Yesterday, when we were getting ready to eat dinner, I asked Hayden to get me a pilsner down from the cabinet. But my brain didn’t tell my mouth to say pilsner it said stein. Does your brain do things like that to you? Mine does quite frequently.
Denton pointed out that what I had in my hands was a pilsner not a stein. Stein= mug with a lid.
By the way, do you have pilsner’s? I found mine at our local Goodwill and I love them. I very, very rarely drink beer out of mine though. When I’ve been really good to myself during the day and drank a lot of water, I reward myself with a big pilsner full of Coca~Cola at supper-time. They hold more Coke than a regular glass. Woo-hoo!
This started a discussion between all of us about the reasoning behind why the stein’s have lids. Do you have off the wall conversations about stuff like this at your house? We do. So, Denton looked up the explanation of WHY steins have lids. Come to find out, it all has to do with the Black Death or Bubonic Plague. In case you live under a rock (like I do sometimes) during the 1300’s in Europe a THIRD of the earth’s population was wiped out. This was the second outbreak in the world’s history. You can read all about it here and here. Just a head’s up, don’t click on those links while you are having your lunch. You have been warned.
People in Europe didn’t have our capabilities of knowing exactly why they were dying, but they figured out by the early 1500’s that cleanliness, their living conditions and overall hygiene was part and parcel of keeping the disease at bay. Hence laws being passed in what is now Germany in the middle of the 1500’s stating that all food and drink containers must have covers. Ta-da! The stein was born to keep away black flies and other nasty vermin.
I have a very close friend who has always said that she would love to go back in time to live. Things were much simpler then, they didn’t have the world problems that we have now, etc. Not me. Just the thought gives me the shivers. I LOVE electricity, running water in my pipes, hot water heaters that heats said water and Amazon who delivers things directly to my front door. Anytime I want I can visit places like Colonial Williamsburg, Pioneer Park Days in Florida, New Jersey, my great-grandmother’s homeplace and many others. And then I can go back to my nice hotel in comfort. And drink my Coke out of a stein, just because. Or better yet, a pilsner.
What did you learn from the internet today?
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