a real dessert

So the month of stouts finishes, and I have a very nice brewery with something that might be very nice.  Frau Gruber sounds like it should be kept until Women's History Month, but it was actually the work of two brewdudes (the Frau comes from the surname of one of them, so it's not actually any kind of appropriation).  This is a 5th Season Imperial Stout (without Schischi), which sounds like it ought to be something revelatory and the result of years of testing.

Weirdly no head whatsoever - kept it too cold maybe?  It still looks appetizing, very black and a little bit slick, with a slight perfume of banana bread.  The flavor is sort of a rum banana cake, a little bit sweet and filled with alcohol.  It has a very rounded feel, like a candy ball in the mouth almost.  There's some reminder of a Sahale rum barrel aged stout, which left very positive impressions, so there's the familiarity and nostalgia factor working for it too.  It's not a beer to simply swig down; although smooth, there's a weight behind it that makes itself known.  They call black beers petroleum in Spain, and this one definitely has that kind of essence to it.  It feels like fuel, giving off potency and power, the kind of drink that you imagine revving in the glass as you pour it.

Supplier: Labirratorium

Price: €9.50

flashy

In preparation for stout month, I get something to kind of dip my toe into.  Something that won't weigh me down when I go deep and dark.  Still ought to give me a little tasty treat, though.  Won't you, Licher 1854 Kellerbier?  A quick search shows that the kellerbier was not Licher's 1854 original, that was a steam beer, the name is just a reminder of the brewery's age.

It's a very light straw color, lighter than I expected for some reason.  The head is a good consistency with very fine bubbles.  It smells a lot like a German beer, slightly bready, slightly grainy, but there's an interesting peppery bit on top.  Does it carry over into the taste?  Well, no.  It's a clean lagery beer, although the feel is a little heavier than usual.  It almost feels like melted Jello, but without the stickiness.  The flavor remains subdued, subtly sweet but nothing overwhelming.  It's almost a pre-pilsner, but not as bitter as those would become.  It develops a little woodiness over the course of the bottle, but still little aftertaste or excess weight.  I was expecting something more robust from a kellerbier, but as a last drink of the night it's not bad at all.

Supplier: La Mundial

Price: €3

bookend beers

Instead of a post per film, I'm squeezing them all into one, very efficient.  I do have two German beers to drink though, so it looks like I can do bookends.  They are actually both the same source, Berliner Kindl.  I have not had the flavored versions before, although I have occasionally seen them in the stores, but it feels like the time has come for it -  German films, German beer, summer heat.  I start with the Waldmeister.  It looks very St. Patrick-y, with it's clear but distinctly green color, and even a little green tinge in the head.  I was expecting the aroma to be somewhat medicinal, but it's kind of sweet, like a lime or apple candy.  The flavor is more herbal, tangy, with a little licorice sort of surfing on top and a sour apple chaser.  Despite its clear and light appearance, the beer feels a little sticky, like liquid candy perhaps.  A melted green Jolly Rancher.  I keep getting hits of mint in the first second of sipping, but that might be something psychological since the color also has something of mouthwash to it.

The first pick was Bilder (M)Einer Mutter/Imágenes de mi/una madre, a memoir film about the sacrifices made by a German woman in the late 20th century for her family.  The filmmaker was there to talk a little about the film afterwards, and there were a few Germans in the audience, so I guess everything is back to normal.  The film starts about when her parents started their relationship and when her father started to film her mother on Super 8.  They were from small-town Bavaria and her mother's parents were on the conservative side, so her mother was not very happy at home.  The family wasn't well-off, and two children had to sleep in the living room.  With no privacy, the (future) mother never felt like she could develop into her own person in her house, and her parents certainly didn't encourage it.  When she started to go out with her children's father, she wrote in her diary about how much she loved him and enjoyed their time together, but there is also a sense that she saw a relationship as an escape from her traditional family.  The filmmaker says the last time she smiled on film was shortly before the filmmaker's birth, but even then it seems that she was unsatisfied with her married life.  In her diary she writes about being unhappy with everything she tries, studies, hobbies, jobs, although once she has children she doesn't have a lot of job opportunities.  The filmmaker's father says when she interviews him that he gladly paid for courses and took care of the children when his wife was in class, but nothing was ever enough.  The filmmaker suggests that her mother might have wanted to have a professional life and asks if her father would have chosen to have only hobbies in her place.  The father says, vehemently, that if he had had to make the choice he wouldn't have had children, but he had been the one who was expecting to have children in the marriage.  At first I thought the mother had gotten sick of everything and abandoned the family, but it turns out she was diagnosed with cancer in the '80s and finally died of it in 1993.  Interspersed with the family story are snippets of feminist politics moving forward in Germany from the '50s to the '70s, underlining the changes that were happening in society, and the hope that people should have had in those times.  And yet, so many remained hopeless, without knowing why, like her mother.  In the Q&A afterwards, the filmmaker said she and her family had worked through their feelings of guilt before she even started on the project, but people working with her did have some quite negative emotions come up.  She also mentioned that it wasn't until they were finishing with editing that she realized she had been trying to bring her mother back to life.  Although the story actually leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the mother, it is a reflection of people living through a certain era, and the filmmaker said herself that it was only a story, not the story.

Second, I chose Je Suis Karl, which to my surprise was produced by Netflix and in fact still available to watch on the platform.  I don't have Netflix, so biggie that I bought a ticket for the festival.  I was expecting a story of a somewhat confused young woman who gets suckered into far-right ideology without any trigger, but that's not the story at all.  We begin with a couple who turn out to be the protagonist's parents smuggling a Syrian refugee from Hungary (I think) into Germany.  A few years later they are living their normal lives in Berlin when a package arrives for a neighbor and the husband takes it into their apartment as a favor to her, since she's 80 something years old.  The package turns out to be a bomb which explodes, blows up a good chunk of the building and kills a dozen or so people, including the wife and two young sons of the man who accepted the package.  Everyone assumes immediately that it is an Islamic terror attack, although we never see any actual reasoning behind this, and the man's daughter, our main character, has a lot of trouble accepting what has happened.  She also gets hounded by the press, which does her mental health no favors.  She gets rescued from a couple of reporters by a nice-looking young man who seems sympathetic to her and her situation and invites her to a youth conference in Prague, where the future of Europe will be discussed and "saved".  She hesitates, but in the end she goes, without telling her father anything.  It turns out the conference is a gathering of right wingers, strategizing to take over as much public space with populist slogans as possible.  They even coopt a number of feminist talking points by giving them a heavily xenophobic twist, as if the only men who don't respect women are non-Europeans.  After the conference, where the main character has become close to her savior, the titular Karl, they travel to Strasbourg to offer support to a far-right candidate in upcoming elections.  The top of the group have decided that they need a big event to kick off a sort of revolution, a call to action for all of their followers across the continent, and that event is a murder.  More of a suicide really, although another person will pull the trigger, but they decide that Karl will be "assassinated" after giving a moving speech in favor of this French politician, but it will be his own comrades who do the deed.  Total false flag - just like the package bomb, which was delivered by Karl in disguise to stimulate anti-immigrant feeling in Berlin.  All goes according to plan for them, the speeches, the murder, the ensuing riots.  The main character's father has come to Strasbourg to find her, with the refugee he smuggled years before, who he sought out after the bombing.  It isn't clear whether he thought this man might have information about the bomb, or if he is just afraid that his old friend might be having trouble with all the growing anti-foreigner sentiment.  As violence explodes all around them in the city, and others as we see on the news, they hide in the sewers, planning to escape, although we don't know where they can go safely now.

The last film for this year was Bornehomer Straße, the story of the first border control to open after the East German government declared free travel for its citizens.  The guards hear the announcement on the TV one night and are confused, thinking it can't be a serious change in policy, and their direct supervisors give them no guidance.  People show up at the gate, expecting to be allowed to cross, and are told to bring visas as usual or to go home.  The crowd grows bigger and more unruly and the guards get more and more nervous.  Finally, the head of the control point decides to release some pressure by letting people cross, but the trouble-makers won't be allowed back in, although nobody informs them, of course.  When the first people are told they can't re-enter East Berlin, there are more protests and pleading, which the head guard finally gives in to, allowing people to come back without any problems.  In the end, he just opens the gate and lets people cross with out any sorting or marking of good or bad on their passports, something that almost seems like treason to his colleagues.  So strange a choice is it, that when he returns home and tells his wife about his night at work, she takes it as a joke.  I did not know this story before seeing the movie, and while there were some funny moments, like the dog "infiltrating" the DDR, it didn't seem to be the comedy that it was described as.  It has the same director as Je Suis Karl in fact, so maybe we should have expected a little bit of misdirection.

One thing I noticed this year was the amount of errors in the subtitles.  It's not too weird to see things that don't seem to be exactly what the actors are saying, due to space and time concerns, but these were straight up mistakes.  You don't excuse changing "the 20th century" to "8 o'clock" with any bullshit about formatting needs.

And now the dessert beer - Berliner Kindl Himbeer.  If the Waldmeister looked like a St. Patrick's treat, raspberry looks like Valentine's.  It has the same aroma as Mort Subité, very fruity but a little bit sharp and with warning of syrup.  It's much more delicate than cherry and raspberry Belgian beers actually, with more of a hint of fruit over a mouthful of...very mildly sour candy.  There is a little bit of that candy feel that was in the Waldmeister, but not quite as much.  It's actually a bit lighter in feel.  I'm finding the raspberry to be less sticky and more refreshing than the Waldmeister, which is not how I expected it to go, but I'm happy with the experience.

icicles dripping!

On the eighth day of Beermas I went and bought for me

Eight icicles dripping

Seven sea monsters swimming

Six owls nesting

Five malts of gold

Four avian hallucinations

Three French magicians

Two love ya dearlies

And the simplest answer there could be 

I feel confident that I have been imaginative for day 8.  Yes, there's a probable maid on the label, but it's not a milk stout and the milking isn't obvious...but don't those icicles look a little like teats?  Just what you wanted to think about with your beer, I'm sure.

Eis Zäpfle comes from Rothaus-Bräu, and I am surprised to see it is made as a Märzen.  Most of the beers of that style that I've seen have been quite a bit darker in color, but the rules were made to be broken.  

Light, straw colored beer, very fluffy head, it's very German in its appearance.  It has a little bit grass and grain in the smell, but its not especially strong.  At first the flavor is very much a German lager, a little sweet and a hint of bitter, but then a wave of bitterness breaks over the tongue, followed quickly by a sort of appley sweetness.  It actually seems right for a wintery beer, having some stimulating, perhaps even medicinal bitterness and a little energy giving sweet.  It's supposed to be enjoyed "ice cold", and letting it warm up does give it a tangier flavor.  It's not an unpleasant change, though, perhaps a little less refreshing, but perky and energetic.

gnädige Frau

For a long time it seemed like German craft beers were going to stay beyond my easy reach, way down in the south that I am.  But, surprise, surprise, they've been making more and more appearances.  Naturally, they are being promoted for Oktoberfest, although they certainly aren't the traditional styles that you find in Munich.  The one picked up isn't even from Munich (although not so far away), but Frau Gruber does make me think of some German (or Austrian) TV shows that take place in the area.  Licious Biermischgetränk contains a fair amount of fruit, that being orange and mango, so I wonder if it will be a little lighter than what you might be looking for at the end of October.

Oh, it's just orange juice in the can!  I can coax a little foam from it, but not much, and it doesn't hang around for long.  The aroma has only a little oranginess to it though.  It smells like a battle of bitter and sweet, not actually the most appetizing, but I will trust in the Frau.  The drink is quite a mouthful, much thicker in the mouth than I was expecting.  Practically syrupy in consistency, although not sweet at all.  It's a very heavy bitter, with a little tickle of sour in the aftertaste.  I was wrong about it being light, it's a beer drink with presence.  It doesn't have an overpowering flavor exactly, it has a little bit of a party to it, but maybe a little too much to go with breakfast.  Breakfast by itself, maybe.

Supplier: Labirratorium

Price: €7.45

it isn't glittering, though

More than halfway through the month, and I need to pick up a few more "samples".  This time I stop by Labirratorium, where I know there will be plenty of unusual choices.  I kind of feel like something a little more traditional, though, so one of my purchases was a German lager.  Now it's a special lager, obviously, but this time I'm not sifting through a dozen flavorings.  This time.  I don't believe I've come across St. Georgen Bräu before, but I'm curious about this Goldmärzen of theirs.  (Oh, wait, here's the last time - also from Labirratorium!)  I don't know if it was one of their original recipes - on the label it says since 1624 - but I'm sure the Bavarian tradition of quality beer will make itself known. 

It has that very classic German beer look, with the translucent gold and frothy, abundant head.  Grains and vegetation are evident in the aroma.  It smells like a full-flavored beer, so I'm expecting something with some weight to it.  I'm a little surprised at the touch of sourness in the taste, although there's plenty of meaty lager almost corn in there too.  It's a nice balance of flavors, making it more interesting than the majority of German lagers in my opinion.  It certainly does have some weight behind it, it drags a little in the throat, almost fighting the swallow.  That robustness is another point of interest for the beer, but I don't think it's strong to the point of distraction.  It does share the feeling of a nice märzen, despite being a blond version, no forgettable beer at all.

Supplier: Labirratorium

Price: €2.40

keep your nose up

I live pretty far out from the good beer stores, so it's a bit of an odyssey when it comes time to pick up some special brews.  At least in August there isn't a whole lot else going on, so I don't have to feel like I'm being crunched for time.  So I can wander down to Be Hoppy, all the way by Antón Martín; actually, I have a warm feeling for Be Hoppy, since it's where I chanced to go during Filomena and it ended up being the only beer store open in town.  Lo, the beer gods did smile upon me that day.  And probably today too, since they do have a selection of oddities and specialties that rivals pretty much anyone else's.  I did get something on the regular side, a German bock with an imperious looking goat on the label.  It was the goat that got me, and the name, Impulsator, just sealed the deal.

So, a nice, toasty caramel color, head starts out fluffy but dies back a bit.  It's candy-like in aroma, almost molasses-y.  I tell myself there's a little bit of toastiness too, but I'm not completely sure it isn't a psychological reaction to the color.  It's not quite as sweet a flavor as I expected, but it is definitely on the sweet side, with very little bitterness at all.  It's relatively heavy, like one would expect from a darker German beer, and I'm expecting it to go a little syrupy if I let it warm up too much.  As it is, it's a mouthful but not too much to handle.  It's a good evening beer in spite of the overall feeling of it being more of fall holiday beer, but that could just be my affinity for the darker ones.  I don't know if I would actually find it all that refreshing on a bright and sunny Madrid afternoon, but I might drink it and enjoy it just to spite the weather.

 

 

a bit of mountain air

It's the traditional vacation month, but this year I do have a few things going on.  One more round of beer class, for example.  There's still plenty of time for a beer a day, I would think, so off we go!  It's a German beer this time, in hope of motivation for the future I guess, Schwarzwald Michel.  With the temperatures as they have been, it's time for something a little lighter and breezier than my beloved stouts.

It's a lightly colored, translucent brew, quite fluffy head on top.  The flavor is pretty typical of German lagers, on the sweet side with a touch of grain, although I'd say this one has a little more weight to it than many.  It also has a very clean flavor, whisking its way down the throat without leaving much of an aftertaste.  The barest touches of bitterness flicker up, but overall it's more of a bock than a regular lager.  Over time there's a bit more herbal and floral notes, creating a bit more complexity.  It's still very summery, and maybe the Bavarian Alpine water brought a little coolness to Madrid August.

first film back

Last year was Heimkino, but this year the Film Festival is back in person.  I'm actually a little disappointed; it was so easy to just watch all the films on my couch, and now I have to go downtown and be in a theater with people... Well, at least there is a festival at all.  The first film was No Hard Feelings, about immigrants and refugees in Germany, with a touch of LGBTQ+.  I think if you don't read the synopsis beforehand you wouldn't know that the main character is doing community service as a translator for Iranian refugees, you might think he's just volunteering for some reason.  The story goes over his quest to accept himself as an Iranian-German, I guess, and a gay one.  He has trouble with different accents, and some Iranians make fun of him for his more German accent.  He starts a kind of secret relationship with one of the refugees and a firm friendship with the refugee's sister, who ends up having her case rejected by the government and her deportation ordered.  I was surprised by how little fuss people made about homosexuality - the main character's family doesn't seem to care at all about who he's attracted to, and even the refugees are not especially bothered.  There are a few comments, but nothing to make you worry about anyone's life.  The main character's parents seem to be planning to return to Iran, which he struggles to understand, but his mother tells him that they just can't let go of their connection to their homeland, while at the same time she hopes that his home is Germany.  The refugee woman ends up going on the run from the police to avoid deportation, and asks the main character to take care of her brother, who he's already started to be pretty serious with.  At the end, she's gone, and the two men are together, happy with each other, but wounded by the situation.

I did go looking for a German beer, and ended up buying one at the German supermarket.  A nice märzen, a little hilariously with the line "like in the good old days".  It's lighter than expected, clear and orangey.  Fine white head, although not very resistant.  There's a very, very mild scent of bitter, not the typical lager grain.  There's plenty of lager flavor, though, full and round, somewhat sweet.  It's kind of a thick feeling beer, not exactly sticky, but it doesn't go down completely cleanly.  It's not a bad beer for movie watching, to be honest.  Too bad I couldn't have it in the theater.

Door #17

Oh boy, more Schlenkerla!  This one fooled me for a minute, since it is the Rauchbier but blended with a pale lager.  According to the back of the bottle, the lager is aged and livened up (kräusened) with the rauchbier just before bottling.  The effect is supposed to be one of effervescence and happy little bubbles in the rejuvenated beer, besides giving it a darker color and more complex flavor profile.  We shall see just how well it works in this case.

The overwhelming sense of the aroma is rauchbier, with that distinctive bacony scent.  I struggle to identify anything else, any kind of lager graininess or hoppy bitter/fruit.  The fruit would be a surprise, since that's not traditional at all.  The flavor is also pretty much all rauchbier.  Although the color is lightened somewhat, the lager doesn't seem to have much effect on the taste.  It's the kind of beer that I don't like much on its own, but is a very good match for food, especially meaty food.  I might have to warm up some chili.

New thoughts on future presentations, will be checking things out in a couple of days.

Door #13

Preparing for another week, with a bottle of märzen at the ready.  It's a genuine German one, Oktoberfest Märzen, in one of those old-fashioned kind of bottles with a pop top.  Even though we're coming close to Christmas, there's something about a märzen style beer that seems to fit the season.  Maybe it's that sweetness that they often have, or the spiciness.  Maybe it's just that it looks like it had chestnuts soaking in it.

There's a malty aroma that wafts out after popping that bottle top, and the beer pours out clear and only lightly topped with foam.  It's a little lighter in color than I expected, sort of a dark apple juice.  Maybe that influences me to pick up on an apple scent in there too.  It's surprisingly tart in taste, not sweet exactly, and a little rough around the edges.  Really not very strong on the bitter.  While it coats the tongue, it's more of a physical sensation and not a taste that sticks around.  Flavorwise it actually finishes quite dry.

It's a little scary how fast time flies, but at least there's no reason to worry about thirteen.

Door #4

I can see the caps in the box and I was apprehensive pulling this bottle out.  Schlenkerla Urbock, the "cousin" to their famous rauchbier.  I had a Schlenkerla Helles at a recent tasting and even that carries the smokey flavor, having picked it up just being in the same factory.  At least it's a definite winter beer.  There's nothing like a smokey treat to make you think of bonfires, roasting things, and tingly hands.  At a fairly strong 6.5%, Urbock will probably keep you feeling pretty comfortable, and make you think you sing those Christmas carols better, too.

It's smokey from the very start, not like the helles, and there's some kind of fuel undertone in there too.  It's heavy like a bock, slightly sweet, also with the typical smokey bacon of the rauchbiers.  There's an odd heavy fruitiness, something plumb-like, which is more in line with bocks.  There's also that dark beer licorice; I'm not sure if it's more distracting than the smoke or not.  In appearance it's a burned, toasted sort of bock, not the warm gold of, say, Spaten.  It might be smoother drinking than the regular märzen rauchbier, but it's still not what I would look for in just a beer.  It's a meal beer for me, if only I had had it for Thanksgiving.  Or saved it for Christmas chilli.  Smokey jalapeños?  Now that's something to celebrate!

Could I pack a German beer cultural history into a couple of hours?  I might find out someday.  I'll probably find out I can't, but I should try to work out a juicy summary anyway.

Door #3

What do I have lying around for door number three?  Oh look, a German pilsner.  It's not one of those export pilsners in a half-liter can, so maybe we can be optimistic.  I mean, Weihenstephaner, oldest brewery in the world.  They must be doing something right?  I'm feeling a little skeptical about traditional things right now, though.

Very light in color, straw yellow, bright white head, although not very long lasting.  It has that German beer smell, a good whiff of grain and grass, although it is a little lighter than a lot of lagers and other helleses.  It's pretty thin in the mouth, but with a good flavor.  Slightly sweet, not grassy in taste.  Not very much bitter for a pilsner.  It feels a lot more like a summer beer than an Advent one, with just enough flavor to be good on its own, especially in company, but would so not lose anything with a nice salty snack.

I would have thought that I would have picked Wiehenstephaner pils at some point in the past; I have had several other of the beers.  Somehow the pilsner has never made it to my glass.  That's probably a mark of my disinterest in the "typical" than a true lack of opportunity.  The beer stores are pretty well supplied with German beers of this type, even now.  And the influence of German beers has been felt for more than a century in Spain and its drinking habits, at least in the products.  More on that later...

Heimkino zehn

It's coming time to finish the German Film Festival for this year, and there's one more documentary to go.  I'm kind of digging the documentaries that I've been able to see this year, but to be honest, I probably wouldn't seek out the docs next year if I had to choose.  I'm just too invested in my fictional or "based on actual events" movies.  This documentary goes by the name Lost in Face.  It's a series of interviews with a woman who has suffered prosopagnosia or face blindness her whole life.  She explains that she has never been able to recognize her face in the mirror, but she knows her clothes and her house, so the person in the mirror must be her.  She can't recognize anybody she's ever known by their face, instead she can identify their gait, posture, or general attitude, and identifies people in family photographs by how they face the camera.  She is something of an artist now, creating semi-cubist works because of her inability to retain details of faces.  They come out with several eyes or no really identifiable eye, lines that could be a mouth or not, and yet the hairstyles are often quite exact.  "Charlotte" did not give her real name at first, being suspicious of how the interviews could develop, but later developed something of a rapport with the interviewer.  He takes her to a hospital for a brain scan, to see if there's a physical problem that can explain her condition, but in the scans the part of her brain that is supposed to process faces appears to be perfectly normal.  The malfunction is at a smaller level of detail than the machine can detect.  The interviews are interspersed with animations of her brainspace, with her "self" cutting the strings of other faces and people and letting them fall into the abyss of nothingness.  She talks about finding friends through her horses, which are kept at a fairly snooty stable, although she doesn't pay any attention to the other people who board there.  A young girl showed up one day with no horse to ride and was just watching the others, so Charlotte, riding without tack or "proper" riding habit, asked her if she wanted to ride Charlotte's horse. They became close friends, and Charlotte was worried about how to handle a long distance friendship when the girl eventually moved to Australia.  Charlotte also talks about her birth mother, who had been very young, perhaps a teenager, when she was born, and had given her up for adoption.  Charlotte's adoptive parents allowed her birth mother to come around as an "aunt", although eventually she managed to get ahold of her birth certificate and see who her birth mother was.  I think no father was actually listed on the certificate.  They continued their friendship until her birth mother's death.  The interviewer spends some time in the beginning encouraging Charlotte to try new ways of knowing the forms of faces but at first she rebuffs him.  At the end, though, she tries to use touch to "see" the features of a face to draw it.  She makes a portrait of him and gives it to him as a present.

Weihenstephaner, is that what I'm left with?  Don't get me wrong, it's a good beer, but it's so normal for something to go with such a surreal kind of story.  It's Vitus, the weizenbock, so at least there's a certain weight to it to help you digest the strangeness of the film.  It's a pretty typical German beer, with the touches of grain in the aroma and flavor, but also some good shades of fruit coming in.  Nothing too exotic, apple and banana for the most part, but it's a playful sort of beer, perky and bright after a story showing somebody living a life that we can only comprehend in the most basic way, understanding her words but not her reality.

Heimkino neun

I have never gone to the collection of shorts that the German Film Festival puts on, preferring to see a whole movie for my euro.  A few of the films have a short shown before them anyway.  The collection is a ... really extensive one, not just 30-40 minutes, and everything in a couple of particular genres.  There are regular love action shorts mixed in with animation and blended live/animation.  The highlights for me were the personal, portable border wall and Mascarpone.  Others were more of a documentary style, like Formas, the interviews with spinal problems, talking about how they worried about their posture and symmetry in the eyes of others, or had come to disregard it in favor of their own comfort in themselves.  In Jupiter a family seems to be running from the end of the world when a comet crashes into the earth, but it turns out they are part of a sect that believes the comet is a ship coming to take them back to their true home.  The daughter in the family doesn't quite believe them, even at the very end.  Liuetenant Luna and Nest have beautiful images and simple stories, La Boutique and Der Junge im Karohemd examine love among our everyday companions, Die Tinte trocknet nicht shows us two Muslim girls discussing how they hope their future relationships to be.  In the beginning they're wandering around a church and one is telling the other how ceremonies are performed to the best of her knowledge.  It sounds like some Christian friend has dragged her to church before, possibly she's even had a Christian boyfriend.  One animated short shows a village fleeing armed conflict, children grabbed up and carried off by their parents with only the barest of necessities,  Finally they reach a dock and the children are offered up by their parents to sailors on the ships to make sure they can get away, although at the end it looks like everyone is reunited.  I don't know if I'll choose to see the shorts in the future, but it was quite the selection for this year.

Another Andechs beer for this installment, this time a standard helles.  Not as much fun as the doppelbock, but something much more predictable and in line with what you're expecting.  It's not super alcoholic, but has a heavy feel, and doesn't even give off a lot of aroma to let you imagine what you're in for.  And what that is is a calm and relaxing lager, nothing demanding or attention grabbing, just in the framework of the style, if that's what you're looking for.

Heimkino acht

I read a few very positive reviews for this film, although I also saw it was "in the style of You've Got Mail", so I should have been more wary.  As it was, I ended up unimpressed.

SPOILERS

A Linguistics professor gets dumped by his girlfriend and at the same time begins to receive emails from an "E. Röthe", who wants to cancel a magazine subscription.  The emails become more and more upset as they appear to be ignored, and finally Leo writes back to say they have the wrong address.  Later he gets a generic Christmas wish email and responds thanking them for their spam.  This gets answered with, "Passive aggressive idiot."  And so the game begins.  E stands for Emma, but a slip of the finger makes her Emmi in their conversations.  They start a kind of flirtation even though Emmi is married with two step-children, and supposedly happy.  Leo tries to get over his ex-girlfriend, who pops up from time to time for sex and disappears again, but when he goes out with women his sister sets him up with, he can't stop thinking about his next message to Emmi.  Emmi also starts to get more caught up in their virtual relationship, and starts seeing the deficiencies in her relationship with her husband.  He is a respected orchestra conductor and spends a lot of time at rehearsals or in performance, while she gives piano lessons and works as a magazine editor, I think, from home.  They almost meet by design in a coffee shop but don't recognize each other yet.  Then, they almost run into each other in a supermarket, but Leo gets a call from his sister that their mother is in the hospital.  He is offline for a few days looking after her, and then taking care of the funeral.  He did not have a close relationship with his mother, so he is maybe more upset by the loss of opportunity to improve the relationship than the loss of a relationship itself.  His sister scolds him for this, too, saying their mother said he was the most like her because both of them kept the people they claimed to love at arm's length.  Leo starts to want a "real" relationship with Emmi, who resists because she doesn't want to rock the boat with her family.  She has a strong relationship with her stepchildren, and even though her husband seems preoccupied with his work, they seem to have a loving relationship.  She even tells her stepdaughter that when they met he took her breath away.  But, after some prodding, she starts to wonder if she could have a great love story with a stranger and she and Leo make plans to meet.  Then, Leo gets an email from her husband.  He asks Leo to have a night with his wife, to destroy the fantasy that they have built together, so that he can fight for her as a reality against a reality.  Leo hesitates, feeling guilty, but eventually continues with their plans.  At the same time, he organizes a transfer to a university in New York, so the meeting would be a goodbye anyway.  Emmi gets ready to go to see Leo and says goodbye to her husband, who tells her to have a good time, as she expects.  What she doesn't expect is that he calls her Emmi, which tells her that he knows everything.  She goes back to her bedroom and sits on the bed until late into the night, missing the date with Leo.  Then, at some early hour of the morning, she puts on her coat and shoes and rushes out the door, driving desperately to Leo's place, just making it before he gets in a taxi to the airport to fly off to his new American life.  They see each other for the first time and smile.

It could have been and interesting story, examining the ways people try to protect themselves from disappointment and pain, settling for something safe but unexciting, taking partners for granted, or getting caught in a cycle of the grass is always greener.  Instead, Leo's sister tells him that he never lets people in when we have seen him ready to marry his ex-girlfriend.  Emmi has a warm relationship with her husband and never lets on that she regrets any opportunities she has missed by marrying him and taking care of his kids.  The part about not being able to compete with a fantasy as a real person rings true, but since it comes at the very end of the movie it isn't explored.  We might imagine that Leo and Emmi see each other and then go their own separate ways to continue the fantasy, or the most Hollywood of endings could happen, where she joins him, with no luggage or anything, on his move to New York and they live happily ever after.  I much preferred Meine Ende, dein Anfang.

Some might say I should have had a gose ready with this movie, since I'm so salty about it.  So luck there, just a weissbier.  It's Andechs, in one those nice, big half liter bottles, to take the bad taste of a disappointing movie out of your mouth.  This is a fruitier beer than a lot of German ones I've had, with hints of banana and apple popping up here and there.  It's also fairly sweet in aroma, with sort of a cakey smell to it.  It's on the heavy side, filling, and better company on a summer evening than some movies.

Heimkino sieben

Another documentary I probably wouldn't have chosen to see if I had been limited by tickets and time.  Also quite interesting, though, it's about an art workshop for intellectually disabled people.  Some of them have even become quite well-known as outsider artists, bringing more attention and, one hopes, funding to the center and its mission.  Kunst kommt aus dem Schnabel wie er gewachsen ist shows several of the beneficiaries of the program working on their projects, on one hand for their personal therapy, but also with an eye to sales.  At one point the head of the center tells some visitors that, while the art is more helpful than the repetitive work of assembling ballpoint pens, it's the factory style work that ends up paying the bills.  You never know what kind of art is going to sell the best.  Two of the participants are preparing shows and pieces to lend out during the filming.  One is a woman who often paints copies of classical works with rooster heads instead of human ones, although she also makes models of famous buildings and creates other, more personal works.  Another is an elderly man whose past is mostly a mystery, since records are not very detailed he doesn't like to speak very much.  He creates highly abstract drawings of precise and repetitive lines that so often go off the paper he's using that his easel and table are also sometimes displayed as parts of his work.  Their names are Suzy van Zehlendorf and Adolf Beutler, if you're curious.  The patients seem to enjoy creating pictures as part of their therapies, and fit in a regular schedule of activities.  Some of them get nervous when their patterns are changed, even though they're preparing for an important art show.  The show appears to be successful, with an appreciative public, and the catalog impresses the patients, who are delighted to see their works in a shiny, important looking book.

As luck would have it, I get a kölsch to go with today's film.  It's not what I would have chosen if it were up to me, I would have thought something heavier would go better.  This time, though, the Früh Kölsch has more weight to it than I remember.  It's also a deeper bitter and more typically beery, not as light and effervescent.  Still, very much a summer beer, it's just too bad I'm not at a street table just off of Gran Vía after seeing the documentary in Palacio de la Prensa.  Surely, there would be someplace with German beers down there.  No Casa de la Cerveza, Kloster, or Oldenburg, but something would do.

Heimkino sechs

Coming off of a good show, you have hope for the next one.  Coup is supposed to be based on actual events, but a cursory Google search didn't give me anything.  Maybe the name changes have hidden it, or maybe it just isn't a story of note outside of Hamburg...it really seems like something people would talk about, though.

SPOILERS

We begin with a young man explaining how he got interested in motorcycles and engine work, when he fixed a thrown out lawn mower as a young boy and a moped later, and got his own motorcycle when he turned 18, under the approving gaze of his father.  He goes to work at a bank, but is also part of a motorcycle club, two worlds that look at each other with disdain and suspicion.  He doesn't much enjoy his job.  He is the only person at the bank who knows how to do certain operations, since they're boring and unglamorous, so none of his apparently high-society coworkers want to do them, and one of those functions is distributing interest to clients who bring in their interest tickets.  The paper tickets are supposed to be marked so they can't be used again, but everyone is too lazy to bring the special scissors from the basement, so he just uses a hole punch.  If there's a big stack of tickets, he has to divide them into groups for punching, and the holes don't line up.  He realizes he could swipe a bunch of tickets and use them himself in other banks.  He recruits a couple of friends from the biker club to help him, and they open an account in Luxembourg, where the bank manager just barely manages to hide her discomfort at the long hair and skull rings that one of the accomplices sports.  Everything goes smoothly, the three men go to different banks throughout the day and cash in their interest tickets, a few thousands of marks at a time, until they have over 2 million marks to share.  Our hero and one of his associates flee to Australia and start to live it up.  He calls his girlfriend and directs her to get on a plane with their son and join him, but she refuses.  The whole thing sounds ridiculous to her, and besides she's pissed off that he has just been MIA for a whole week.  The police start to harass her and she gets angrier and angrier, while the two financial criminals in Australia start to get homesick.  Eventually, they try to negotiate a return to Germany, saying they'll give back all the money they have left, they only spent about 100,000 marks, in return for all the charges being dropped.  They never quite get the deal finalized, but the man goes back anyway, out of love for his girlfriend and son.  He loses the money he has left, has to go to trial, and after a few years his girlfriend leaves him anyway.  He continues to have the most interesting life he can, though, later buying a yacht with another girlfriend to sail around the world in.  They have some trouble getting out of Thailand.  Now he's back in Hamburg, giving an interview to go with the movie, and when the interviewer asks if he regrets anything, he says, "I only regret coming back."

Is Schlenkerla the best known rauchbier?  It's certainly the one that I see most often.  A rauchbier seems to be fitting for a story like this, where somebody vanishes like smoke after committing a crime.  Obviously there's a smokiness in the aroma and the flavor, but I find it interesting that the beer has a certain creaminess to it.  It gives the feeling of a smoked cheese, with the tiniest hint of saltiness and sourness behind the bitter smoke.

Heimkino fünf

And the German ride continues!  It's a good thing they're showing all the films on two days; even not having to spend a lot of time out of the house it's a lot of time to spend watching three or four movies a day.  Here we have Meine Ende, dein Anfang/Relativity, which I wasn't sure about since it looked so much like a cute little romance in the trailer for the festival.  It is not that, however.

SPOILERS

The movie starts with a bang, a couple getting together after the man's presentation of his doctoral work at the university, going to the bank, and being caught in a robbery.  The woman manages to sneak her phone out of her bag, but one of the robbers sees her and starts screaming and threatening her, causing the man to come between them, and get shot.  After this we watch a story being told in two directions, with scenes of the woman's grieving going chronologically forward mixed with scenes from her relationship with the man going backward.  The story of one of the thieves is also mixed in, from before and after the robbery.  It turns out he was only willing to rob a bank to pay for his daughter's medical treatment; she has some genetic marker that makes her a bad candidate for normal treatments, but an experimental one does exist - not covered by the normal health care system.  The robber loses his job after he gets caught stealing a bracelet for his daughter while he was supposed to be doing night security at a kind of big box store, and the family is left without private insurance.  He returns to the scene of the crime, feeling guilty about the murder, and happens to see the woman leaving a candle in front of the bank.  Then she turns to walk into the middle of a busy street and the robber rushes out to pull her back.  They begin a strange sort of friendship, with her looking to forget her pain a little bit and him trying to assuage his guilt, not only at his part in her partner's death, but also his betrayal of his family for losing his job, and possibly having an affair before the events of the movie.  The flashbacks show the woman feeling insecure at being the checkout girl girlfriend to the man, who comes from a well-off family, and apparently has never had a job at all while studying.  They manage to build a tight relationship, which lets the woman feel able to blow off her needy and manipulative mother.  Finally, the woman goes into the police station to give her statement about the robbery and the detective in charge of the case shows her the security footage in case she can give him more details about the robbers.  He has to talk to another cop for a moment and leaves the footage paused as one of the robbers reaches up to paint out the camera lens.  The woman sees a bracelet under the robber's glove and recognizes it as her new friend's.  She is furious, but doesn't tell him what she knows right away.  Instead she follows him to the hospital and sees him with his daughter in her room.  Flashing back again, we see the robber and his friend go to buy the guns for the robbery, and he buys blanks, not wanting to actually hurt anybody.  His friend, though, takes real bullets without him knowing.  This leads to the robber accidentally killing the woman's boyfriend.  Now the woman is aware of all of this and takes her new friend the robber out to a park to talk with him.  He suspects nothing amiss, but when they are alone she pulls a gun and demands an explanation.  After he tells her everything she pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and throws it at him before walking away.  The paper is actually the results of a compatibility test that show she could be a donor for his daughter (bone marrow, I think?).  She goes through with the donation and it looks like the little girl will make a recovery.  The last scene of the movie is the first thing that happens in the story, really.  The woman just misses the train in the U-Bahn and when the next one comes in she runs into a man who she feels an instant connection with.  He seems to feel the same, but they only have time to give each other their names - Nora, Aron.  My end is your beginning, he says.

A nice doppelbock ought to be good company to a head-scratcher kind of film.  Not too strong with the flavor, but a good kick of alcohol to keep you in your seat.  Schneider Weisse presents Hopfenweisse Tap 5.  Not quite what I expected, similar to the film.  Unfortunately, this time I was disappointed.  While there's a pleasant bit of spice, it's overridden by sort of a rubber taste that I found distracting and rather unpleasant.  Can't all be winners, I guess.

Heimkino vier

I don't generally choose to go to the documentaries, and there aren't that many that come to the German Film Festival.  Sometimes they aren't documentaries as much as a personal report and musing, like that one on slower living a few years ago.  This year there are several documentaries offered, mostly arty stuff.  One is a biography of German artist Christoph Schlingensief, a man who always wanted to make movies, and managed to do it, although they were certainly not "popular".  Upon viewing one of his films as part of his application to film school, a professor told him that the film made it clear he would never love anybody.  Schlingesief took this as a challenge to prove that he could, in fact, love other people, even though he had to apply to film school several times, and was only accepted with some very influential recommendations from established directors.  His vision was to share provocation and make people reconsider their view of the world, not too uncommon among artists, really.  Schlingensief had the same idea about violence on film as Tarantino, apparently, in that it isn't something to be careful of, but to exaggerate and exploit.  Schlingensief was trying to remove the power of taboo by forcing it people's faces, making uncomfortable and ugly things mundane.  He was hired to direct plays, which he found an interesting challenge and was not immediately successful at.  He created installations in public spaces where people would be faced with the realities of xenophobia or racism, or be encouraged to face their socio-political worries in the Church of Fear.  His parents appear in his early homemade movies, not terribly excited about it.  He made television appearances to defend disgusting or upsetting art, bringing arguments of freedom of expression and honesty with oneself.  Sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 and died only about a year and a half later.  He isn't very well-known outside of Germany, but seems to be something of a figure in the German art and cinema world.  Certainly, his films, which look like grosser versions of Ed Wood or other B horror movie makers, could be enjoyed even if just as junk entertainment.  I'm sure Schlingensief would want us to read between the lines, though.

A doppelbock does seem to go with this style of art somehow.  And Korbinian is a formidable kind of doppelbock, with a royal reddish color and a dessert-laden taste.  I've met Korbinian before, but this one came in a selection box, and it never hurts to try things again.  While fruity, there's also a definite chocolate flavor hiding in there, giving the beer a richness and smoothness that surpasses a lot of the style.  And bocks are a nice group, so that's saying something on my part.