We Came Here To Party

Wow, what a weekend. Turns out I'm an idiot, we weren't actually going straight from Switzerland, we went back to Freiburg on the bus, but then we left that night, our adventure started at about 10. Switzerland was alright--unfortunately the weather was pretty crappy so we all had to go to Luzern, instead of having the option to go hiking in...Grenzwald, I think it was. Luzern is just a huge tourist town, so it was very nice and everything, but a bit disappointing, especially with the gloomy, rainy weather. Plus we were there for like 6 hours, which was wayyy too long.

Speaking of wayyy too long, we started on ou way to Munich at 10 PM Saturday night, and we didn't arrive until 9 AM Sunday morning, haha. There were 9 of us who went together Saturday night; we bought two "Schönes Wochenende" passes, each of which costs 30 € and works for up to 5 people. But because we were traveling in the middle of the night it was really difficult to find good connections and stuff. We ended up going to Karlruhe a ways north of Freiburg, then to Mannheim, where we went to the most awful Irish pub in the world. It was nice enough, but it was the name that killed us: Murphy's Law. If you're not familiar with Murphy's law, let me state it roughly for you: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Brian and I fought vehemently against going in for a drink, but we were overruled by the majority, so of course our trip was jinxed from then on.

The next place we went to was Stuttgart, although that wasn't necessarily the plan--we accidentally got on a train that wasn't allowed by our S. Wochenende passes. A ticket checker than informed us of this, charged each one of us 25.30 €, and made us get off at Stuttgart, which was only a few minutes away. He wouldn't let us just get off at the next stop, we had to pay and get off. It was really lame. So basically at this point, it's around 3 AM, we were just charged and then kicked off our train, and now had to wait 3 hours for the next train that we could take to Munich. Luckily the police didn't kick us out of the train station once we told them we were actually waiting for a train, so we ended up lying on a train station floor sort of sleeping but mostly just huddling together for warmth. We definitely looked homeless. And, while it sounds like an awful experience, it was actually sort of hilarious at the same time, so whatever.

Anyway, we finally made it to Munich, and followed a couple of friendly old American men (who actually have lived in Germany for years) to Oktoberfest. If you're my parents or anyone who won't enjoy hearing about how much beer we had, you should probably skip ahead a while. For those who are still with me, we drank our first Liter of beer at about 10:30 AM. We were in the Paullaner "tent" (these so-called tents are just like huuuge restaurants with tables everywhere). The liters in each place ranged in price from like 7.10 to 7.50 €; expensive, but not as bad as I would have thought, and there was no deposit on the drinks, which seemed unusual, but allowed many of us to swipe a liter glass. Oktoberfest was an interesting place: it was like a huge carnival, complete with rides and food stands and stuff, but mostly people just hang out in the tents drinking. From Paullaner, we headed back outside, and then decided a second liter was in order at the Löwenbräu tent. Löwe is lion, by the way, which hopefully helps you understand why Löwenbräu is a must drink, since lions rule.

We hung out there for a long time, then we wandered for a while, but I was kind of losing track of time, so I'm not exactly sure what the schedule was like after that. Nikki and I left the group because we were waiting somewhere to be served and it was taking too long, and we wanted a 3rd liter, so we went to some place whose name I forget. It was incredibly packed, which was actually nothing compared to the day before, according to the Australians and New Zealanders with whom we ended up standing. I ended up drinking at least 2 more liters while I was there. That makes 4+ liters, for those of you keeping score at home. Our train was leaving at 5:51, and once I finally left, I had to stumble through town trying to find the train station. I asked around a lot, and somehow I made it to the right place about 2 minutes before the train left. I was a bit of a mess, but I did it! We got home at around 2:30 AM this morning (Monday). Basically, we were awake for 43 hours, with slight naps, and far too many liters of beer, and far too little money afterwards.

But it was worth it.

Definitely an awesome adventure. Anyway, I don't think I can write any more now, and I doubt you can read anymore, so I'll be stopping now. Catch ya on tha flipside, which will probably be, like, tomorrow.