Munich (October 3-5)

I arrived in Munich to a train station full of people in lederhosen and dirdles, and immediately went on a walking tour. The guide was another super awesome one, and I had this moment when she was talking about how like 80 percent of Munich got bombed during World War II, because I had honestly (ignorantly, entitledly) never really considered before (not even when I was in Berlin, which was also heavily bombed) that the "good guys" did a lot of damage during WWII too. So yeah, learning things.

After that I didn't really have any plans and decided to check out Oktoberfest. Despite not actually knowing where it was, I figured I couldn't go wrong following the crowd of drunk, festively dressed (literally like half the people in this city are dressed up, it's awesome) people. And indeed they did not steer me wrong! I don't know what I was expecting from Oktoberfest; I should have been expecting it to be huge and crazy, but somehow I wasn't prepared for just how huge and crazy it is. But let me tell you, it's huge and crazy. In addition to all the huge beer halls, there's a giant carnival. I walked through that, and then through one of the beer halls, which was packed, and those girls really can carry like six one-liter mugs of beer in each hand.

But I knew I was too tired to have one then myself. So I headed back to the train station. I was staying in Nuremberg (about an hour and fifteen minutes away by high-speed train), because by the time I went to book a hostel in Munich, they were all really expensive (like $90 a night, no thank you). I somehow accidentally got on a commuter train instead of the express one, though, so it ended up taking almost three hours to get to Nuremberg. But I was in a compartment full of drunk and singing Germans, so I guess it was probably worth it.

I managed to catch the right train back into Munich in the morning, and then almost immediately got on a different one to take a tour of Dachau, the reason, much moreso than Oktoberfest, that I decided to come to Munich. But I'll talk about that in a separate post.

I had planned to have a quiet evening, but a girl I was on the tour with invited me to join her at Oktoberfest, and I am not one to turn down beer-related invitations. And I'm really glad I went. There's just something to be said for the experience of standing up on benches and singing songs you don't really know with a bunch of drunk Brits, Germans, and Italians you hadn't met a few hours ago, and I'm glad I had it.

Me with a beer as big as my face. (Photo cred: Erin)

For I think the first time on this trip, I didn't do anything cultural or historical or Europe-y the next day. But I think sometimes you need a day of rest, especially after participating in something as, ahem, cultural as Oktoberfest. So I let myself sleep in, and bummed around my hostel, and then I did a little shopping, bummed around a little bit more, then hopped on a train to Venice.