Berlin and Munich - Going to Oktoberfest!

September 25-October 7, 2010


Anton surprised me by coming to Germany for a week, so we did a quick loop of Berlin->Munich->Erfurt->Berlin. We had to do the stop in Munich, to experience Oktoberfest firsthand.

Berlin is a really cool city. We did a few tours and hit up the main tourist spots. The free walking tour there really is pretty awesome. We took the night train from Berlin to Munich, which was an interesting experience. Those sleeper cars are tiny!! There were six beds in ours, three bunks on either side. There was only enough room for one person to stand in there at a time. Lucky us, we had a full car, and I was the only girl in the car. It smelled like stinky feet in there.

We spent our first day in Munich checking out the beer tents at Oktoberfest. 2010 is the 200^th anniversary of Oktoberfest. It was lucky that we were there mid-week, because it was still pretty busy in the tents even early in the day. We were there by around 11am. Our first stop: Hofbrauhaus. We each ordered a litre of beer and settled in. Those beer mugs are huge and heavy! Right off the bat I recognized a guy at our table as a German exchange student that I had a class with in my last semester at the U. Talk about a small world. We met a couple from Canada at our table, and ended up spending the afternoon drinking beers with them.

The atmosphere inside the tents is just awesome. Everyone is there just to drink beer and have a good time. The band started playing around noon, and everyone kept on standing up and singing this song and cheers-ing each other. I'm sure anyone from Germany knows the song I'm talking about. It was sort of taught to me, but I don't remember it. Even though it was only early in the afternoon, the tent was pretty full and people were well on their way to getting hammered.

The next day we took the train a few hours outside the city to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle, aka the Sleeping Beauty Castle. Robert gave me a hard time about it when I was planning it out, saying how no real Germans go there, and it’s all tourists. He was pretty much bang on. The castle and surrounding area is really beautiful though, and the interior of the castle was also quite different from the other castles I’ve visited so far (saw a few in Ireland).

When we got back into Munich we headed straight for Oktoberfest. It was way harder to find a spot at night, all the halls were jam packed with people, drinking, eating and singing. It was cool just being inside soaking in what was going on. We managed to find a spot on a patio outside. Not as exciting as being inside, but still a spot to drink some beer. The waitresses are all crazy strong too, carrying multiple beers at once. I heard that they could carry 8 at a time, but I don’t think I saw anyone carrying more than 6. And it was all women working as the servers.

The next morning we headed to Erfurt, for some last hang out time with Kathryn and Robert. They were awesome hosts and took us around the city (me for the second time!), showing Anton all sites. Erfurt had its own Oktoberfest going on, so we had some beers there. Not quite the same atmosphere as in Munich, but there was a drunk dude dancing around the tables playing air instruments and pretending he was part of the band, and he was pretty funny.

The next day we did a visit out to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, an informative, but depressing afternoon. I went to Auschwitz when I was in Europe 5 years ago which was also a really good experience, and visiting both helped give the full picture. Buchenwald was a work camp, whereas Auschwitz was an extermination camp.


After that Anton and I headed back to be Berlin, capping off the trip.