Salzburg, Austria - Mother Superior was not kidding when she said "Climb every mountain"

Wednesday, September 24

If it hasn't already been said Haus Linder is much more than a hostel, a high end bed and breakfast would be a better way to put it. Off our balcony we had a panoramic view of Salzburg, not a bad way to start the day. The breakfast was very good but again... no hot food. We were the only ones in there besides the owner who made us a nice breakfast of breakfast rolls with jams, cheese, juice, coffee, and the best salami we'd had. It was sliced super thin and had a nice peppery flavor. She and her family were off to church service as it was a local holiday celebrating St. Rupert, also the name of her husband she told us. He was the founder of Salzburg and it's a huge deal... we didn't know how huge just yet. We went back to the room to shower and pack up. Our room had a private shower that was kind of funny, it was like stepping into the closet with a bi-fold, sliding door.

When our hosts returned, we thought it was time to pay for our night and head out for the day. Heather opened the door and said "holy blonde kids!" She had her grandkids upstairs with her in the kitchen, about five or six of them, all blonde haired. One of the girls was eating chocolate and offered one to Heather, who is never one to turn down a chocolate. Heather also got put to work for a moment working the phones with an australian guy on the line our host could not understand. After a walk back down the hill and hopping on the train we were off to the main area of town.

We arrived back at the main station and put our backpacks into a storage locker for the day. With a map in hand we set off to find the Mirabell gardens, made famous in the movie The Sound of Music during the "Do Ri Me" song. Along the way what did we find? If you guessed gelato you'd be right. Much to our suprise its the cheapest yet, 80 cents for a cone. We were sold. Charlie got a chocolate flavor and Heather got cookies. Apparently cookies means every good flavor you can think of because this cone was unreal. This was another one of those flavors we could spend paragraphs describing and still not really do it justice.

We came upon the enterance to Mirabell park, and at first, weren't that impressed. Walking up a small hill reveled a beautiful rose garden, and down a few stairs, a huge well maintained flower garden. The Mirabell Garten was pristine. Most interesting was a house on the grounds that one of the archbishops built for his secret wife (naughty, naughty). Oh and they had 15 children!!

Crossing over the Salzach river bridge we happened on a HUGE festival! It was of course the St Rupert's day festival. It took up all the streets with food, drinks, beer tents, and rides including a REAL pony merry-go-round. We sampled a few things like pastries, real honey in various flavors and plum schnapps. We toured the beautiful Dom de Salzburg cathedral, dedicated to St Rupert and St Virgil. The cathedral was bombed and mostly destroyed in WW2 reopening May 1, 1959, seeing the renovations were beautiful. We both really liked this church in a way we couldn't explain, it just felt special.

Next item on the list: The Sound of Music. Yes, Heather has been singing constantly! We found out the tours were 37 Euros... a bit out of our price range. We decided to try to see as much of the sites from the movie on foot.

We ended up walking too far around the hill/mountain and realized we were close to the Nonnburg Abby. This was really quite a hike up the hill but we were not about a to let a guy in his 70s in front of us beat us up!! The abby was very small and honestly not that recognizable from the movie. But how often do nun's lie so we believed that it was what they said. Next we just kept heading up the hill looking for "the thing that does the walking for you" to get up to the top and see the Hohensalzburg castle. Well seems we were much further up than we thought, we were too high up to catch them and had to walk all the way up... this was something we vowed NOT to do because too much walking makes us useless at night and for getting up in the morning. Ughh this was hard, by far the hardest "climb every mountain" we've done. However far you think the climb is when you see the pictures just add 30 minutes of 90 degree grade climbing and you'll be in our shoes.

The castle was very interesting and we had high hopes because this was our first castle. We found the only way to go through the actual castle was to go on a guided tour. We were given little devises that described what we saw in each room. The first room was pictures of all the archbishops who had lived in the castle over time and models of the castle as it was added to over the years. On to the torture chamber! Oh this is going to be exciting right?!?! Nahh it's just called that, no one was ever tortured there, just shackled. Torture is a way to get a confession out and no one could be convicted unless they confessed to a crime, so with no court in this castle: no torture. Up a lot of spiral stairs to the very top of the castle to a look out point. Wow we thought we had good views this morning at the B&B, this was breath taking. There were a few clouds around the mountains but the pictures will speak for themselves. Next we walked down a very long hall that lead us to an old organ. This organ was in a room to itself and was used to wake up the people in the castle, not really to be played... actually it didn't even have a keyboard. It should be noted that this is not a "King and Queen" castle, just one for archbishops. Okay so we turned in our little things that talked and thought... ummm that's all we got to see? We weren't the only ones feeling a bit short changed. We wondered more into other building and saw some of the bishops bedroom chambers, an example of a kitchen and other artifacts. We also again thought it would be so much more interested if it had still be set up in the original form. We found out later the castle had been taken over and looted by Napoleon and it's rumor that the art and furniture had been used in fires to keep warm. It's also rumored that if you tour some french museums you might see a thing or two that does in fact belong to Austria. The castle we should also add was freezing! Charlie enjoyed looking at cannons (total boy thing to do). There was a kind of strange area that had a marionette museum. If you ask us, they are creepy but we paid to get in and looked at everything to get our money's worth. We took advantage of the "machine that does the walking for us" down the mountain. Ughh it was packed and made even more packed by two older germans squeezing in who maybe hadn't been introduced to the concept of soap. It was a long 60 seconds down the mountain.

It was nearly 3pm and we were starving. Salzburg seems to be a very reasonably priced town until you are starving and can't find anything that is either open in the mid-day break or in our price range. We settled on a place called Republic which had free wi-fi and beer, prefect. We each had a wiezen beer. Ok we are going to talk about food again so be ready. Charlie had a chicken and chili sauce wrap with a great mixed salad. Heather had a pasta that was a bit of a surprised when it was set down. The spaghetti pasta was nearly black. It was dyed with squids ink which gave it a really rich/light flavor. The pasta was topped with... we're not sure but it tasted like if you combined a tomato/potato/pumpkin with a crisp piece of fried thin cheese and a chili sauce. Yum, we love new food and this was too good not to welcomed into the clean plate club.

After eating it was back to the festival to see what's new to eat and drink. Heather asked a nice looking couple what they were drinking and they only could say "the best." Better try that then. It was kind of like a fruity pink sparkling liquor/juice. A bit too sweet for our taste but fun to try a glass of. With a bavarian pretzel in tow we headed back to the train station to pick up our bags and head over to our Austrian host's place.

Getting our bags out the locker was a little drama because the machine broke and we had to describe what was in there but it turned out fine. We're now off to find Thomas' place (our Austrian host) which we decided on by looking at the map "didn't look too far." Actually it wasn't too far this time but the but you can double your journey with backpacks on. We got a bit confused by the way the number of the building and apartment were written in the address: 20/9... which is which?? We went to the wrong place with a woman who would open her door to us but assured us Thomas was not there... guess we looked a bit sketchy since it was pouring out. We did then find Thomas' place but with some issues with the door bell we sat outside his apartment from 7pm-8pm. Finally we left him a note saying to contact us and headed back into town not having a clue where to sleep tonight. As we got about a block away footsteps came from behind and an out of breath Thomas said.... "are you Heather and Charlie?"

Thomas had been out on his balcony and not heard us ring or knock on the door but when we finally gave up and walked away in the rain he saw us and chased us down. We couldn't be more relieved or impressed by his HUGE brand new apartment. Everything was custom and gorgeous, pretty impressive for a single guy. We sat up and talked a while over a beer. We had our own room!!! Later that night another girl from the US came and took the couch but we didnt meet her till the morning.

Being cold, soaking wet and very grateful to have a place to stay we slept quite well.

Dachau, Germany and the train to Austria

Tuesday, September 23

We awoke about an hour and a half later than we had planned, guess thats what we get for not setting an alarm, but we were ok with getting a slightly late start. We got up and showered and headed out to the train station to see Dachau Concentration Camp.

Its about a 20 minute train ride to the village and from there about a 10 minute bus ride to the concentration camp site. Neither of us really knew Dachau was a village as well. After misreading the bus schedule and getting off 2 stops too early, we made it to the entrance of the camp. Walking down the gravel path was almost like being in a park as it was very well maintained. Along the way there were signs depicting events that took place and what used to be along the pathway. Right before the main entrance there was a bit of the original cobblestone road leading in, and a small fragment of the original railway leading to the camp.

We entered the camp through the original gate in the building that was the ss officers headquarters. The gate door was the original one with the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" or Work Brings Freedom. The gate opens up to the main camp yard. It was a HUGE yard, with all of the original buildings that surrounded it intact, although restored. The first part of the museum was in the main building of the camp. It started off in the room where the prisoners were processed. They had a few of the original desks used, and a uniform issued to those in the camp. All through the main building there were videos, artifacts and many reader boards telling the history of the camp, events leading up to ww2, who they brought to the camp, and what went on at Dachau. Dachau was the first concentration camp the Nazi's built in 1933, and is the only camp that was used the full duration of the war. Dachau wasn't built to be an extermanation camp, but as a work camp. It's built on an old amunition plant left over from ww1. The first prisoners were responsible for tearing down what was left of that and then building up the camp that functioned from 1933 to 1945. Dachau was an all mens prison up until the end of the war when the nazi's started evacuating other camps and moving them to Dachau among others. The majority of the prisoners were Jews, but it also held political prisoners, POW's, and gypsies.

The other rooms in the main building consisted of the kitchen, shower room, and other processing areas. While it was great to have so much information up to read and pictures to see, it would have been nice if they had some of this building set up like it was in use, much like the way we thought the Anne Frank house should have been. Nonetheless it was a very powerful experience going through the building. In the shower room they had set up a table where they used to whip people if they did anything against the rules. The rules included things such as having a dried spot of water on the bowl you ate out of. Parts of Dachau were kept spotless during the war as it was frequently used to show their camps were being kept in order and prisoners here worked to the bone to keep it that way, but outside of certain areas it was a whole other story. In the doctors areas experiments were carried out on prisoners. They would submerge people in freezing water to find out what organs shut down first in hypothermia or put them in a pressure room until death then see how the brain was effected by it. Just going through that room knowing what happend there is enough to make hairs stand up. Exiting the main building into the yard, we walked across to one of the bunkhouses.

Inside one of the bunkhouses they had set it up to how it was during its use. It was amazing to see rows and rows of wooden "beds" crammed into a room. The camp was set up to house 6,000 prisoners, at its peak it held over 60,000, but it usually had somewhere between 12,000 and 32,000. They say at times the prisoners would have as many as 5 or 6 in one bed. There was also one of the washrooms in place and a bathroom. We were also told that during the war the windows were chalked over so nobody could see outside. Even though the rooms had been restored some years ago, it wasn't hard to imagine the horrible living condidions.

Next we walked out among the foundations of the probably 30 or so bunkhouses that weren't standing anymore, to the back of the camp where there were chapels built after the war. Walking a bit further into the woods we came upon the crematoriums. The first one we went in was the newer, larger one. The first room was a waiting room before the gas chamber. This is where the prisoners were told they were going into a shower room to keep them calm, and told to give their clothes up to the ss guards. Next we went into the gas chamber room disguised as a shower. The walls of this room were over a foot thick, and there was special plumbing into the showerheads where the gas came out. The room was used to kill up to 150 people at a time in about 20 minutes. Standing in this room took an emotional tole on us both. The next room was the cremation room itself. There were four large cremators, each capable of holding three people at a time. In front of them were hooks hanging from the celing where people were hung and killed before being cremated if they were not among the ones gassed. The final room was where the dead bodies were stored, waiting to be cremated. There was a picture up from when the US forces liberated the camp of the room full of bodies. We both left that building speechless and quite shaky. There really is an eery evil feeling going through that building just knowing all the unspeakable things that occured inside. Heather said she never wanted to feel or see what she felt in the room ever again. They say the numbers killed at Dachau was somewhere between 25,000 and 45,000. Nowhere near some of the extermanation camps such as Auchwitz that was rumored to have murdered between 750,000 and 1 million, but shocking nonetheless. After the liberation of the camp, the US soldiers forced the citizens of Dachau village to tour the camp, to witness the horror happening in their own backyard.

Next we walked along a trail that led us by where the ashes of thousands of unknowns were buried, and to the infamous pistol range that served as an execution site as well. One time 92 russian POWs were killed at one time. This site was disturbing in its own right as they had made a drainage ditch for blood that ran out of those who were shot. After walking past a couple memorial sites, we started back towards the main building. Before leaving, we went through the prison bunker, where political prisoners were held, such as one man who tried assasonating Hitler on a visit to Munich. We both were kind of suprised to find a prison within a prison. Most of the rooms were about 8 feet by 8 feet with a small window high on the wall, and a small opening on the door. There were a couple rooms for solitary confinement in the dark. There it was said they would get water and a pound of bread to last them 3 days in the dark, with a prisoner meal every 4th day, which never amounted to much. Still, life in here was probably a bit better than in the main camp if that is possible.

After that it was time to head back. Neither of us really said much for a bit as we were trying to take all of what we'd just seen in and were both pretty effected by the past few hours. We couldn't imagine what the soldiers who found and liberated this camp went through, as some of them even snapped and executed around 30 ss guards. Its really hard to imagine that not that many years ago this site was home to one of the most evil events in history, but it really ties together some of the feelings we had visiting Omaha beach.

We took the train back to our hosts apartment to pack up and said our goodbyes. We will miss staying with Florian and Andreas, as we had a great time staying with them and getting to know them. We hope someday we can host them in the US. We would love to show them around the twin cities, and take them to Valleyfair, as Andreas especially is fond of rides. Before we left, Andreas had us take a shot of "schnapps", which he said is how they say goodbye. Of course we knew he was making this up, but we did anyways. We arrived just in time at the train station to catch the next train to Salzburg Austria. The Train ride was beautiful as we made our way to the mountains once again. Coming into Salzburg we caught a glimpse of the castle we want to tour, and Heather sang "the hills are alive with the sound of music" waiting for our city train to the hostel.

The only directions we had to the hostel were go left up the hill out of the train stop,then make a left on the road the hostel is on. They should really change "up the hill" to climb the Bavarian Alps. It seemed like we walked a mile up the mountain, having to take a break part way up. The hostel is more a bed and breakfast really. There is a stunning view of Salzburg from atop this hill, and our room is gorgeous as well. We debated walking down the hill to explore, but thought it would be better to call it an early night and save the energy for tomorrow. After all, we do have lots of dancing in flower covered hills to do and sing our hearts out.

Munich, Germany - If it's at the train station: we will eat it.

Monday, September 22

We had grand plans of visiting Dachau but unfortunatly they are closed on Mondays. What to do, what to do???

First of all: Sleep in.

Then: Lay around and hang out with the fun german guys

Next: Catch up on emails.

Ok enough of that.

We did get somewhat productive!! We did our laundry which if we do not do every 4-5 days will will be arrested for public nudity. While that was brewing we walked down to the grocery store. Of course it was raining, freezing and we had no umbrella. But no big deal, it wasn't as bad as the walk home one night in Amsterdam. We were in search of a traditional german meal but with no restaurants open Charlie was in charge of cooking. We still are shocked by the low prices in Munich, only 15 US dollars for a bottle of grand marnier ... that's about 1/2 off. We got some german brats, sour kraut, tiny potatoes and the best mustards in the world, yum! Oh I should add it's our duty as american's (and our loyal blog readers) to try as much chocolate as we can in each country.

We got back to Florian's and cooked a great meal, did a lot of planning for the days ahead when we'd be traveling to Austria and Italy.

A little later in the afternoon we decided going back to Oktoberfest was a capitol idea! So on the train we hopped. We made a quick stop at a store called C&A which is maybe like a big Old Navy or GAP. Heather got a red fleece because she was freezing.

As promised we went to a church. Not just any church: St Paul's Cathedral! After a few days in Germany it was very much in order. The church was very different, clean whites and almost no colors but still very nice.

Ok on to Oktoberfest again. It was a completely different crowd this time. We walked in to the paramedics strapping a young (we assume american) man to a stretcher who had enough to drink till oktoberfest of 2010. Mostly we wanted to try out some of the great food we had passed up the first time we came. Kaiserschmarrn was in order to start with as you read in our earlier blog we haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Heather even took a picture of the menu so we'd remember the name. Yum it was heaven, like a toasted pancakes with sweet raisins topped with powdered sugar. If that didn't nearly melt in our mouth there was a creamy apple sauce on the side with cherries. We each had a liter off beer taking our total count up to 11 liters from the other day. While we enjoyed our dessert we saw another guy giving "the bums rush" out the door and thrown on the street. Better luck next year buddy.

We took a stole down the main drag of Oktoberfest stopping to get some candied cashews and laughing at anyone who thinks rides are a good idea after even having 1 liter of beer.

Oh and we found something that really puts the "about a foot long" hot dog to shame at the Mn State fair: The ONE METER brat. Yes you heard right, 3 feet of brat goodness. No we didn't get it but did drool over it.

Our favorite tent was the Lowenbrau tent with the lion the roared and took a swig of beer after his roar. We split one beer there just to say we'd been there and called it a day before we started dancing on tables and making more international friends.

So back to the train station. Here we are in the magical train station finding ourselves hungry (yet again). Heather had a scoop of amaretto gelato, charlie had a fruit and cream one... and the trouble began. It's like once we started eating we were addicted... everything was wonderful and finally cheap! We found chocolate filled croissants, waffle filled raspberries and cream cheese, mini spring rolls... oh my!

After enough stuffing ourselves we got on the train and headed back to Florian and Andreas apartments. Florian was out for the night seeing a band but Andreas was up and ready for fun. Andreas is going to school for engineering and spends most of his time at home "learning" which we think is really cute. Before we left he said, "make sure you drink beer in Germany." Yes as if we would forget to do that. So we finally drank our 12% world's best and most rare trappist monk beer. All we can really say is yes, it does live up the hype. We'd like to save the other for our "best meal ever" in Italy. We shared some of our beer with Andreas who was happy then to share more of his beer with us. The hours past and we laughed the night away. We showed pictures of our dogs and families from back home and asked him more questions about those crazy german drinking songs. Asking about german drinking songs turned into him getting out the songs and all of us singing along... including the huge germans hits: Country Roads and Hey Baby.

As long as we live we will never forget one of Andreas stories. He is on a table tennis team that goes on a yearly trip up to the mountains. Andreas had a special job and shirt: he had to teach the younger guys how to drink hard liquor. Well as you can imagine the story just got funnier and he brought out his computer to show us all the pictures to go along with it. He said the next day on the way back it was tradition for them to keep drinking. He said once he "lost his mind" and remembers nothing but what his friends told him, including how he was dropped off at his parents house and he said: "they were not impressed." We laughed so hard and so long as this that the neighbor downstairs came up to tell us to be quiet. Soon the neighbor was laughing too. We both thought... yeah I doubt our parents would be "impressed" with us if we came home in that state.

But the silver lining to his story is after that day he does not drink hard liquor anymore. Except: mixed drinks and anything under 20%... we also had a very good laugh about this.

Andreas told us about german schnapps which is NOTHING like american schnapps. This is not sweet and will nearly kill you we think cause most likely was made in a bathtub of sorts. We declined shots which was a good thing and headed off to bed where we laughed for another 20 minutes recalling the stories Andreas had shared with us.

Heather said, "Can we please take him home, he's so cute and he won't be any trouble... I'll take care of him, I promise!!!!"

Munich...Food for thought

Sunday, September 21

Oktoberfest and lots of traveling took its toll on us. We didn't get up until about 11am. We spent a couple hours drinking water to re-hydrate ourselves and catching up on emails. We went through our pictures of oktoberfest and had a good laugh remembering all the fun times the night before.

We set out in search of food in the middle of the afternoon, wandering to what looked like a business district, but the few places we came across weren't open, so we started walking in the direction of the Aldi supermarket. Apparently everything in this suburb of Munich shuts down on sunday, much like downtown St. Paul. We decided to catch the train into downtown Munich and search for something there.

Exiting the train station, we took off across the street in search of anything we could find. Apparently the train station is in the Indian/Middle East part of the city, as every restaurant we saw for about 3 square blocks sold nothing but falafel and kababs. We settled on a place that had a heated indoor sit down area as most of them were just outside seating. Heather would have preferred to eat in the machine that cooks the gyro meat, but that is probably frowned upon. We ordered up some sort of beef gyro type sandwich and an order of fries. The sandwich was delicious, of course, so we finished our sodas in the heated restaurant and decided to walk back towards the station.

We poked back in a little connivence type store we saw on the way, and somehow, we were hungry again. This time we got a brat with the yummy mustard on it and some sort of berry pastry. We stood at a little bar type area customers could eat at and enjoyed our 2nd meal of the day. We both love how they serve brats on a delicious toasted baguette. Neither of us spoke while we ate.

Back inside the train station we stumbled upon something wonderful, the food court. The Germans know how to make a food court. Its not the typical type consisting of fast food chains and mall style chinese food, oh no. What they have resembles the taste of the globe buffet at the Rio in Las Vegas. And its cheap. First things first, we got some apricot gelato. Again, it was cheap, only 1 euro (normally 3-4 euros). We enjoyed it while we walked through deciding our next purchases. We drooled over a huge bakery area with many great looking pastry's, a chinese food station, served on actual china plates with some food made to order, a huge sandwich bar, pizzas, pretzels, and also a small grocery area.

After finishing the gelato it was time for more for more food. Apparently a long day at octoberfest will make you hungry. Next up was a pretzel Heather had had her eye on, cut in half like a bagel with butter and chives spread on it. You'd think we'd have had enough by now after eating about 3 meals, but the bakery area caught our eye on the walk back to our subway. Charlie was caught dead in his tracks by one particular pastry, one filled with the famed Bavarian cream. We purchased one and giggled our way over to table and dove in. It can best be described as the best glazed krispy creme donut on the planet filled with the best cream on the planet. Neither of us said a word while eating it, just enjoyed it. When it was all gone, we even felt bad for throwing away the bag it came in because it had a little bit of cream smeared on it. We thought we better get back on the train back to our host's home before we became obese.

Back at the house we messed around online a bit and called it an early night. All in all a great day of recovery.

DISCLAIMER

We promise we are doing something cultural soon or at the least going to church.

Munich, Germany - Oktoberfest 9/5,000,000 beers

What a great night's sleep! The cupboard under the stairs was amazing. We both think we get a lot better rest when we're not in a hostel, big shock right?

A day that starts the same as most, the evil alarm goes off and we fight it for a good hour. After we clean up it's off to Oktoberfest. Looking back we really doubt we needed ANY direction on how to get there: follow anyone dressed in traditional german get up. Florian wasn't really interested in going so he told us the train station to get out at. On my gosh we crammed like cattle onto this train full of fest-goers.

When we rode the escalator up we were smack in the middle of the fest, no worries about finding our way. Oktoberfest is so much more than we expected. It's like the Minnesota state fair minus the animals and 100 times the beer. When they say beer tent they don't mean tent, they mean really nice buildings with tables as long as the eye could see. It was wonderful! We aren't sure who would want to go on rides they had there (really big carnival ones) cause just watching how fast they were going was enough to make our head spin.

We both felt a bit embarrassed by any american man under 30, you could spot them just acting like idiots... typical college boys.

First day of Oktoberfest goes something like this.... at 11:30 a big big parade goes down the street with each brewery having a band and a bringing all their kegs to their respective tents. It's really amazing to see, even the horses are dressed up to the 9s. 6-7 breweries run the tents or beirgartens and only serve their beer in there. Getting in is the trick. You need a reservation made in at least February and those are spendy IF you can even get one. We of course did not have one and just tried our luck.

Beer is beer right? Well that's what we said for the day, we took off our beer snob hats and sort of slummed it. All the beers here are light in color lagers, really nothing exciting with a lot of taste but oh well :) With beers coming in 1 liter glasses weighing around 5 pounds, not much to stick our noses up at.

All said and done, we made it out of Oktoberfest very cheap. If you think you need to make table reservations early you might want to look for a hotel for Oktoberfest a few years ahead of time and then still expect to pay a second mortgage. Ahh but we are cheap,... ugh I mean smart. Since we are staying for free with Florian and it's free to get into the fest and the tents really all you need to do is buy beer and food. Beer and food were not bad priced, around 8 euros for a 1 liter of beer (about 38 ounces or more than 3 cans of beer) and 1/2 meter brats on baguettes only 4 euros. Those brats kind of put our state fair foot longs to shame, not to mention the delicious mustard that goes on them. It was a really smooth, creamy dijon style that was a bit sweet.

We walked around eating a brat, corn on the cob and a small bag of popcorn. I think food is a universal language. Without a word we were exchanging homemade pretzels for popcorn and raising our glasses in a toast with friendly italian men.

At the time we didn't know it, but we got in a tent and witnessed the tapping of the first keg, but as young fools here for the first time, we left the tent in search of.... we don't know really?! This was also where we first saw the women who served beer carrying our 10 or 12 liters of beer at a time! We were very impressed with their strength and ability to weave through the mobs of people without spilling.

Now onto serious business trying to get into a tent! We would like to add that it was unseasonably cold this day too, Charlie is quite the gentleman and gave his vest to Heather (aka the freeze baby). We stood in line at a few different gartens but no one was getting in, they were full up (even a 20 euro handshake didn't work for one guy). One of our favorites had a giant lion over the entrance growling the name of the brewer and taking a swig from his giant beer mug. The best we could do was get a table outside a garten and make more friends. We found two spots and jumped on them fast. We sat with a german couple, another german man and on the end a few guys from New York. The german woman was very nice in answering all of our oktoberfest questions and translating the menu. One of the traditional foods to get is 1/2 a chicken. We probably should have eaten more than splitting a brat and popcorn earlier. The german couple ordered a wonderful looking desert made of apples and raisins and like a fried donut covered in powdered sugar. We aren't sure of the name of it, but we regret not getting one, and might go back monday night just to eat food.

Our first liter of oktoberfest beer!!! (the previous beer was only a 1/2 liter) There was much toasting, and all those drinking songs we heard on the train were everywhere too. We probably sat out there an hour or two. The only thing to complain about at Oktoberfest would be the lines for the bathroom. Heather was gone for over 40 minutes once... and we guess they could exist somewhere we didn't see but we could not find the "vomit-torium" as we read somewhere. While sitting outside the table next to us was full of italian men who gave us cheese and crackers, and Heather stole a bite of brat. After they left some younger kids from florida sat down, and we made friends with them and exchanged travel stories and suggestions (including the wonderful bar in Brussels).

Because of the weather we think a lot of people didn't show up the first day and around mid afternoon we caught a break and weaseling inside to the WONDERFUL HEATED Paulander beirgarten. Again, more friends to be made. And yes things may get a bit fuzzy. We kept saying how great it would be to have all our friends and family here at this celebration. Inside there are long wood tables and benches. The benches are really not for sitting on, everyone stood on them arm in arm and danced for the rest of the night. The next few hours were filled with beers and laughter. Our table was occupied by a woman from Austria and 2 younger girls, one assuming to be her daughter, a man from turkey, and a german couple. Heather was trying to play love connection with the austrian woman and the turkish man, who promptly told her they just met 3 hours ago! Like stated earlier, the benches were merely a suggestion to sit on, their real purpose was to stand on and sing and dance. We were waiting for them to break, as they would bow a lot in the middle with 5-6 people standing and dancing on them at a time. Not to mention they got very slippery with all the beer being sloshed around and spilled on them. One thing we liked was all the covers of older american songs. We heard Frank Sinatras "new york", sweet home alabama, summer of 69, and of course country roads take me home many many times. The next few hours were spent dancing on tables and benches, singing, drinking beer, and making friends from all over the world. One thing we did notice was we looked like the funny ones not dressed up, so we made a promise to dress up next time we go. Something like 80% or more of the people were dressed up in traditional clothing.

All good things must come to an end, and drinking hours are fairly short here...9am til 1030pm, so we found our way back to the subway and caught the next train back to our host home. Waiting for the train Heather took a seat next to a german man named Didi, who shared his snacks with her. She's good at looking hungry or thirsty to strangers if it involves anything free. When we got back, Florian and his roommate Andreas were quite proud of us for living through our first unsupervised oktoberfest, finding our way back, and for each consuming 4.5 liters of beer. We had heard that during oktoberfest, 5 million liters of beer our consumed, so we felt proud to drink 9 of those 5 million. We declined their offer for one more before bed. It was only about 1030pm, but it had been an eventful day, so sleep was much welcomed. We cant wait for next year!!!!

Munich, Germany - All Aboard!

Friday, September 19

7:30am came way too fast. It was a short nights sleep in a room with 20 people. At first the light was on until Heather got up and shut it off, multiple people snoring, and somewhere around 2 or 3 am 2 girls came into the room, one speaking softly, and one basically yelling, with the entire room telling her to be quiet. We got out of bed, ate some breakfast and made plans to just sleep on the 5 hour train ride to Munich. We made sure we had change for the "machine that walks for us" to get us up the hill while carrying our backpacks. At the train station we hopped on the first train for the hour trip to Zurich where we would have a one hour layover to catch the next train to Munich.

In Zurich we walked across the street to McDonalds to use the internet while we waited. Heather bought a happy meal of chicken nuggets and curry sauce, and we worked on the blog a bit and checked email. We should say we only go to McDonalds because they are a sure place for free internet, provided you by something. So we usually go and split a soda. We can assure you we are not dining at all the McDonalds in Europe. We got on our next train, and much to our surprise we had a private 6 person cabin all to ourselves!! For those paying attention, we should have taken notice when we sat on the train in the station for about half an hour, before being told we had to move to a different car because of one of the second class cars not having electricity, so they had to split the train and take a couple cars out of the train. Luckily we got our own private cabin again, where we promptly shut the curtains and napped for about an hour. At a stop along the Switzerland-German border we found ourselves sitting once again for about an hour. We really did not get a good explanation of what happened other than our engine had left the train and were either waiting for a new one to come along, or they would put the people on our train on the next one coming by. At about 2:45pm, the next train came along, and all the people on our train now attempted find seating on a near full train. We tried getting our seats in first class since we had reserved seats on the last train, but to no avail, so we found ourselves wandering the train in search of seats. We walked through the dining car, where it seemed some pre-partying for oktoberfest was going on, so we kinda hung out near the kitchen for a few minutes, hoping for a seat to open up. Shortly after an older couple got up and we quickly took their spots with some guys maybe in their mid 30's on their way to oktoberfest. We had NO idea what we were getting into here.

We sat down and ordered a beer and began talking and introducing ourselves, and really in Europe you introduce yourself by your country, names are optional. There was a group of about 40 Swiss men (bankers) on their way to party in Munich, and one guy from Australia traveling on his own. We soon found our new friends to be quiet fun and entertaining. One of them had an ipod hooked up to some speakers they were blasting what we now know are German drinking songs, and the entire group was singing along. We felt kind of bad for an older gentleman who was dressed up in a suit eating a very nice meal, next to 40 plus party goers. He proved to be a very good sport though, and even got a hug later on in the train ride. The next 3 hours on the train were kind of a blur and a lot to take in, so forgive us if we jump around a little. Most of these guys had been to Oktoberfest many times before, except for one, who claims it was his first one. The australian guy had been there once last year. They told us stories of past experiences, what to expect there, and different traditions that go on there.

One we asked about was we'd noticed all of them putting some kind of brown powder on the backs of their hands and snorting it. We assumed it wasn't any type of hard drug, as they were doing it right in the open on a packed train, and also they were fairly respectable people when not partying on trains. They said it was powdered tobacco, and was a Bavarian thing to do, especially at oktoberfest, and really wasn't any worse than smoking a cigarette. At one point a guy in a red t-shirt bumped into the waiter, causing him to spill his tray and break a glass. The waiter looked quite mad, and we thought maybe he'd put an end to the fun everyone was having, but he turned out to be a good sport, and later on he posed for pictures and chatted with everyone. The same waiter who went from crabby to friendly at the drop of a bottle was running his own deals for sur.e, the price of beers shifted all through the ride and at one point a conversation went something like this:
Heather - "We'd like to order two more beers."
Waiter - "No more beers, all out!"
Heather - "Really!?! No beers?"
Waiter - "No beers, all gone!"
Heather - "Are you sure?"
Waiter - "Fine we have beer in cans."

Towards the last hour of the train ride there was quite a party going. The ipod stereo had made its way to our table somehow. We found it VERY funny that a huge hit here was a remake of the John Denver song "country roads". There was also a song Heather dubbed "the german macarena", which we're assuming told a story of cowboys as the dance involved swinging a lasso and shooting pistols and scanning the horizon for indians. We could be way off on this as we are just going by hand gestures as we didn't know the words.

Like our other train journeys... we arrived in Munich an hour late missing the meeting with our german host Florian. As the 100's of people piled off the train we stumbled along with our heavy packs and tried to make heads or tails of this new city and find the city train to Florians. Trains where pretty easy to use here which was good because we may have only been running on a few brain cells. Since we've been planning train troubles into our journey we were prepared with directions on how to find Florian's house. He only lived maybe 50 meters from the station, and of course we could do nothing but apologize for our lateness.

Florian was great! He lives in a two bedroom apartment, of course on the top floor with his room mate Andreas. Florian is still in college studying English and Sports so communications was really easy for all of us. Like a good german host he offered us a beer right away but we'd had about enough for a while. He showed us where we will be stayed. Has everyone read Harry Potter? Good. You'll know what we mean when we reference the cupboard under the stairs. It was private... no it was perfect! A lot of thought went into decorating this room. The low slanted wall/ceiling had dark blue wallpaper with glow-in-the-dark stars, the floors were a bunch of mattresses pushed together to make one, a discoball, lava lamp and polar bear type fur blanket, million pillows and bean bag chair made us laugh and smile :)

After we settled we took a walk with Florian to the local grocery store, picked up some cheap dinner and headed back. WOW the prices here are 1/4 of what we paid in Switzerland. Oh and we have solid way to gage how expensive a city is. We always go check out the tiramisu for two at the grocery store... whatever price that is will tell you all we need to know.

Back at Florian's we all had a nice german beer (oh hell, why not?). We talked for a while then we made our dinner. Spaetzle (a sort of potato pasta), red sauce, sliced chicken, and three triangles of soft cheese made us a meal fit for royalty. We did our usual "oh we'll never eat all this" and of course almost licked the bowl clean.

We are off to bed in our cool room because tomorrow it's time for Oktoberfest!! And from our friends on the train we learned you need to get there early if you want a chance at getting in a tent.