Chicken Dinner, München and Oktoberfest-Eins, Zwei, Drei, Super!

Chicken dinner. Can you see the movie?

Donnerstag 16 September: Today I took it easy. We are home in Vienna for the day and then tomorrow we leave for Munich to go to Oktoberfest. My feet hurt like crazy so I'm staying in bed as long as I can today! I stayed in bed until 3:30 then Marisa and I walked around near IES and then Mariahilf. I started coat shopping, since it's starting to get a little bit chilly, but I didn't end up buying anything yet. At night Emily and Elizabeth and I went out to a new bar Emily read about. (Not new, but new to us) It's called Schikaneder, but we call it chicken dinner. It's super awesome. They play independent films on the wall and have really cool music, and it's not too expensive. I think it's my new favorite bar in Vienna.

Freitag 17 September: So I'm kind of sad this morning because my train doesn't leave for Munich until noon and Marisa and Ben leave for Munich at 6 am. I really wanted to go to Dachau, but it closes at 5:00, which is when I'm getting to Munich. So I decided to wake up early and go to the train station to see if there's any way to change my ticket. Here is the time line of my fabulous morning:
5:00 wake up ugh...

Sitting on the floor in the train, eating lunch.

5:20 leave for the Wesbahnhof train station
5:50 get turned down for a switch in ticket by that same bitchy girl that I always get at the öbb office
6:00 decide to ask how much a ticket to Munich is. It's 83 Euro, forget it.
6:30 arrive back at my apartment and realize I forgot my keys, ring the doorbell and call my roommates
6:35 fall asleep on the steps of Dürergasse 18
7:00 wake up and decide to go to a bakery and get breakfast
7:15 finish breakfast and head to the grocery store. It doesn't open until 7:30 so I sit on a bench

Still sitting on the floor, yep right next to the WC, Super!

7:16 look at the time. 7:18  look at the time. 7:19 look at the time. 7:20 look at the time, you get the idea
7:30 go to Zielpunkt and buy snacks for the train
7:35 reach in my purse to pay and find my keys. ugh.

Dinner, yummy!

Weißer Bräuhaus. Isn't it so Bavarian?

Walking around Munich. This is their Rathaus.

So then I went to my train at noon. For the first stop we had to sit on the floor because there were no seats that weren't reserved. For the rest of the ride we got to sit but we had to seat hop at every stop which was kind of annoying, but not too bad. David packed sandwhiches for us and I packed drinks and snacks so that was pretty good too. Marisa and Ben met us at the stop near our hotel and I got all checked in. After that we went to get dinner. We went to this traditional Bavarian restaurant called the Weißer Bräuhaus. It was founded in 1490. Isn't that just crazy to think about! We had to wait a while to be seated, but it was well worth the wait. It was really awesome too because every time we spoke German to the waitress she spoke German back! She didn't even try to speak to us in English which was refreshing from Vienna where everyone switches to English. I ate two meatballs and potato salad. I drank a radler (lemonade and beer, it's super yummy!) and then for dessert Marisa and Ben and I split these apple doughnut things with ice cream and whipped cream! It was so delicious! After that we decided to rest up for Oktoberfest tomorrow so we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

Ready to go back and go to sleep!

Waiting to get into the tent. Oy!

Playing Sabateur, waiting for festivities to start!

The tent, it was huge! And this was just one tent!!!

Standing on benches!

It says something about "you are madness to me"

I'm wearing a travel money thing, can you tell?

This is where Hitler played pool. Kind of eerie.

I have a bruise from holding this beer...

Samstag 18 September: Well today is the first day of the 200th Oktoberfest! We were up by 6:30, breakfast at 7, on the Sbahn by 8 and at Oktoberfest in line for a tent at 8:30. Breakfast at the hotel was amazing! It was this incredible buffet! I had smoked salmon sandwhich and this granola that tasted exactly like the vanilla granola I buy at Sunflower Market at home! Ok back to Oktoberfest. We got there and realized that we were some of the only people not dressed in liederhosen or drindels. Kind of embarrassing, who would have thought that so many people dressed up! So originally our plan was to go get a table (you need to be seated at a table if you want to order beer) drink one beer once the keg was tapped at noon, sober up and go to Dachau before it closed. That didn't happen. We finally got into the tent (we were at the Pschorr-Bräurosl tent) around 9, but that didn't mean we got a table... We wandered around asking every table if they had room for four for about an hour. What people do is they send in one or two friends to snag a table and they hold the table for all their friends. So each table only had one or two people at them, but they were all "taken". It was incredibly annoying and frustrating! So we kept looking, but we weren't having any luck. We finally decided to split up. David and Ben went off and Marisa and I stayed together. Eventually we decided to just stand near a bunch of tables with empty spots, since they weren't letting anyone else into the tent. There were other people doing the same thing and we would kind of smile at them and shake our heads every time someone would turn us down for a seat. It was crazy, David and Ben were offering people money to sit down, Marisa and I would go to tables of boys our age with puppy dog eyes. There was just no way to find a table. Finally this group left a table near us and a group of friends sat down. Some of them were the ones we were smiling and kind of joking with us and they offered for us to sit with them! Yes! Finally! We succeeded in getting a table at Oktoberfest! YES! (David and Ben were still searching, but Marisa and I got lucky!) At this point it was 10:30 so we had a while to wait before it all would start. The group we were sitting with all work or go to school together in Munich but they all came from Italy, Pakistan, Malaysia, Finland, France and Germany. So it was a really international table and we all just spoke English to each other. One girl had a card game with her called Sabateur. It was kind of complicated and had a lot of different types of cards, but the main point of the game was to build a path to gold and some people were trying to get to the gold and some were trying to not get to the gold. It was really fun once we got it and I think I'm going to try to find it in a store here so I can play with my brother Adam when I get home! Near noon the parade came through the tent and things started getting crazy! (ok so they were already crazy before this) People were standing on benches and chanting and cheering. It was just nuts. We made friends with our waitress whose name was Frannie (pronounced Francie) She kept coming by to look at our card game and chat with us, this turned out to pay off because she served us first! We were the first table in our whole area to get beer, it was really cool! Beer at Oktoberfest comes by the liter, that's a lot of beer! Ben and David told us they got a table outside and we decided to meet outside at five. So for the next five hours we drank beer, sang a lot of German drinking songs and I probably spent about an hour and a half of my life waiting in lines for the bathroom! We had such a great time with the people at our table and talking about differences in our countries! It was awesome! I had two beers, but I didn't finish my last one because it got kind of warm and gross after I was gone at the bathroom for so long! Marisa and I also enjoyed a very large pretzel and then later a gingerbread cookie. After we met the boys we noticed that someone who shall remain unnamed was acting kind of weird. The moral of this story, don't take candy from strangers. Especially at Oktoberfest after three liters of beer. I'll leave it at that. We decided it would probably be best to get dinner and then reassess after that. We went to a restaurant where Hitler used to play pool. We ate a ton there, the portions were huge! I had chicken and rice and frites (and water!). It was very good. We wanted to play a game of pool, but with the circumstances the way they were, we decided to go back to the hotel and call it a night instead. We went back and I watched children shows in German for a bit. (That's the best because I can understand everything they say!) Overall it was a good day though.
 My Tips for Oktoberfest:
1. Get there super early. 8:30 wasn't early enough!
2. Wear traditional Bavarian clothing, if you don't you look silly. (Believe it or not)
3. Bring something to do while waiting, like Sabateur.
4. Try to be friendly and make friends with other people waiting, you can look out for each other.
5. Pace yourself, things can go downhill fast, and the bathroom line is long!
6. Pretzels are yummy and good to fill up your stomach while drinking beer!
7. Don't plan anything else for the day. You will be here all day!
8. Don't take candy from strangers! I'm serious!
9. Have fun and go with the flow, you might have to be flexible and don't get frustrated.
10. Eat a good breakfast, it's going to be a long day!

Another early morning. Yawn

The snack I packed. Isn't this just creepy?!

Sonntag 19 September: Even though I slept for eight hours, I was so tired when I woke up! My train was at 8:24 this morning and I wanted to catch the Sbahn by 7:30 because the subway system of Munich is very weird and then next train wouldn't come until 7:50 which was cutting it close. Breakfast started at 7, so I wanted to leave the hotel by 7:20. We ate fabulous breakfast and I packed a few snacks for the train. I went to check out thinking it wouldn't be too long, but it turned out that fabulous breakfast was not free. Oh no, it cost 10 euros a breakfast so I had to pay for that and it took time for the payment to go through. Needless to say we missed the 7:30 Sbahn. We waited 20 minutes and thankfully just made it onto our train back to Vienna. We were off and about half an hour into the trip the train suddenly stopped. There was an announcement in German and all I got was "Vienna" "Get off the train". So we got off the train. No one spoke very much English so we kind of spoke Gerglish for a while and determined that a train ahead of us derailed (assuring, I know) and we were going to have to go back to Munich and catch another train to Vienna. We took an Sbahn back to Munich and got a new train to Vienna through Salzburg. We made that train and were off again. I fell asleep for a few hours and when I woke up the train was stopped. This time all I could make out was "working" and "20 minutes" (the Bavarian accent is very different from the Austrian one, and it kind of sounds like a different language!) That was great because our layover in Salzburg was 20 minutes! We made it to Salzburg and thank God, the next train was also delayed, so we made it! Getting home to Vienna felt so great! I was three hours late and had a very stressful morning but I was so glad to be home!!! For dinner Marisa, Katie, Elizabeth and I went to get sushi and then I just relaxed! Ah! Tomorrow classes start! I only have Art and Architecture at 1:15 but I think I'm going to practice in the morning. Time for bed! What a great week!