NBS BIF #12 Sign Up Thread

Danke! Tried to buy some German beer and my local store only had some Korbinian with about three inches of dust on the bottles. Have to go with local freshies

 

Having the score in the middle puts me at the worst odds. And it's not looking good...

 

Well, that was disappointing. I expected more scoring from those two teams. Oh well. What's next?!?!?!?!?!

 

I've been kicked off the football team

 

I very much support this post

 

I have a regular treehouse/trillium hookup these days pretty much at cost. So I hope my target hasn't already cruised through all their beers before and wants some hazies and fruit sours.

I'm ready to smash a damn porch or 2

 

I believe I'm up to start the next LIF. I'm going to go out on a limb with this one, the determination of the winner will include some subjectivity. Here's the deal....to enter, all I want is for you to post a true, funny story that somehow involved you. Doesn't have to involve beer, but certainly can. You have until midnight ET this Thursday to post your story. I will use a three person panel of myself, my wife, and my daughter (H.S. Senior) to determine the best story. Each of us will pick our three favorites, assigning 5 points to our favorite, 3 points to our second favorite, and 1 point to our third favorite. Story with the most points wins. For what it's worth, the rocket balls story from @Roguer in the last BIF is a good benchmark to aim for. I'm guessing / hoping he has other stories worth sharing.

This may be a spectacularly stupid idea for a LIF, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!

 

.....and while I am obviously ineligible to win my own LIF, in the spirit of sharing, here's a story of my own.

Freshman year of college over winter break, I went to Europe with two friends. This is the winter of 1990 into 1991, so no cell phones. We had a very, very loose itinerary. We knew we were starting in Zurich with a friend of ours who had been an exchange student in our high school, we knew later in the trip we were hitting Hamburg, Germany for a few days to visit an exchange student who had lived with my family for my Junior year, and that was the extent of our planning. We had Eurail passes, but that was about it. No hotel reservations, just winging it.

From Zurich, we spent a couple days in Venice. Next step is an overnight train from Venice to Munich. In the middle of the night, the train slows down as it's pulling into a small train station somewhere in Austria where we needed to switch trains. As we're pulling in, my friend Brad decides he needs to take a leak. We tell him to just wait, but he heads off to the bathroom anyway. While he's away, the conductor comes to us and frantically (in a language we don't understand) makes it clear that we need to get off the train NOW....this is not a long stop. We grab our stuff and get off the train, which promptly closes its doors and takes off....with Brad still on it.

Our next train change was in Salzburg, Austria. We figure Brad will show up a couple hours behind us, so we hang in the train station in Salzburg waiting for him. After a few hours, he still hasn't shown up, so we give up, spend the afternoon in Salzburg, then head to Munich that night.

Fast forward a few days. We've now moved on from Munich (which was a freakin' blast incidentally) and show up in Hamburg. We still have absolutely no idea where Brad is. Because we're guys (i.e. not that bright) and 18 years old (so really stupid....because all 18 year old guys are, by definition, idiots) we don't really give Brad much thought. We haven't really tried to find him, called his parents stateside to see if they know where he is etc. We just wing it and figure he'll find us eventually. Sure enough, on day 2 in Hamburg, we come home from a day of being out and about, and there's Brad, playing Nintendo on the floor of our friend's house.

Turns out that while we assumed Brad would have continued to Salzburg, Brad assumed we would come back to him at that little train station in Austria where we were separated (which was solid reasoning on his part, just not in line with what we were thinking). After a day of waiting for us to show up and finally realizing we weren't going to, he ended up spending the next 4 days sitting in train stations all day hoping to spot us. He would buy a USA Today so that other American's would talk to him. At night, he would use the unlimited Eurail pass and take a train to some random place that was 6-8 hours away and just sleep on the train rather than getting a hotel. The next morning, he would take the train back, or go to some other random city hoping to spot us. After 3 days, he finally decided to call my parents to get the address our friend, then made his way to meet us.

Now, as a parent of a 17 year old and a 19 year old, I can't imagine letting either of them head to Europe with essentially no set plans, and no way to communicate with them, but back then, all of our parents were totally fine with it. This type of thing almost couldn't happen now with cell phones, emails etc. but back then, as I can attest to, it was absolutely possible to lose a traveling companion for four days!

 

I'm banking on him having another story. That can't be the only one.

 

This was fantastic....well done, sir!