Here in Heidelberg I have my own personal tutor, who happens to be Bavarian. Her family was nice enough to let me and the other American student here stay at their place so that we could go to Oktoberfest. Additionally, the other American's tutor has a car, so we were all able to drive there! This was actually pretty lucky, because the weekend before this, several people I know went to Oktoberfest in a 9-passenger van and slept in that van. Rumor has it some drunk rando puked on two of them in the bathroom and they were left showerless to deal with the aftermath. Yikes.
The day before we drove to an outlet store to buy me a cheap Dirndl. This actually ended up taking quite a while, as I turned out to be too small for adult-sized blouses. The poor people I went with had to watch me try on a million (ok... maybe like 7...) of these things before we found one that didn't look ridiculous on me, but I was successful! I also enjoyed driving through
Bayern. The landscape seriously looks just as beautiful as Sissi would lead you to believe.
The next day we got up at the buttcrack of dawn (6am!) to go to the train to München. Even as we got there, the tent we were in was PACKED. This photo was taken in the afternoon, but you get the idea.
In the beginning it was just drinking. You paid 10 euro for a liter of beer and it was good beer, but I am physically in capable of drinking that much beer before it gets stale! Also, people who wanted to chug beer stood up on the benches/tables and chugged. One guy chugged 3 (or was it 4?) Maß on the table top. On his final Maß, he was holding a bucket in his other arm, which he proceeded to puke in after he finished the Maß. Needless to say, beer chugging was not for me. My apparently-barely-adult-sized-torso would not be able to fit that much fluid.
One fun fact I learned from my tutor is that when you order a mug at Oktoberfest, they are definitely not called steins. They are called a Maß. My tutor apparently ran into some Americans the weekend before I came, who called beer mugs "steins" and she didn't know what they were talking about until they showed her.
At about noon a band started playing, at which point everyone got up on the benches and stomped around and jumped to the music. I made the mistake of finishing my pretzel before jumping up and allowing a German youth to stomp on the bench next to me. The bench hit my bottom so hard I ended up with a bruise the next day. I wished that I had learned German drinking songs beforehand! It seemed like everyone knew the words but me!
The next day it was time to head home. On the way back, we were able to stop at Schloss Neuschwanstein.
The castle was quite pretty, but we would've had to wait at least an hour to get to go inside, and frankly that just wasn't worth it. There were pretty large crowds around, probably because it was a holiday weekend. Also, since it was Tag der Deutschen Einheit, German radio was actually playing German music for a change. Woah.
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