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Beer. Beer.Beeeeeeer! Oktoberfest 2008 was pretty awesome. For those you who don't know, Oktoberfest in Munich is the biggest festival in the world. Not only is it the biggest festival in the world, but is the biggest beerfest in the world! Needless to say, we went to Oktoberfest to drink…and drink we did. Basically our entire program went to Oktoberfest the same weekend. The train ride was super fun because the entire train was packed with people heading to the same place. People were drinking and chanting and singing all night long. It was so funny. Amber and I cracked our official first beer on the train too…We had to celebrate! We got to Munich at 6:30 in the morning. My cheap suitcase didn't make it however…The roll handle broke, so I had to carry it… that was super fun! (NOT) We got to the hotel around 7am, and of course, our room wasn't ready. Not only was it not ready, but it wouldn't be ready until 3pm. So what did we do???? DUH! We headed to Oktoberfest!!! I don't joke when I say that we drank our first liter at 9am. These people were crazy, but for those 3 days, we were crazy too. So not only was it freezing, but it rained for 2 days straight. When I say freezing, I mean like 35 degrees. It was so cold and none of us had sufficient clothing. But we put on our beer coats early, and soon the cold and wetness didn't matter anymore.
It is very hard to make Oktoberfest sound fun…Because what I am about to tell you doesn't sound fun, but it was! So we got to the tents at about 9:30am. Because it was raining, everyone else and their mothers were trying to get into the tents…Any tent you went to you would be shoved up against 1000 other drunk strangers until you pushed your way into the tent…which could take hours. We waited in the pouring rain for 3 ½ hours to get into one tent. We continued to drink beer, but after 3 ½ hours in the cold and rain, we wanted to get inside. My hands and feet were numb, because I didn't have gloves or socks…but it didn't matter to me. I was at Oktoberfest, and I didn't care what went on. After waiting, we figured we would just walk around until we found somewhere to get into. We ended up finding out about the Hofbrahaus, which is Munich's most famous bar. Period. Hofbrahaus actually had a tent at Oktoberfest, so we made our way out of Oktoberfest towards the Hofbrahaus…By that point were all pretty set anyway, but we really wanted to be inside. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea as us, because we ended up waiting 2 hours to get into Hofbrahaus…but we finally made it inside. We got a table and it all went downhill from there. Liter after Liter, the beer kept coming and we kept drinking it. German beer is much stronger than our typical American beer. Multiply that by 4, since 1 liter is equivalent to 4 12oz cans and I'm sure you can imagine how much fun we were having. Here's another one…Imagine 10,000 people chanting and singing! It was a BLAST! They love the song "HEYYYYYYYYYY BABYYYY!!! I WANNA KNOWWWWWWW, WOULD YOU BE MY GIRL!!!!" We sang it all night…10,000 people. It was sooo much fun. We clanked our mugs so hard and so much that they would shatter and people would cheer even more! It was a drunken mess, but that is what we went there to do…They closed the main room, which is exactly being at the tent at Oktoberfest and holds 10,000 people, at 3pm. By 3:30pm, we were in bed at the hotel. It was so funny to us that we were in passed out in bed by 3:30pm! It was so hysterical.
We woke up on Saturday ready for round #2. Once again, it poured on Saturday, but that didn't stop us from having a good time. We happened to get there a little earlier than the day before so we got into the Hippendrom, which is the "most hip" tent. My roommate Amber and I, in the process of finding a table, lost that other people we were with. We looked around for them, but couldn't find them or a seat, so we left the Hippendrom and went to the tent next door which is where we thought our other set of friends were…but they weren't. Once again, we got right in, found a table, but weren't in the same tent as our friends…Once again, we left and headed down to the tent where our friends were in line. It would figure that we waited for 3 hours, got all the way to the front of the line, and then people decided they didn't want to wait anymore. I was angry. I had waited 3 hours in the rain, got to the front of the line and then everyone wanted to leave! I couldn't believe it, but I didn't have a choice. Once again, we headed to the Hofbrahaus, which we loved. We were waiting in line to get in, but the guy who was letting people in kept ignoring us. Someone inside dropped a glass and he left from the door, and before I knew it we were storming the door. Because we were in the front, we got shoved into the door. The 400 people behind us pushed us through the door…Btu that was okay because we got in and the other people didn't. We headed back upstairs but they were closing it early. We ended up making friends with these German boys, and sat at their table. We were there all night. Once again, the beer kept coming and we were set. The German boys were obsessed with us…Being endowed, they were obsessed with Amber and my boobs. It was so hilarious. All they wanted to so was touch them, but we wouldn't let them…haha. As the night went on, people came and went and we met some pretty cool people. It is so cool the people you meet and how small the world is. Americans were everywhere and we met so many people. I ended up sitting next to two guys from London. They were both engineers…One worked for Land Rover and the other made pistons for Formula 1 racing…We talked all night and they told me all about their jobs. They have connections like whoa…and of course we exchanged phone numbers. The guy who worked for Formula 1 was so interested in me…as conceded as that sounds…The next day he called me 12 times, wanting to meet up. I never called back…
By Sunday, we were so exhausted. Everyone was sick because we had spent 2 days in the freezing rain drinking beer. Half of our group had to leave early, but me and Amber's train didn't leave until 8pm. Instead of being drunk for the train ride home, we decided to make some smart life decisions and go to Dachau concentration camp. It was very interesting, yet depressing. I love learning about the Holocaust, so I enjoyed it very much. We didn't know what to expect, but I must say that the feeling you got when you walked through thte gates, just as the prisoners did, was eerie. Everyone who was there felt exactly the same. There was a feeling of mourning and a feeling of death. After all, thousands of people were murdered here for no reason. Dachau was the first concentration camp built, and the only one that lasted the 12 years of the Nazi's Holocaust. We started by going into the museum, and learning about all that happened here. It was very graphic but necessary to understand the nature of torture that occurred here. They imprisoned anyone who they suspected was against the Nazi in anyway…This included homosexuals, religious figures, etc…I couldn't image being imprisoned in a place like that just because of the way I looked or what I believed in. Outside the museum, there was a monument of twisted metal that represents the people who tried to get out through the electrical barbed wire fences that surrounded the camp. There is also a monument that has the words "Never Again," which were said when the Americans liberated the camp in 1945. After the museum, we walked around the camp and saw some of the buildings that were still standing. Most of the barracks had been torn down, but they reconstructed one so could see what conditions these people were forced to live in. At the point where the camp was over the max amount of people, there would be 7-10 people per bunk bed, when there should have only been one. There were 26 barracks at Dachau. After the barracks, we walked down Camp Road and headed toward the Crematorium and barrack X. Of all the places in the camp, the crematorium was the place where I realized where I was. I entered the crematorium as the prisoners did. The first room was the waiting room where the prisoners were told to disrobe to get ready to "shower." The next room was the "shower," or gas chamber. I was standing where thousands of innocent people were mass murdered. I couldn't stay there because I got emotional. On the way out, we saw the ovens where people were incinerated alive. I had learned about this place and had read in books how gruesome it was, but to be standing there was a totally different feeling. I cant really describe how it felt to stand in there. I just felt extremely uncomfortable and left. We headed to Barrack X, which is where many of the medical experiments were conducted. I had never seen anything like this. The things they did to these people was insane and inhumane. They conducted experiments for Malaria where they would let millions of mosquitoes infected with Malaria bite the person, and then conduct tests, eventually killing the person. They did pressure experiments where they would inflate the brain with pressure to see what the maximum pressure of the brain could be, eventually exploding the brain of the prisoner. It was so gruesome. They also did hypothermia experiments where they would immerse the prisoner in a tub of water that was so cold for such a long time…Basically torturing the prisoner to death. The experiments were endless and even to this day, we don't know what else they were capable of. Being at Dachau was a very liberating experience. When I left, I felt a sense of awareness and a sense of humanism.
Dachau was a great way to spend the last day in Munich. After we got back to Munich from Dachau, we decided to go back to Oktoberfest to buy some souvenirs and see the actual festival. Sunday was the only day that was beautiful. The sun was shining, but it was still cold. Of course, the only day we couldn't drink massively, we could walk into any tent we wanted and find seats…Instead, we walked around and enjoyed some of the German food and culture. I had bratwurst and Weiner schnitzel and a giant cookie heart. The food was amazing!!! Our last day was very fun. When we got to the train station to go home, the people we were sharing a couchette with were trashed. It was a very interesting ride home, but needless to say we had an AMAZING time in Germany. The next few weeks, I will be staying in Florence to get caught up with school and life in general. I only have a few trips left, as my amazing journey in Europe quickly comes to an end…We still plan on seeing Athens, Venice, Pisa, Amsterdam (maybe), Barcelona (maybe) and Dublin for Thanksgiving!
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