Well, I would be remiss if I didn't wind you guys up a little bit first, so to start off, I took a couple pictures on my way to class one day. I was in the Odeonsplatz and they have a pretty epic group of statues. Honestly I don't know what they're commemorating, but I've included a couple photos in the slide show later on.
This next one's for the ladies. I think you'll all appreciate this.
So would she be a pirate, or a wench? Or perhaps a pirate wench? In either case, she wasn't pillaging and plundering (for example, after taking this picture, she didn't stab me and take my camera and wallet), so I don't think she was "legit".
Anyway, I've been taunting you long enough: on to the meat and potatoes! Oktoberfest started on the 19th of September. I went on the very first day, but there were so many people I couldn't find my way into Bierzelt. I got a really tasty Currywurst, but no Bier though. I know, I know, that's analogous to blasphemy in Bayern, but I didn't think you could get Bier anywhere outside the Bierzelts (I later found out you could buy Bier on carousels, of all places). After this rather uneventful first outing, I remembered that I had another two weeks to get a good seat, so I decided to leave.
It gets better, though. Round two came on Thursday the 24th. My German friend Alex was going with some of his friends to celebrate a birthday, and he invited a couple of us along with them. We couldn't get a table ourselves, but we were able to convince some people who did have a table to buy us a couple beers (in order to order anything in the tents, you have to have a table, or, as I found out later, you have to be near enough to a table that the servers think you're sitting there :-D). Unfortunately, I couldn't order anything to eat, which made the two liters of beer I drank rather effective. An interesting note here, though. It appears that as I finish my first liter, my ability to communicate in German improves, but as I finish of a second liter, that ability drops precipitously. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will have to research further...
Anyway, after two liters I was done for the night, so I left and managed to find my way home without much incident. I was pretty useless the on Friday, though. I managed to recover enough of my wits to make it out again on Saturday, which was awesome because I managed to try some real Bierzelt food! I went with my friend Jake Venzor, from Cal Poly, and some friends he knew traveling in Europe. We were waiting to get into the Bierzelt for over an hour before we decided to leave, and as we left we found a really easy way to s
neak in on one side. I kinda felt like an idiot for waiting so long, but we got a table this time, so it all worked out! So, I was either done with or close to being done with my first liter of the night when I tried to order some chicken. Being ineffective (apparently the word I learned for chicken doesn't work translate to Bayerish) we enlisted the help of a German guy next to us, and just a half an hour later I had some food. It was awesome! They basically took a chicken, removed the innards and cut it in half, and it tasted incredible (well, I mean, they cooked it first, too). Totally worth the wait.
Ok, I've kept you waiting long enough: here are the pictures!
So, after that last trip, I had to take a bit of a break. I had my language class Mon-Thurs, and I already knew it took me a full day to recover from a night on the Wiesen. This, coupled with the fact that my bank account was running on fumes, led me to postpone another trip until Saturday the 3rd. I had plenty to do in the meantime, I got my Aufenthaltserlaubnis, which is a document that allows me to stay in Germany without fear of deportation, and that process along took something like four hours. I also discovered that government buildings close at noon on Fridays. Kinda makes it difficult to do some things.
October 3rd is German Unity Day, and it commemorates the day that east and west Germany re-united. As far as I could tell, they celebrate by closing down all the shops in the city. So... this left me, as well as everyone else in Muenchen, little to do besides going to Oktoberfest. I was still poor, so Jake and I decided to go late and just take some pictures, both to miss most of the crowd and to get some night shots. We got some pretty cool shots, but when we went to leave, the U-Bahn stop was blocked up by Polizisten and MVG workers. We had to walk about a mile to Marienplatz before we could catch the U-Bahn back to Studentenstadt.
This is a long post, but I'm almost finished! Sunday was the last day of the Oktoberfest. A nice guy from my building gave me a coupon for a free Mass (a liter of Bier), so I got up... somewhat early and left for the Theresienwiese. Chris and I managed to find a table at the Schottenhamel Festzelt, and we both got some beer. After we finished, we went to the Augustiner tent to meet some friends, and somehow I ran into an Aussie guy from my language course named Dave. The lucky punk worked at a youth hostel that had some agreement with the Augustiner people, so they got to sit on the upper balcony (I got him to take a couple pictures for me from up high). We left him to his drinking and found our friends near the bandstand. I was hungry as heck, so I got some Goulash! I swear, everything they sell at those tents is fantastic!
After the food, Chris and I left, to return later that night for the rides. I had heard they let you take your cameras with you, so I shot this video on the giant swing!
Ok! That's all for now, guys! Hope you enjoyed it!
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