Travel The World With Maria: Germany

So after a very interesting overnight train ride (much like the one on the movie "Euro Trip") where I was stuck in a 6 person room with some scary looking Croatian men, I arrived in Munich at 7am. It was so cold, I didn't leave the train station for a couple of hours. I sat in a cafe, had a coffee, used the wifi and changed into warmer clothes before venturing out into the city. The first day I spent wandering around Munich, and I bought myself a Drindl for Oktoberfest! A Drindl is the traditional Bavarian women's dress that all the women wear to Oktoberfest. Everyone in Munich is so friendly. The girl in the dress shop told me where all the good shopping is and invited me to come back if I had any more questions about Munich.

The next day I went on a tour to Dachau concentration camp. This is one of the first concentration camps, that many others were modeled on. It was horrible imagining all the horrible things that happened in this place. We walked through all the old buildings, which were built by the prisoners, the crematory and even the gas chamber. It's hard to imagine how anyone could treat other, innocent people in this way.

Finally it was time to put on my Drindl and go to Oktoberfest! I happened to meet one of the guys in my water polo team over there and we spent the day in Hoffbrau Haus drinking big steins of beer, eating chicken, making friends with all sorts of people, including some guys in the German Army and watching people standing on tables skulling beer. The music and the atmosphere was amazing. The whole Oktoberfest grounds are awesome. It's like a playground for adults! Rides and roller coasters everywhere, Food stalls that looked like huge gingerbread houses, or covered with decorations, fabricated little people turning a pig an a spit, all selling delicious food - bratwurst, pork knuckles, roast chicken, giant pretzels and all sorts of sweet German treats. But of course, there are the big, grand... beer tents. These things are massive and each one is a work of art. Inside live music is playing, beer wenchs are rushing around, their arms full of fresh beer steins, and almost every table is full of people in traditional Bavarian dress, drinking steins of beer, singing, dancing and eating delicious food.

My second day at Oktoberfest, I went with a Canadian girl I met in my hostel. We started the day by going on the roller coaster which had 5 loops. Good decision to do that at the start of the day before we had any beer I think, I still felt like I was going to fall over afterwards. After having a bratwurst, we went into the Augustiner tent. Supposedly the best beer at Oktoberfest. It was packed, but we managed to squeeze onto the end of a table full of guys from Norway. We planned to stay for a couple of drinks, but we ended up there well into the night, drinking beer, singing songs and we didn't pay for one beer all day. At about 10pm we had a wander around inside all the other tents, and got dragged onto another table with some German guys for a drink where we stood on the benches, singing, dancing and drinking for about an hour until we decided it was time to go to bed. On the way back to the hostel we picked up some candied nuts and chocolate covered fruit skewers for desert, a perfect finish to an amazing day!