Munich
Cliffs Notes Version:After a lackluster morning, we arrived in Munich determined to go out on a high note. We hit up the Deutsche Museum, got a new drindl for Colleen, and closed out Oktoberfest.
| MunichCliffs Notes Version:After a lackluster morning, we arrived in Munich determined to go out on a high note. We hit up the Deutsche Museum, got a new drindl for Colleen, and closed out Oktoberfest. |
Day 1Finally, we arrived in Munich ready to put the crappy morning behind us and to get the day going. Our plan had always been to end the trip in Munich for the last day of Oktoberfest as a poetic close to the trip. This was all kind of serendipitous. Oktoberfest happened to start on my birthday, and based on Colleen's vacation days (as a grad student 10 days of vacation just mean I graduate 10 days later) the trip had to end on the Sunday which was the last day so we could get Colleen back to work.We were too early for check-in so were going to throw our bags in a locker and get going. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda decided to release a video a few days earlier showing Oktoberfest as a terrorist target so security in Munich was very high. A side effect of this was that all the lockers in the train station were closed. At this point, Colleen had had enough and so she walked out on the street and punted a puppy. After the German equivalent of PETA got done with the interrogation, we walked to our hotel and dropped off our large bags in their luggage room. We didn't want to head to the Oktoberfest grounds quite yet and we still had a few of our smaller bags with us so we headed over to the Deutsche Museum to kill a few hours.
We got to the grounds mid-afternoon and the weather was gorgeous. We decided before sitting down in any tents that we should walk around a bit and check out the insides of all the tents we didn't go in the last time we were there. After doing that for a bit, we decided that we absolutely had to go on the Ferris wheel. The Ferris wheel line system was a little interesting. Essentially, you bought your ticket and then you went through a turnstile where you were in a giant waiting area with no semblance of order with dozens of women, excited and annoyed, and dozens of men, looking at their women with the question of 'Why aren't we in a tent drinking right now' planted on their face. At this point, you just kind of slowly zombie-walked/shoved your way to the front of the line the best you could. Eventually, you were close enough up to the front where they would throw you into one of the pods so you could partake on the grand experience that is the Ferris Wheel ride. I will say that once we did actually make it onto the ride it gave very good views of the grounds and was enjoyable. I especially liked looking down at the poor bastards still in line and mocking them from high above.
After the Ferris Wheel experience, Colleen and I went to hit up some tents. Getting a seat inside was not going to happen, so we walked around until we found some bench seating just outside the tents. The first tent we did this at was Hofbrau. We had a mass a piece there and then walked around a bit more and then went to Paulaner. After having a mass there, I actually wanted to buy a mug legitimately which I think took the security personnel off guard as they were just used to tackling people that were trying to sneak out with them. The doors were closed by this point to go into the tent and their store, so a very helpful and strangely happy security guy ran in with a mug and some of our cash and was able to legitimately buy the Paulaner mug for us. At this point, we were just thinking it probably would have been a lot easier to steal the thing like everyone else does, but the security guy was cool and he seemed happy to help.
At this point, Oktoberfest was almost coming to a close. We bought some more souvenirs including the mug from Kalbs Kuchl that we didn't get when we went there the previous time. We wanted to be on the grounds when they officially stopped serving, just as we were on the grounds two weeks earlier when they tapped the first keg. For some reason, it seemed fitting for us to close out the trip that way. At 11 p.m. the beer serving stopped ... the oompa bands began to die down ... bags of trash began to appear and people who were having trouble walking before had more obstacles to avoid ... souvenir stands were still going strong, but the pretzel shops were putting lids on their mustard jars. With all this activity, many wouldn't notice a newly minted thirty year old and his lovely wife in a brand new dirndl walking underneath the sign proclaiming 'Auf Wiedersehen!' However, for these two it was never considered a good-bye, for they had already made up their mind the better translation, in this particular context, was a see-you-later.
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