Eww... Bad Form.

So there I was, minding my own business with my buddy J at the Schanzenbräu brewery warehouse this afternoon, enjoying a cold hoppy helles beer. Schanzenbräu is an interesting story-- they were car nuts who happened to brew beer as a hobby. Over the years, their beer got more attention than the American muscle cars they imported into Germany and lovingly restored-- so now it's a growing brewery (and local restaurant) that also dabbles in classic Detroit iron restoration. Anyhoozle, J is a graphic artist by trade and has been working with Schanzenbräu to bring out some new T-shirt designs. One of his designs has the red-and-white Franconian flag prominently displayed (Franconia is the northern region of Bavaria, and Nuremberg is generally considered its capitol). For the purposes of the display, the design was mocked up on a black T-Shirt. No less than 3 people-- both the brewery owners and some random guy standing off to the side reacted immediately and negatively to this image on J's computer-- we were told that black, red, and white were a very VERY bad combination, and that they didn't want to "associate our beer with Nazis." Um, excuse me? Turns out that those 3 colors carry a lot of heavy historical weight in these parts still-- red, white and black were also the color of the Nazi flag. Whoopsie!

As soon as I heard that, my mind shot immediately back to the odd reception I got last year when I wore my Saint Kilda Saints jersey into town. Saint Kilda is an Australian Rules Football team, and you can see their jersey ("jumper" in Aussie speak) in the photo being modeled by all-galaxy player Nick Riewoldt. I have a long-sleeve version of this jumper, and I distinctly remember the day we went into town-- I got a LOT of attention, and even B mentioned it-- I figured it was because it's a pretty distinctive jersey, Germans are pretty sports crazy yet don't follow Aussie Footy, and they were trying to figure out what I was wearing. Um... whoopsie? Readers may be relieved to know that while I have an Aussie Rules Football jersey (I love that sport), I do not own the crazy socks or a pair of those short-shorts-- have to draw the line somewhere.