Hello friends,
Here's a recap of what I did while Erin and McKayla were heading toward Switzerland on their bikes!
We parted ways Thursday morning, and I spent the day making my way to Lausanne on a train to meet my friend Shelby there. Shelby is living and working in Switerland this year while studying French. I felt like an idiot all day for trying to speak french, trying to find my train, getting yelled at by the train conductor for where my bike was, charged extra for the bike, and finally trying to pay in euros once I hit switzerland (they use Francs...). But I survived the day and finally Shelby came to meet me, took me back to her host mom's house on the metro, and we went to sleep.
Friday we spent the day traveling to Munich. They don't do TGVs here in Switzerland (treins a grand vitesse, aka REALLY fast trains) and so it wasn't until a nauseous 8 hours later that we finally pulled into the Munich station. Luckily our hostel, the Meininger Hostel, was only about one kilometer down the road, and we walked there no problem. There were drunk Germans EVERYWHERE. It was Friday night after all, and people were parading the streets singing drinking songs in German, wearing Leiderhosen?? (spelling completely wrong, but that's how it sounds and it's the traditional German garb for men, with the cuttoff brown overalls, long socks, collared shirts, hats, you get the picture). There were also many frauleins equally decked out in puffy German dresses. Shelby and I walked around town, but didn't make it out to the actually festival grounds that night, opting instead for a beer at the hostel bar and an early night of sleep.
For those who don't know: what Oktoberfest actually is, is the world's largest public festival. It started in 1810 as a celebration for a royal wedding (prince Ludwig i think?) and every year since, for about 2 weeks in early October or late September, they rope off a huge area of Munich, and have a dozen beer tents, and hundreds of food stands, shops, rides, etc. Apparently about 50 million visitors come to Oktoberfest over the course of the 2 weeks, and the festival itself actually feels like a small city. Outside, it's very fair-like, and inside the beer tents, it's a massive shitshow of people of all ages drinking excessive amounts of delicious German beers from liter-sized steins, amidst endless cheers, toasts, and drinking songs. They also serve traditional German foods the entire time, all brought to you by an army squadron of Frauleins in dresses with arms the size of my thighs from carrying all the beer.
So that's what we did on Saturday... We had booked our hostel though a company called First Festival Travel, based out of London, with the happy result being a hostel full of ENGLISH speaking friends, even if it was kiwi, aussi, and british English. We befriended our roommates at breakfast, Sophie and Mouse of New Zealand, and we headed down the tents with them that morning. By 9 AM the tents were already PACKED with drinkers. We're lucky we even got a table, which was in the back corner. Shelby, Sophie, Mouse, Stephen, I, and about 6 young to middle-aged Wimbledon tennis workers then sat around drinking steins of beer and acting foolishly. The day was one of the more fun I've had, EXCEPT when I had to battle hordes of drunk, uncomfortable women in the lines for the bathroom.... Eventually I tired out, and went back to the hostel to siesta before evening festivities. I woke up at bedtime with massive hangover, and went back to sleep.
Sunday morning I was doing better than my hostel mates at our delicious buffet-breakfast. We hit the tents again, starting around 9 am, though I postponed the drinking a bit this time around. The tents were quieter Sunday and Shelby and I made many random friends with the others who came and went from the tables around us. We also met some swiss-french semi-pro soccer players, Bruno, Johann, Andrea, and Cedric who were rather sexually agressive, flirting with the closest girls they could find. Bruno even kindly asked if I would care to "faire l'amour" with him... which I politely declined. So if any incriminating pictures turn up on facebook, that was the situation. Took another evening siesta, and actually made it back out at night, when Shelby and I opted to experience a little more of the fair aspects of the festival, and less of the booze-soaked drunk-men-filled antics of the beer tents. We rode a MASSIVE ferris wheel, I ate a bratwurst, bought a present for my lil' bro, and then we went to bed.
And that was it. The next morning we were back on a painful (though unbelievably gorgeous) 8 hour train ride from Munich to Lausanne, where I was finally reunited with Erin and McKayla! Phew.
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