Brewtown

A friend and I headed up to Milwaukee for part of last weekend. Mainly to catch a Brewers game, but also for a German festival. The festival was entertaining enough for an afternoon. There were some German shows going on, although we only sat in on one about clothing. Apparently colors of various accessories are indicative of different aspects of a person's life. Aside from that though, they all kinda looked the same...wouldn't be the first time I've heard that though :) But yeah, each region has a unique style of clothing, which I wasn't able to appreciate. The beer selection was kinda limited, but good enough. They only had one German brew, but it went down well since it was pretty hot. As for food, they had sausages, schnitzel, brats, and other assorted German/carnival food. I did have some pig's head though, and that was pretty good...once I got past the shock value of a head on a plate. There wasn't a whole lot of meat for how big the thing was, but between the meat and the skin - good stuff.

On the way back to the East Side neighborhood, we stopped by Kopp's - a Milwaukee frozen custard place. Think ice cream, but richer and better. They've got vanilla and chocolate flavors, but also two special flavors of the day, which are pretty much delicious. Especially when it's "bienenstichkuchen:" almond flavored custard mingled with yellow cake pieces, honey, Bavarian creme and sliced almonds.

As for the East Side area, it's very suburban feeling. I wouldn't have imagined houses that big and nice only a few miles from downtown. Some of them were approaching mansions in that regard. It makes for a nice area, but then there isn't really a city neighborhood feel to the region - no restaurants, shops, or bars in the immediate area...suburbanish. We ended up walking about twenty minutes for that type of stuff later in the night. It's especially weird to not have that stuff nearby, since UW-Milwaukee was only a few blocks away. It's a different story west of the river though, where most of the apartments, houses, and region are not nearly as nice. When driving across town, it's quite a contrast between the two banks of the river.

We caught brunch at the original pancake house. I got served the largest omelette I've had - it seriously took up an entire plate and was about three inches thick. Oh, and it was covered in goodness that was some sort of mushroom sauce. Headed out to the Brewers game afterwards. I have to say that Miller Park is pretty nice. If it weren't in the middle of nowhere, it might give Petco a run for nicest park, imo.

So yeah, the city's pretty nice as far as living arrangements go. Pretty big places around the East Side, which are close to the lake and downtown. Aside from that though, it's a quieter town with less going on in the neighborhoods. It's been awhile since I've been to their downtown though, so that might be a different story.