Willkommen to Das Haus!

A few months back an awesome friend of mine told me about this place in the Downtown Birmingham area called "Das Haus" that has a German Culture Club. I didn't think anything of it at the time because I was still in Huntsville and would be there for awhile. Once I got to Birmingham, I did some research and found out that they offer German Lessons every thursday from 6:30pm til about 8:00pm. What made this news even better is that after looking up the address I realized that it was located just 3 blocks away from my house!

So I wasted NO TIME!

On the outside it has an old fashioned Pub type of feel to it. Not to mention that you can smell Bratwurst, Knackwurst, and Sauerkraut from 100 feet away.

The atmosphere on the inside is VERY serene. They even had old jazz music playing. And let's be honest, how often will you walk into a bar and hear Billie Holiday blasting through the speakers? In 2013? Yeah, thought so.

Now about the German Culture Club... They are known as the F.D.S.K. which stands for Freunde Deutscher Sprache und Kulture (Friends of the German Speaking and Culture). They were founded by a group of German immigrants in 1965 to promote, educate, and celebrate the German Language and Culture! They've been in this current location in Downtown Birmingham since 1970!  

Willkommen to Das Haus!

my new addiction

Not only are they an amazing bar, a German Cultural Club, AND have great taste in music, but they serve food too! Although I'm not the biggest fan when it comes to beer, a very hospitable bartender there (her name was Tammy if I'm not mistaken) insisted I try a HARD Apple Cider that's popular in the UK. I have to tell ya, after a few sips of  "Strongbow" I was immediately in love with it's bold flavor. 

now THAT's what I call a meal!

With my drink in hand, it'd only be right to order some custom made German delicacies. I indulged in their dinner specials and ordered a Bratwurst served on delicious bread, a bed of sauerkraut and a side of German Potato salad which I have to say is very similar to how Americans make it except the lack of mayonnaise lol. The taste I encountered with this dish is not comparable at the least to an American-made dish.

After feeding my face, people started to gather and we began to start the German Lessons by playing Liar's Dice. Now as much as I want to explain this game in detail...... I was virtually confused from the moment we started until it was time for a "break".

For the sake of sounding like a complete idiot, I'll give it a shot and go for the "brief" version... So Liar's Dice is a game similar to Yahtzee (if you've never played Yahtzee don't feel bad. I haven't either lol) in which each player has a set of 5 dice and shakes them up in a cup. Now the object of this game is deception and the loser will have to drink. Say for instance I shake my dice up and flip my cup over facedown. If i have like a certain number of 1's, 2's, 3's.... 6's etc then I say "three 5's" which means that there are at LEAST three other people who've rolled a 5. Now over the course of the game the next person can only go up in the number of chances a number has been rolled. If any of the other players feel like you're lying they have to say "Kah!" which apparently is Chinese for "bullsh__" if they're right you have to drink, if they're wrong then THEY have to drink.

Confused yet?

GOOD.

For a less confusing explanation I'll pass the job over to Wikipedia. Just click here. 

We played about six or seven rounds of this game. With at least three or four of the rounds having us say the numbers in Deutsch. Luckily they provided a chart! 

After a few embarrassing rounds of mispronouncing numbers, we took a break and I was able to talk to one of the instructors who lived in Germany all his life (near Hamburg). I told him about the CBYX program and that I would be in Deutschland over the course of the next year and he agreed to send me some of his lessons tomorrow that he's covered in his past lectures. Needless to say I will be going here every week until I leave!