The answer is obvious if you are as “metro” as I pretend to be: the shoes match the purse. I have giant feet. They say that guys with big feet … have to buy big shoes. That can be an issue in Europe. Size 14 US translates to about a 48 in Europe and the largest standard size here is about a 46 (12.5 US). Sometimes I can find larger shoes in Germany and I like buying German shoes for a variety of reasons. One is that German shoes tend to be very high quality (no surprise). Another is that the first person with my surname to immigrate to America was a Bavarian shoemaker in 1832. I still have some of his cobbler’s tools which is kind of cool. Do you see the pretty blingy parts on these shoes that match my bag? Those are for decoration and they serve no real function except to look good. Germans do not make things just to look good; Germans will try to make something that is functional look nice, but they would never add mustard yellow embellishments to a pair of shoes for no functional reason. These shoes are not German and they are not size 48. These shoes are Italian and they are size 46. But they match my purse.

My wife and I went to London for the weekend to judge a beer competition. We are beer judges and brew beer as a hobby. I will be blogging a lot about beer, beer competitions, brewing, chasing classic beer styles, and the history of beer. This blog is about shoes. It might be a good idea to drink a beer while reading it since it is likely I drank a beer while I wrote it, but this blog is about shoes. I struggle with overpacking. I am an American and I am used to packing everything I could possibly need and cramming it all into my giant car or an oversized suitcase that I might have to roll from the car to the airport counter. Now I usually travel by train and I have to be able to squeeze my bag down the aisle of the train and from station to station. This was my third trip to London since I’ve lived in Strasbourg and that means carrying my luggage to the tram stop to get to the station in Strasbourg, carrying it from Gare de l’Est to Gare du Nord in Paris, and going through border control there before getting on the Eurostar to London. So I don’t carry spare shoes. I wore my new shoes thinking I would break them in this weekend.

I like the shoes because they match my purse. No, I don’t always wear a purse, but I’m trying to now. Most Alsatian men carry one that they keep their ID and cigarettes in. The purse is really handy for going through security to get on the Eurostar. That experience is kind of like airport security in America except nobody is as rude as a TSA agent. It’s also nice on the train for holding my headphones and battery charger. I got this purse in Liverpool a few weeks ago and they engraved it with one of my favorite things (except they didn’t have French accents).

The shoes almost killed me. I should have worn my German shoes. Shoes matter.