"Good Times Never Seemed So Good" (Neil Diamond)
It should be noted that this is a nostalgic review--though I spent many nights here when I was 20, I have not been back since. However, I would lay down my entire fortune...ok, maybe just $20 of it...that the bar is preserved in the same state as when I left, with an overwhelmingly and disgustingly thick fog of smoke in the air, Christian still tending the bar clad in the somewhat crusty, black leather vest that he wore nightly, and George asleep on the couch seating that lined the walls, with people standing and dancing on the couch around him. And I imagine the bar is still as oddly difficult to find, as though stuck in some sort of vortex that neither GPS nor maps will help you to locate, regardless of how many times you've been there.
A friend and I were recently reminiscing out our many visits to this establishment...nights spent making new friends, listening and dancing to really strange German music along with the occasional "Sweet Caroline", and learning to fit in with German culture (starting with lessons on how to properly pour Weissbier, and how to drink from a glass boot without ending up with beer and egg on your face).
Arche Nowak was the kind of bar any of our American parents would probably cringe to think of their children spending time at, and which could even provoke the arch of thick brows from German host parents. It was dark, clausterphobic, a bit sticky and seedy, and situated beneath a brothel (or at least was back in the day). It was the kind of place where you would find every kind of person from students, businessmen, and old locals, to creepy men who had just spent time at the aforementioned brothel.
But we didn't care.
Maybe it was the way that everyone knew and perhaps even shouted our names when we walked in, exactly like in "Cheers". Perhaps it was the generous hospitality that Christian showed to us American students. It could have been the way that no matter how stressful your school day was or how sad you might have been missing friends and family back home, you would find that the dark clouds lifted (and were replaced with stinky fog) upon walking into "Da Arche". Perchance it was just that we could actually afford the beer there at the time. But it was amazing.
I'm sure if if we returned to Rosenheim to visit our old stomping ground, we would find that some things had changed...that Christian might have a few more gray hairs, that we would have been replaced with much younger kids learning how to properly pour their Weissbier, and that there might even (hopefully) be a smoking ban in place. But I'm also just as sure that everyone would still know our names.
Prost, Arche! read more
