beers available in Madrid, but they all have that solid Teutonic calm about them, knowing they're just fine and not being too interested in taking risks with flavors and ingredients.  Oh, that's not a reference to anybody's film industry, is it?  In any case, there are some seasonal offerings, like Ayinger Frühlingsbier.  I haven't actually checked, it might be available all year, but it has a suitable name.

A little spluttery to open, but not too foamy when poured.  Light straw color, almost rosy gold, clear and with a moderate snowy white head.  The scent is a little off-putting actually, a sort of sour graininess that you get with a number of German blond beers, but the taste is quite different from the smell.  Not sour at all, mostly sweet in a clean and "natural" sort of way, just a hint of bitter underneath.  It's very light and practically evaporates in the mouth, a real spring-like beer.  Warmed up there is a little perfume poof, but it's pretty subtle and doesn't distract from the overall cleanness of flavor.

Supplier: La Birratorium
Price: €2.90

spoilers ahead!!


There is no classic film this year, which grieves my heart a little, but there have been past years without it and it's come back.  I'll try to be patient and optimistic.  There does seem to be a theme of apocalypse though.   Lots of last people on earth and stuff.  The first film did have zombies, although they aren't a super huge part of the story.  Endzeit involves two women who sneak out of one of the last cities on Earth to get to another one, where the zombie disease is being treated instead of having everybody infected killed immediately.  They're the typical tough girl and not-so-tough girl, and do not appear to be getting to be good friends through most of their interactions, even though the tough girl saves the soft girl from a zombie or two and the soft girl fixes the tough girl's camera.  Both of them are haunted by the people they let die in the initial outbreak, although the tough girl is haunted by a crowd of strangers she locked out of a building while the soft girl is haunted by her own little sister.  The soft girl actually wants to find her sister and have some closure, while the tough girl was scratched by a zombie at some point and is going to see if she can be cured.  They irritate each other and separate, and we see the soft girl get stalked by a zombie they had run into before, but she is saved by a sort of Mother Earth.  This woman, whose face is half vegetation, tells her that the disease was always with us but we made the conditions right and the loss of most of humanity is simply natural.  The tough girl ends up buried in Mother Earth's garden and the soft girl pleads for her remaining life, which Mother Earth grants, although she says there's no hope.  The tough girl leads the soft girl off, even though she had promised to stay with Mother Earth, and eventually they get attacked by a huge herd of zombies.  The tough girl sacrifices herself after closing a fence behind the soft girl, who runs off and ends up in a seemingly abandoned mansion.  She wanders around looking for food and comes across some candy and a book in braille.  Then the zombified owner of the house shows up, blind as he was in life.  He tracks her to the attic and they fight because she isn't graceful enough to sneak away and not strong enough to fight him off - at first.  One of her eyes gets gouged out by a rack of antlers she tried to defend herself with and that gives her enough adrenaline to push the zombie off her and smash his head in with a shovel.  She bandages her eye and leaves the house, leaving a sad dog loyal to his owner even beyond the grave behind.  She ends up in a wild place where she finds the body of a young girl in a red swimming suit, like she remembers her sister wearing.  The body is long dead and she lies down beside it to die herself, perhaps, but grass and other plant life begin to grow on her and she "wakes up".  She leaves her sweater with the body and goes on to find the other city.  As she looks at the fence and the city behind it, she realizes somebody is watching her, and she turns to find the tough girl, who is probably a fresh zombie, but certainly not alive.  The soft girl says the people in the city won't accept her and the two walk off hand in hand.

The movie is based on a graphic novel and it does have that typical color scheme for graphic novel-zombie movies, with everything kind of washed out.  The soft girl has red-dyed hair and in some scenes it's a very bright red, almost like her sister's swimming suit, and her clothes are a dark, bright blue in some early scenes.  The synopsis implied that there was some kind of ideological reason for the women leaving, some anti-patriarchy sentiment, but the movie doesn't show that explicitly.  At first the tough girl clutching her abdomen in private makes it seem like she's hiding a pregnancy instead of a zombie wound, which is a normal symbol of women escaping The Man's control by taking control of their own bodies, but it's also pretty normal in a zombie movie for somebody to be secretly infected and only slowly transform for dramatic effect.  The soft girl tries to kill herself in the bathtub and is cured by a shadowy figure who says, "You'll be needed again tomorrow," which is pretty creepy, but not quite Gilead-like.  It's not a bad zombie movie, although the typical fan of such things would probably be disappointed by the sweetness of the ending.

after 'fest

With a change of hour the light gets weird.  It's lighter earlier in the morning, but then darker in the evening, and to be honest I prefer a darker morning.  Eases me into the day, or something.  So, a nice dark beer will help me deal with the night.  Ayinger Altbairisch Dunkel isn't a stout or porter, but things aren't always completely black.

Such a lovely scene

It's very bubbly with sort of a root beer candy color, not very heady.  The smell is sweet and tangy, promising malty goodness.  The taste is actually very mild, just very slightly sweet in fact.  If I didn't know better, I might think it was a particularly mellow root beer.  If any flavor stands out it's the sweet, which makes me feel like I need a pretzel snack.  The level of sweetness develops over time, picking up the malty feel.  It's a quiet and laid-back beer, good for swallowing many glasses of, over a pool table perhaps.

Or in front of the bar at 9am.  The Bavarian way!

Supplier: Ruta 33cl
Price: €2.65

movie one

It's Beer Week and German Film Festival, together again!  To celebrate, I sought out a good German beer for my first film.  Ayinger seems to be around in bars, although I don't think I've taken advantage of its presence.  I guess I'm a little behind in the month, but I'm sure it's still perfectly ready for drinking.

It's one of those straw yellow, bubbly German beers, a little more bitter in aroma than many such examples.  The taste is reminiscent of Spaten bock, although much lighter and more spring-like, doing justice to the name.  It's bitter, but with a sweet finish that complements the beginning.  Maibock is like a little sibling to Spaten bock, with the same basic structure, but something a little more playful and shy where Spaten is confident and center stage taking.  Ayinger Maibock is pleasant and almost uplifting, a good all-arounder, but I don't know if I would use it for, say, a beer float.

Supplier: La Buena Cerveza
Price: €3.10

spoilers ahead!
The first movie of the festival was Gleißendes Glück/El éxtasis/Original Bliss.  I had wanted to see the movie shown at 5, but schedules can change in a moment, and this was on my back-up list.  So, at 9:40pm I was waiting with a good 30 other people at the door.  The movie was supposed to start at 10.  We didn't even get in until quarter after.  It seems the movie before had a question session after and the half-hour before our movie wasn't enough.  Poor planning, Palacio de la Prensa and Cine Alemán!  At least the movie was interesting.  It's the story of a middle-aged woman having a slow emotional breakdown, mourning her lost faith and suffering from insomnia.  Her husband seems patient but sometimes frustration makes him explode.  He slams her hand in a drawer after a fight and calls their family doctor to fix her up instead of taking her to a hospital, then insists, compassionately it might seem, on staying by her side to hold her other hand.  That should probably be a red flag.  The woman hears a psychologist talking on the radio about changing reality through the power of your mind, and she goes to meet him at one of his conferences.  They hit it off, going out to dinner, for drinks, he even moves to the hotel she's staying at "to hide from his fans".  When she goes to his room she sees a laptop with porn on the screen.  He explains that he's studying porn addiction to find new treatments, but it soon becomes clear that he is an addict himself.  The woman goes back to her husband, but she and the psychologist start exchanging letters and eventually he has a conference in a city near where she lives.  They meet and discuss their problems some more.  She had been sleeping well in the hotel, but at home her insomnia comes back.  The psychologist tries to quit porn and writes postcards to the woman about his progress.  Her husband finds those postcards and gives her a beating that causes her to go to the psychologist's apartment in Berlin for a few months.  They become closer, eventually, possibly, having sex.  The day after she decides to return to her husband, but insists on her own space in the house.  He fixes her up a sleeping area in the attic, like the one she says she had in her grandfather's house.  It's one of her happiest memories.  But, the first night she goes down to her husband in bed and shows her newly bald crotch.  As she returns to her bed, he leaps out of the darkness like a monster in a horror film and tries to beat her to death before killing himself with what looks like sleeping pills.  The human violence is not shown, but plates fall, windows shake, furniture breaks, and the house looks like a hurricane and an earthquake hit at the same time.  Somehow, she survives and wakes up in the hospital with the psychologist at her side.  They are about to start a loving and emotionally fulfilling relationship.

Although I'm not sure the abusive husband was a necessary part of the story, it's an interesting contrast to see an ostensibly respectful and normal man as the beast while the porn user is less a misogynistic pervert and more a considerate partner who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.  The woman seems to be looking for emotional connection throughout the film, and her husband scoffs at her previous attempts to find peace in religion, saying she never had any faith, she just wanted to whore herself to God.  She does try to contact some divine being at different points in the film, kneeling in church or by her bed.  Mostly she asks what she should do.  Then she makes decisions that end up causing her pain.  But, her relationship with the psychologist wouldn't have prospered without those decisions, so the ends justify the means I guess?

for a little kick

One thing about these German beers is they can make some interesting labels.  As I recall from Vienna, the bock beer has a connection with Easter and spring, so here's Celebrator Doppelbock.

It's like a labor of Hercules...fetch the Beer of Strength from the Giant Goats of the Alps

It's a nice dark color but with some reddish highlights in it.  The head is off-white, contrasting nicely, and resistant.  It has that appetizing creamy, earthy dark beer smell, and the taste doesn't disappoint.  It's rather subdued, with no particular note making itself more noticeable.  It doesn't have any of those experimental ingredients like chocolate or jalapeños, but there is a covering of sweetness on it.  It's smooth and goes down easy, perhaps dangerously so, without any odd lingering aftertaste.  It does feel quite nice for a rainy Easter time, not too sweet, but maybe good to go with a Cadbury egg or two.

And it comes with a prize!