Amy's Adventure Time: Munich

Regardless of what it's called, Oktoberfest doesn't really take place in October. The last three weeks of September as well as the first week of October makes up this crazy festival. We jumped on a train at 7am, because we had heard just how crowded it can get throughout the day. When we arrived at the festival at 9am it was already packed enough to rival the Iowa State Fair.

photo c/o: Kendal

The first "tent" we went into was the Hippodrom, since their tables were unreserved until noon. However, "tent" is definitely the wrong word to describe these buildings. These structures must be there year round. Most seat upwards of six to eight thousand people, and many, like the Hippodrom have two levels for seating.

photo c/o: Heather

A band, located behind the floating pony in the photo above, plays traditional music all day starting at 11. So our band surprised us by all chugging an entire beer before beginning to start playing. Now, this one beer may sound doable to some people but these Oktoberfest beers are not normal beers. Each beer is one whole Liter. And it comes in a large glass stein, which is heavy enough without any alcohol in it.

photo c/o: Jess

Outside of the tents I was surprised to find that there were a lot of fair-like rides at the festival. I never got around to riding any of the rides, even though I had really meant to.

A few of the people who came in our group did end up going on the swing ride. And since it was such a sunny day (unlike what the pictures show) they said it was lovely.
Throughout the day we wandered through 6+ tents, but ended up getting a table at only one more. This was because it was just as crowded as everyone said it would be. We searched and searched for a seat at a table, because you couldn't get a beer without a table, and finally we found one in the Augustiner tent.

Both photo's c/o: Kathryn

Once we did find this table we enjoyed being able to sit down, and two of the girls I was with ordered half a chicken for lunch. Now, at this point I must say that I went from zero to decently intoxicated in about a minute, so I am very thankful and apologetic to those who were with me and looked out for me.
As some of you may know "Prost" is the German version of "Cheers", and so at many times throughout the day the band would play a song which was "Ein Prosit". The song itself isn't that original, basically the same phrase over and over again with mugs raised.

Though the best part of it was that a lot of people got up onto the table benches and sang along.

We decided to end the day around 5pm and got on the two hour train ride home. But, about an hour and a half into the trip the train stopped at a station and didn't start moving again. We were thankful that there was a family where the father spoke English in our train car and he explained what happened. Apparently we were supposed to get off the train and onto a bus that would take us to Salzburg. But, because it took so long for us to figure this out the bus had already left. This left us stranded in rural Bavaria in some small town called Traunstein. And now that I've wikipedia-ed it, turns out it's not oh so tiny a town as I though it was. But still not a city.

We waited over an hour for the next train from Munich to come, and luckily did end up safely back in Salzburg at the end of the day. So overall, Oktoberfest was crazy awesome. And I'm definitely glad I went, though I think it may be too much of an extravaganza to make a tradition out of it.

It's about time I started backtracking because I've really done a lot since coming here. On the Second of October the whole AIFS group had an outing to Munich. We took the train there, which was about a 2 hour ride. Had a small walking tour of the center of the city. And then we were left to our own devices.

On the right is the glockenspiel. We weren't lucky enough to see it in action, but our tour guide told us the story of what goes on. The top tier depicts a wedding scene, while the bottom is a battle between Bavarian and Anglo-Saxon knights.

We next wandered into the Englischer Garten, which is huge. I think we were told it's larger than Central Park in New York City. This was the first time I noticed that it's actually becoming fall here! But it made everything so much prettier. We stopped for refreshments at one of the many beer gardens within the park called Chinesischer Turm. Which is the lovely tower in the picture on the right. Since Oktoberfest was still going on I think everything was a little more over the top and crowded than it may be normally.

After that we headed over towards the Olympic stadium and I was surprised to find the BMW museum located right outside of the subway stop. Didn't get to spend much time there but they had the neatest blobs that moved around completely independent of each other. They also had scrolling messages on them, in German and English.

The Olympic stadium was kinda lackluster since we couldn't find a way to see more than what was left over of the swimming building. But it was still neat to be near it.