Day 23: I Think i like this place!

It was a short drive from Minnesota to Madison. I got to stop by one of the best parts of my trip-the Leinenkugel beer tour! I got 2 free samples, so i tried the berryweiss and it tasted like sparkling wine and i tried the summershandy which was like a lemonade beer. ick...ill stick to my sunset wheat. anyway, they've been around since the 1800s and make everything right there on sight. miller now owns them, which i guess works out well because i can get it anywhere. I stopped by a cheese shop and got some pepperjack cheese curds. im not sure if they're the right thing-they just look like little chunks of cheese. i got to my hostel in madison totally not in the mood to have 5 roommates for the night, but that's alright for 23 bucks. the guy running it told me of some good bars so i headed downt to the hippyish/co op area. i can definitely tell the town used to be full of hippies! at least there were people out and live music on a tuesday night. i headed to some divebars and found myself in a gay bar. clearly nobody was in the mood to talk to me there so i walked into a punk bar. since i was sick of not talking to anyone the whole night, i spoke to some madison folk. turns out they've all grown up and lived there their whole life. hey, maybe it's a much cooler place than i experienced. after waking up way too early the next morn, i tried to find a bagel in the town, but i think the midwest hates bagels!!! there's a gumby pizza in the town but they weren't open. i also stopped by ella's deli-it has a carousel and all these ridiculous animated toys in the windows. well that wasnt open either.
I headed to Milwaukee and stopped by the mustard museum! It's really just full of hilarious mustard advertisements. It had mustards catoragized by fruit, vege, beer, pepper, etc. flavors. I picked some up and then i headed to the Pabst Mansion!! I learned a lot about dear ol' Capn Pabst. He used to own a fleet ship and then married someone in the beer business and made the pabst name what it is today! the mansion was pretty damn amazing. then i headed to miller valley! man was it miller time there. it takes up 82 acres or something ridiculously large like that. i didn't realize miller made old english, sparks, mickeys, fosters, and peroni. i now understand a little more of the beer process. i sat down with a bunch of young guys to try our 3 samples. yes, i got to sample miller light, mgd, and then peroni. it was miller time!!
i got back to my hotel and waited around for a bus to take me to the brewers game. after an hour of sitting in the 50 degree weather, i just drove. turns out i didn't have to pay for parking, but i walked in during the 6th inning. miller park was pretty awesome but the retracting roof was covered. it was a pretty good game and the brewers won at the last minute. the beer was way cheaper than the dodgers but the hot dogs were way worse. i got back to my neck of the woods and there are a good amount of german bars. i walked into the hofbrau house and had a hefeweissen. some guy ran up and gave me a beer and said he bought it for me. i said, half of it is gone! so he just left it on the table and ran away. haha. anyway, i'm really excited about exploring the different parts of town today. i love the german atmosphere and that everyone loves beer here! it's definitely a cool city.