Oktoberfest

Guten Tag!! Well friends, I went to my first Oktoberfest last weekend in Germany. It is the biggest beer fest in the world and is held in Munich (Munchen) in the southeast. Munich by the way is the 3^rd largest city in Germany with a population of about 1.2 million people.

Now with the intro out of the way, I will answer the following questions with one answer:

1. Did I have a great time?
2. Did I meet many great people form different countries?
3. Did I try speaking German?
4. Was I at one of the best tents?
5. Do I have memory loss?
6. Did I wake up in a garden?
7. Did I wake up with virtually no hangovers the morning after?
8. Was the beer very pure and smooth?
9. Would I go back again?

Ok – you may have guessed the answer is YES!! Except 1 & 9 which is really HELL YES!!

Day Ein

My friends Jase and Bert flew to Munich Friday morning and made our way on the ultra clean and efficient German rail system into town to find our hotel. Once there we met up with Jason’s brother’s girlfriend’s sister and her boyfriend. We headed out to explore the city in the rain. The roads are quite confusing, but even if we found ourselves in the middle of the road in on-coming traffic, all the motorists were really patient (not like London). We found a market and had a nice Bratwurst in a roll and our first stein of bier. Well, that started it. We kind of gave up of seeing much of the city in the rain and made our way to the Hofbrauhaus, which is a giant bar, which is like a beer fest all year-round. Hitler used to hold meetings there. We had another 3 steins (1 litre ea) as a primer for the weekend ahead. Then we went to have Pizza and met up with Jase’s brother Richard and his girlfriend Patria who are over traveling Europe. Then back to the hotel

to rest up for the big day ahead…

Day Zwei

We got up reasonably early and headed down to the Oktoberfest and had a bit of a snoop about before finding a place to watch the opening parade. Then we went off to find that all the beer tents were full!! We had feared as such, but didn’t get disheartened. Instead we explored some more and eventually found a small tent that could squeeze us in. This is when the fun started. We meet a group of Americans, Swiss, Italians and of course Germans. Everyone was there for the same reason as us, so we set about meeting and talking to (the best we could with our respective languages – which was half the fun) as many

as we could. My memory starts to fade, but there is plenty of photo evidence of the fun. Plenty of drinking steins that were served by the strongest women I’ll ever see.

Day Drei

The main day: the day we made it into a real tent! To secure our place, we got up early and got to the tent by 9am. Even though the thought of drinking that early wasn’t appealing, we bought a stein anyway and slowly got into it. We were lucky enough to be joined by three German girls, all in the traditional dresses who filled us in on the finer points of the beerfest. Later in the morning, my friend Inge, whom I met on my tour of Ireland joined us with her friend. They both live just outside Munich, so there was no hanging out with Aussies and Kiwis for us – German all the way that day. We tried something called snuff. You snort it, and it’s kind of a coffee coloured powder with a menthol smell. Now, don’t worry Mum, it’s not drugs, although I’m not exactly sure why we kept snorting it. Maybe it was clearing our noses? Fun times anyway. Later on I left for an hour to check out the carnival rides with Inge and Katja and went on some sort of swinging carousel ride – maybe not such a good idea spinning around real fast after having multiple beers! Anyway, I was fine and we went back to the tent and enjoyed the music and singalongs until 10:30 when they kicked us out. Probably a good thing as we’d had enough by then. The band were great and played a mix of German and English songs, although we would have preferred more German songs even though we weren’t the best at singing along to them. There is something to be said about being in a giant tent with thousands of other drunken people, standing on the tables singing at the top of our lungs. I’ll tell you when I remember…

Day Vier

At bit more of a Somber (and Sober day) we went on the Third Reich walking tour to learn about Hitler’s days in Munich before jumping on a plane back to London.

Now I’m back at work. Stink. But I am starting a new job in a couple of weeks and am taking a week off next week to see Mr Turtle in Italy. But that’s for another blog…

Wonderful Weekend in Wales

Shwmau / Hi !

Last weekend was a bank holiday over here and you have to make use of any opportunity to do some trippin’ out of London. Justin, his flat mate Patrick, Turtle and I all went on a tour of Wales with Shaggy Sheep tours. It was the smallest tour I’ve been on so far, with 16 people, but there still was interesting people.

After being sick with food poisoning and having to get up at 5:30am to meet the tour at 7:30am, the first day was a bit of a slog for me. Our first stop was Cardiff and we were left to our own devices for a few hours to explore the relatively small city centre. We did a tour of the Millennium stadium where many big concerts and sports events are held. They were setting up the stage for the Rolling Stones concert at the time. The big opening roof would have been impressive to see open, but apparently it takes 20min. After Cardiff, we saw A.B.C. (Another Bloody Castle or Another Bloody Cathedral – typical of any tour in Europe) and then went to the smallest pub in Wales for a pint, before having some dinner and heading to our hostel.

The next day was better. Firstly we went to explore where a famous Welsh poet by the name of Dylan Thomas lived. It sounds like he was a man plagued by an excess of alcohol, but he has sparked my interest in poetry somewhat. Maybe his prose speaks to me better. One of his more well known poems is entitled ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go_gentle_into_that_good_night.

We then headed to the smallest city in Britain on the west coast, called St. David’s with a population of 1979. It is only called a city because of it’s cathedral called St. David’s also. After that, was the highlight of the trip; coasteering! Now many of you will wonder what that is, like I did a few weeks ago. Well a simple way to describe it is: Coasteering involves doing all the things you were always told not to do at the beach. You head straight for the rocks, scramble up and down the cliffs, jump into the ocean, let the waves carry you into swirling rock pools, then get back up and do it all again. That’s pretty much it. I’ll let the photos explain the rest. I must say though, it was great to do some adventure sport. Some of the jumps were about 17m high with people hitting the water at nearly 70kph! It was quite hard work for over 2 hours, but really exhilarating, and helped us bond a bit as a tour group.

After that we went to have a well earned beer and feed at another nice country restaurant where we had a hearty Welsh soup called Cawl. Some had servings of faggots and spotted dick for dessert! A fun night was had.

The next morning, we headed out to climb Brecon Beacons which woke us up! Apparently it’s where the SAS soldiers train. It was nice climb up to some decent views, while seeing some sheep along the way. It was nothing compared to the beauty you see of nature on a typical hike back home though. After that we headed to a coal mine, which was quite an eye opening experience to see the conditions they had to work in. I think we headed 90feet underground and got kitted up with hard hats with lanterns. It was cool when we turned all our lights off to experience the most purest of darkness.

That about rounds the trip off. All in all a great weekend. I loved going to the little country villages like where Daveth off Little Britian is from, and hearing their almost singing quality of the language.

Iechyd da! (Welsh for cheers / good health)