A long overdue post, for sure!
I just got back into England late Tuesday evening after a crazy, fun, amazing visit with my good friend Iris, a resident of Munich. She was kind enough to host me while I visited and took me around the city, sticking by my side to help me get around since I don't really know a drop of German. I was really grateful for that. It was fun, too, because she was translating and teaching me how to say things the whole time. Such a patient person!
I was visiting at a fantastic time, of course, because it was the middle of Oktoberfest and the whole city was bustling with activity. On top of that, one of our friends came and visited us over the weekend and we all got to have a walk around the festival on one of its most crowded weekends there is.
We went up in a gigantic ferris wheel to see the city while there and it was a breathtaking view of Munich.
It was impressive from so high up, as was the entirety of Oktoberfest. It seemed like there wasn't a free square foot of space on the main grounds. I didn't even get a shot of all the different sides, but this is about only half of the festival.
If you look in the above photo, you can see the enormity of the city's statue of Bavaria, the region's patron saint. We ended up walking over to it after the ride to get some breathing room on the grassy knoll where she resides. It was really impressive -- and it should be since it's one of the biggest bronze statues in the world, weighing in at just over 95 tons.
We ended up running around the city after that, being silly, because the Oktoberfest was just too crowded that Saturday. We couldn't even get into a beer tent that day, which is apparently the only place you can purchase beer at Oktoberfest. It's a really misleading from the media I've seen; I thought there were places you could just run up and grab a beer at throughout the fest. It was all right, though, because Iris took me down to the festival on Monday to try to get into one and we did!
(don't mind the apparently extremely disgruntled German woman who Does Not Approve in the front there)
The tent was downright enormous! I was shocked!
Iris' mom gave us tickets for beer and chicken that she had received from her workplace and so we enjoyed a plate of delicious roasted chicken and I got a Great Big Beer -- I'm not kidding here, they sold the special brewed, high proof Weizen by the litre only! It was delicious, too!
It was a crazy atmosphere that supposedly only gets crazier at night, but we had rides to ride, places to run around to, and things to see since we went there on the day before I left. We happily toasted one another once the drinking song was played (oh, and they place it so often to keep everyone ordering more beer!), which you can download here; if you listen you can hear the German woman next to me and then all the clinks at the end as we toasted one another with our behemoth glasses of beer.
You can hear Iris' fantastic commentary throughout most of the thing. ;) I dropped the camera, of course, but hey, it was still fun trying to record it! Their coasters are so much faster than ours! We also went on this awesome ride called The Insider, a spinning coaster type ride that had two-seated cars that roated back and forth, upside down and around, so that you were being spun at least 3 directions at once. Let me tell you how fun that one was after my litre of beer! Haha!
I had so much fun in Germany, just spending time with Iris and Stacy! And Germany… I think I'm in love with it! I'll certainly have to go back there someday! It's truly an amazing place, perhaps one of my favourite places I've ever travelled to.
Since I've been back I've been taking it easy mostly, just going into town to enjoy frozen yogurt and fresh made hot chocolate at Katie and my favourite place in town, Lick. I have a small update with photos to make about that eventually, but until then…
Prost!
