OKTOBERFEST!

I survived Oktoberfest! It was definitely an experience I am glad I had. My justification at the beginning was, "When will I ever be back in Germany during October?!" After the trip, I needed no such justification because it was such a blast! A group of ten of us decided to rent two cars and drive to Munich. The trains were ridiculously expensive to get to Munich so renting was our only cheap option. We picked up our car from the rental shop at around 2 on Friday afternoon and began our journey. It started off pretty smoothly, after we got the GPS working. We had a VW with 5 seats and a very spacious trunk; it was like a mixture between a van and a SUV and was quite big for a European car. Little did we know that once we got on the road, we would spend the next eight hours stuck in horrible traffic and weather. Yes, it took us 8 hours to get to our hostel, located in Ingolstadt, which was still 80 Km outside of Munich. To give you a little bit of help with distances, it should have taken us about three and a half to four hours to get to Ingolstadt! We were bombarded with stop-and-go traffic, rain the whole way, and a lot of accidents. We tried taking detours, but would just get stuck in worse traffic. The other car took about eight hours as well, but they left two hours earlier. After we finally arrived at our hostel, we all got to bed pretty quickly, since it was already about 23:00. I was woken up at 5:45 am for our departure at 6:30! It took me a while to fall asleep, so I probably only got about 4 hours of sleep; I thought that I probably got the least amount of sleep of everyone. I found out the next day, that at least 3 others didn't fall asleep at all! And unfortunately, 2 of the 3 were our drivers! They were troopers though! Our drive into Munich was surprisingly traffic-free and went by really quick. We found a warm parking garage and dropped our cars off (we needed to find somewhere warm, since our cars were doubling up as our hostel for Saturday night!). Then, off to Oktoberfest! By the time we arrived at the fairgrounds around 9 am, most of the Beer tents were already closed because they were so full! We found one that was still letting people in, and somehow we got extremely lucky and got in, and found a table for 10.

We quickly ordered our beer, despite the fact that it was 9:30 am..but hey, its Oktoberfest right?! We spent the next 7 hours at our table, listening to music, talking to the people sitting around us, singing, and having a great time. I only had about 1.5 Liters of beer, so needless to say, I was one of the more sober ones in my group. Regardless, I still had so much fun! Its difficult to explain what its like inside the beer tents. Its pretty cramped, I got beer spilled on me a few times, its pretty loud, the music is obviously very German and quite polka-y, the waitresses somehow manage to carry 12 1-Liter mugs of beer, and the food is really good.

At around 16:30, we got kicked out because our table was reserved for the remainder of the night. We decided to roam around the fair for a bit. Fairs in Germany are not as over-priced as America. I got a "Weiss-wurst", which is essentially a white brat in a hard roll. This is one of the dishes that Bavaria is famous for, and I would highly recommend having one if you go there, it was delicious! We then attempted to get into other tents, but none of the tents were letting anyone in. We got split up from the rest of our group so we decided to meet up for some food. Of course, as college students, we went to McDonalds! After we finished eating, we stayed in McDonalds for a while. The reason was, it was warm in McDonalds and they had a bathroom...I felt somewhat like a hobo ;) A few of us decided to hit up the tents again. We couldn't get in anywhere again so we parked ourselves outside a tent (despite the fact that it was raining) and ordered a beer. All of the tents close down around 23:00 so it was pretty crazy getting back to our cars since the subway stations were so packed. We crashed in our cars for about 3 hours and got on the road. Yes I know, this wasn't the safest idea when our drivers had gotten about 2 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, but they would have been even more sleep deprived had we waited any longer. My car anxiety surfaced and I realized that even though I was extremely tired, I would feel a whole lot less anxious if I stayed awake the whole time. I kept the driver company the whole way home, and it actually went by pretty quickly!

 It was a very successful weekend! Another note or two about Bavaria...they have extremely strong accents and are very difficult to understand. I don't understand much when I am in Cologne but it is definitely enough to function. In Bavaria, I couldn't understand anyone unless they spoke English! Even the more experienced German speakers in our group were having trouble understanding them! Thankfully, in the beer tents, the only word you needed to know was beer! A lot of the men and women were wearing traditional German outfits..the men in Lederhosen and the women in dresses. I'm actually thinking about purchasing my own dress, to use for Halloween(here and at home of course!), and for our Karneval kick-off day. I was able to keep the trip pretty cheap as well, which is always a plus. I came home with a gingerbread-like decorated cookie that is pretty popular in Germany (my roommate said I needed to buy one!) and I also was able to smuggle out a beer mug. Don't worry, I didn't steal it. A guy was walking down the street with it, he set it down and walked away, so I ran up and grabbed it. However, the mug is pure glass and weighs about 4-5 pounds, so I will be really disappointed if my bag is overweight when I come home! I guess this is all for now...I may be traveling to Amsterdam this weekend, or spending my first weekend in Cologne! Bis dahin :)