Oktoberfest

Hey, so I haven’t written in a while, but it’s because the last entry I spent a ton of time on got deleted, which frustrated me to no end… at least for the last few weeks.  I migrated to Blogspot and tried to take everything with me, but we'll see how this works.

Ich liebe Munchen!

Peter's attempt at a Facebook shot was way better than mine :P

Since I last wrote, I’ve been exploring Vienna much more and can now tell you more about Danube Island, Roman ruins in Vienna, the Opera house, Prater Park, the Naschtmarkt and other things like that. I was also in Slovenia and Italy, specifically Ljubljana, Bled, Piran, Venice and Padova two weeks ago.  This last week, I went to see Don Giovanni at the opera house, and on Thursday I went to Haydn’s house for my classical symphony class.  This week I’ll be going to the Freud Museum with my Psychology class. 

I ran into these musically-inclined Broncos in Munich!!! :)

Inside the beer tent, 9:30am

As for this last weekend, I went to Munich for Oktoberfest with my friend, and it was unbelievable!  We got to Munich at 6:15 in the morning, and the train station was as busy as if it were noon.  We took the U-Bahn to Theresien field (where Oktoberfest is) by 7:30 in the morning.  Already people were lining up to get into the beer tents.  Large groups of guys and girls around our age were toting small wagons filled with beer bottles, and almost everyone was wearing a dirndl or leiderhosen.  After about an hour of waiting, the doors to the hall open.  I didn’t hear the doors open or see the doors open, but I felt the force of a thousand people behind me and in front of me start to move toward the door.  I’ve never been so sandwiched in my life!  Thank goodness I didn’t drop anything, because if I had, it would have been lost forever.  I couldn’t have even bent down to pick up anything, that’s how packed together we all were.

When we got inside, Peter and I rushed to find a table and eventually found one with these two boys around our age.  One was Vietnamese-German and the other was Portuguese but a student at the university in Munich. At first we only spoke a little bit, but after the beers started coming, we were soon very good friends.  Three girls from Nuremburg also joined our table, and we quickly became friends too, speaking in both English and German.  I was so happy that I got to speak so much German there, and we were using all of the things that I have learned so far in class!  They were all so nice, and we would cheer on the people around us as they stood on the tables to take “the challenge”: downing a full mass without stopping.  People would cheer when they chugged successfully, or boo if they failed.  They would also boo if they took too long.  The energy is unlike anything I’ve experienced before.  It is the biggest party in the world, and I can’t wait to return someday.

View of Munich from Alt Peter

The next day we went on a tour of Munich with FreeEurope—an excellent company if anyone is looking for taking an inexpensive tour that is informative but also very entertaining.  We learned about the beginnings of the Third Reich, Ludwig II and his creepy Hall of Beauties, and how 18^th century Munich dealt with “splash-back” in the Hofbrau Haus (hint: you had better move your legs from under the table).  We went up the Alt Peter and had a great view of the city, and then we had to catch our train back to Vienna.

That’s all I really have time for today, but I’ll hopefully put some pictures up soon for where I went two weekends ago.  I'll also post my first blog, although it will appear as being out of order...eh, oh well.