Text A: At the Hofbräuhaus, Munich, 1934

I was back in beer-territory. Halfway up the vaulted stairs a groaning Brownshirt, propped against the wall on a swastika’d arm, was unloosing, in a staunchless gush down the steps, the intake of hours. Love’s labour lost. Each new storey radiated great halls given over to ingestion.

[Within the great halls] the trunks of these feasting burghers were as wide as casks. The spread of their buttocks over the oak benches was not far short of a yard. They branched at the loins into thighs as thick as the torsos of ten-year-olds and arms on the same scale strained like bolsters at the confining serge. Chin and chest formed a single column, and each close-packed nape was creased with its three deceptive smiles. Every bristle had been cropped and shaven from their knobbly scalps. Except when five o’clock veiled them with shadow, surfaces as polished as ostriches’ eggs reflected the lamplight. The frizzy hair of their wives was wrenched up from scarlet necks and pinned under slides and then hatted with green Bavarian trilbys and round one pair of elephantine shoulders a little fox stole was clasped. The youngest of this group, resembling a matinée idol under some cruel spell, was the bulkiest. Under tumbling blond curls his china blue eyes protruded from cheeks that might have been blown up with a bicycle pump, and cherry lips laid bare the sort of teeth that make children squeal. There was nothing bleary or stunned about their eyes. The setting may have reduced their size, but it keyed their glances to a sharper focus. Hands like bundles of sausages flew nimbly, packing in forkload on forkload of ham, salami, frankfurter, krenwurst and blutwurst and stone tankards were lifted for long swallows of liquid which sprang out again instantaneously on cheek and brow. They might have been competing with stop-watches, and their voices, only partly gagged by the cheekfuls of good things they were grinding down, grew louder while their unmodulated laughter jarred the air in frequent claps. Pumpernickel and aniseed rolls and bretzels bridged all the slack moments but supplies always came through before a true lull threatened. Huge oval dishes, laden with schweinebraten, potatoes, sauerkraut, red cabbage and dumplings were laid in front of each diner. They were followed by colossal joints of meat – unclassifiable helpings which, when they were picked clean, shone on the scoured chargers like calves’ pelvises or the bones of elephants. Waitresses with the build of weight-lifters and all-in wrestlers whirled this provender along and features dripped and glittered like faces at an ogre’s banquet. But all too soon the table was an empty bone-yard once more, sound faltered, a look of bereavement clouded those small eyes and there was a brief hint of sorrow in the air. But succour was always at hand; beldames barged to the rescue at full gallop with new clutches of mugs and fresh plate-loads of consumer goods; and the damp Laestrygonian brows unpuckered again in a happy renewal of clamour and intake.

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, 1977, by Patrick (‘Paddy’) Leigh Fermor.

- Laestrygonian – The Laestrygonians are tribes of man-eating giants from Greek Mythology.

Text B: At the Hofbräuhaus, Munich, 2012

My real destination that day was the famous Hofbräuhaus, where Paddy had drunk himself senseless in 1934. This cavernous beer hall was a nexus of converging stereotypes – lederhosen and oompah bands, woodcock-feathered Alpine hats, buxom barmaids and foaming beer steins – a temple to Bavarian gastronomic excess. Paddy had gone to town on the place: ‘Hands like bundles of sausages flew nimbly, packing in forkload on forkload of ham, salami, frankfurter, krenwurst and bratwurst and stone tankards were lifted for long swallows of liquid which leapt out again instantaneously on cheek and brow … features dripped and glittered like faces at an ogre’s banquet.’ Now the ‘feasting burghers’ had been replaced by American exchange students, Japanese tourists sipping coffee rather nervously and smiling politely at the drunks. The Hofbräuhaus seemed about as authentic as the mock- medieval feasting hall with the chastity belt-wielding monk; a theme park, a pastiche of Bavarian culture. There was even a gift shop selling branded baseball caps.

Not getting drunk wasn’t an option, however. The very atmosphere brought on a feeling of instant intoxication. The drinkers were seated at trestle tables running the length of the hall, served by blondes with bulging breasts and pretzel girls posing for the cameras; one of these professional wenches delivered a glass as long as my forearm, and my table filled up with boozers who trammelled me to the furthest end, with no possibility of escape.

It was only four o’clock in the afternoon. I became sunk in boozy gloom that peaked around the middle of my second giant glass, and by the time I’d started the third it was lessening with every gulp. The alcohol flipped a switch, and Paddy’s description sprung to life as if a ghost-train ride had commenced: suddenly my table-mates were shovelling down dripping lumps of knödel, sawing through Bible-sized trombones kicked up a plodding, ponderous tune, intestinal tract music, geared less towards dancing than digestion. An abortive attempt to leave was thwarted by a sinister black-bearded character who motioned me back to my seat with a steak knife – ‘Bier, Nick, Bier!’ he growled and I wondered vaguely how he knew my name – and inebriated songs started up at adjacent tables. This wasn’t a cultural experience that could be comprehended sober, much less enjoyed: the beer made sense of the oompah band, and the oompah band made sense of the wider Hofbräuhaus, the clunk of the weighty mugs and the bellowed conversation, while the tourist tat was a diminishing smudge on my peripheral vision.

Walking the Woods and the Water: In Patrick Leigh Fermor’s footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn, 2014, by Nick Hunt.