Oktoberfest

This past weekend I went to Munich with Allison, Kelly, and Kristy...but the best part was that I got to meet up with Bre (my roommate from bentley) who is studying abroad in Dublin! After an 8hr bus ride which I luckily got to sleep through due to my good friend tylenoyl PM, we arrived in Munich at 9am and by 945 we were on a walking tour of the city! Allison had found this great tour company that has free walking tours all over europe and then after the tour you can decide how much you want to tip the guide. Our guide Curt was great, he was from Chicago so he had a nice american accent which was a plus and at times a little cheesy he tried to make the tour fun.

We started off at the Marienplatz square which has the famous Glockenspiel church, it kind of reminded me of the Its a small world ride at disney world, because when the clock chimes all these little charcter things spin and twirl around. We also saw some other churches, our guide was telling us that a large majority of the city was destroyed during WW2 and since then has never actually been rebuilit so alot of the famous landmarks no longer exist. Also, since the city was shambles after the war it was very expensive for them to rebuild, we saw one building that apprently used to be made of bricks and had columns but after the war they just painted on columns and bricks to this building to give it the facade. We then visited the Hofbräuhaus which is one of the most famous beerhalls in the world. This was also where Hitler gave one of his first speeches that started the 3rd reicht movement.

We had originally planned on doing a Hitler walking tour in the afternoon, but we liked our tour guide so much that we decided to go with him to Dachu, which was the first concentration to be built in 1933, and was built only two months after Hitler took power. The town of Dachu is about 10km outside the city so we had to take the U-Bahn (Munich's metro) to get to a station and then from there took a bus to the concentration camp. Visiting Dachu was a very moving experience, it was surreal to think that a concentration camp had been in operation there for over 12 years. Dachu started off as a labor camp, actually the front gate into the camp reads "Arbeit macht frei" which translates to "work sets you free", basically meeting that these prisoners would be worked to death. Over the course that Dachu was in operation over 200,000 prisoners passed through and over 43,000 died. Our guide brought us through the barracks, the gas chambers, and there was a museum that had a lot of artifacts from the camp. I still don't understand how the Nazi's could dehumanize these people and deprive them of all their human rights. I was really glad that we were able to visit Dachu, It was definately a different type of experience but I think it was an important one that I am glad to have the opportunity to have. What really stuck with me was the statue outside the krematory that was made by a survivor of the camp that read, "In Memory of the Dead, In warning to the Living."

So on to a happier subject! After the tours we returned to Munich and then somewhere in the streets of Munich Bre and I were reunited! We decided to eat dinner in the Haufbraus beer hall! When I had visited in the morning on my tour it was obviously empty, so it was crazy to see it completly full! We ordered a bunch of Bavarian food to try for dinner and it was all really good, even the white sausage! Of course we had to order beer, so we all officially had our first stein of beer During dinner there was a band playing and they kept playing the traditional german songs and then there is this one song that played constantly where everyone gets up and prost (cheers) their stein with everyone around them!

Saturday we were up nice and early to be at the beer tents at 9am! Saturday was the opening day of the festival so beer isn't actually served until 12pm when the mayor of Munich taps the first keg. Oktoberfest started in 1810 as a celebration to honor the wedding of one of the royals. SO originally Oktoberfest used to be held in October which is how it got its name, but as it became a very large tourist event it was moved to the month of September when Munich has much better weather. We decided to go to the Haufbraus beer tent, which is the 2nd most popular tent! So we waited in the tent until 12 when the festivities actually began. Pretty much everyone in the tent boys/girls dress up in the traditional Bavarian customes, so we looked a little out of place, but I attempted to blend in by braiding my hair haha We spend the morning indulging in delicious pretzels with cheese!! they were deliciousss and they had lots of other german food-sauerkraut, pickles, snitzel...It took forever for the beers actually to come out, it was insane the beer girls carry 10 of them at a time! I have no idea how they do it, my one stein was heavy enough! Oktoberfest attracts a lot of tourists and at our table we made friends with some Australians!

On the fair grounds are tons of rides, ferris wheels and all the traditional spinny rides that are like the Big-E. After we left the tents we walked around the grounds a little, got some more food-this term chicken and french fries...and then headed back to our hotel to get ready for dinner. We ended up going to a little restaurant near our hotel which was delicious!

Sunday morning we packed up and checked out of the hotel and were off to the Costume and Riffleman's parade, which happens the first Sunday of Oktoberfest. The parade is 7km long and we would have stayed for the whole thing except it was pouring rain, and for the first time since I have been in europe I was actually cold! After the parade we walked around did some souvenir shopping, and then ended up running from store to store trying to stay out of the rain. We then went to the train station and walked around in there for a little and got our last cheesy pretzel of the trip before we had to head over to meet the tour group that we booked our bus through.

Despite the fact that it was pouring rain, the drive back through the Alps was gorgeous! I couldn't believe how green everything was, the buildings looked like something out of EPCOT, there were cows/sheep everywhere and you could even see snow in some parts of the ALps! THose roads were so windy and I can't believe how high up we were, it was crazy to look down! And despite the fact that we were in the countryside of Germany we probably passed five McDonalds!

Germany was quite the experience! I am not a huge fan of the language and its so hard to read I have no idea how people learn to speak it. Munich was a very modern city which is obviously much different from Florence and it was funny because maybe three times someone would come up to me and say "Spreek gen Deutch" and to that I had absolutely no other response then to give them a confused look and say no...as you can imagine my blonde hair and blue eyes don't really allow me to blend in with the Italians

Dad/Andy-all these pretzel pictures are for you, don't worry I consumed enough pretzels for all of us this weekend!