Oktober"bestweekendofmylife"Fest

OKTOBERFEST! sorry it has taken me so long to blog about this weekend. It was just so jammed packed and filled with "fun" that I've been trying to recover. As the title indicates, it was truly the best weekend of my life. DISCLOSURE: parents/noni/adults- this blog will obviously tell all my details of the drinking weekend, and you guys know I can't leave anything out, so maybe you want to skip this blog if you're feeling uncomfortable. :) OKAY LET THE STORY BEGIN....

We booked the trip through a company called "Bus2Alps" which is a student-based travel program. Since it was such a last minute decision to go (I initially planned to go with another friend who bailed and canceled our trip, so we had to act quickly and plan again), the only option they had was a camping package. I was hesitant at first, the whole no showering after attending a heavy drinking festival, but it was the best decision to camp. The campsite is an affiliate of Bus2Alps, known as StokeTravel, which is run by Australians. WHO I LOVE. Everything about them. The slogan of their company is "Your tent or mine?".  Hahah so funny. The Australians love to party... let me just say. In fact, so much so, that when I was talking to a German who asked about my travel arrangements, reponded with "Just hope its not run by Australians. They're crazy". Anyways, my friend Lauren and I, along with our 3 guy friends, Ben, Mike and Tom, boarded a bus Thursday night at 1130pm. The bus ride to Munich was 8 hours, so we barely slept on the bus. We arrived at the campsite at 8am. The first thing we saw when we stepped off the bus was Australians heading for us...with beers, tons of beers. And beer bongs. We were in shock. Naturally, before even checking in, they were handing us drinks. One really funny Aussie even made me do a beer bong. Don't worry guys, I did it well. And the first girl, mind you, who stepped up to the plate. No big deal :) Then we checked in to our tent. The rows of the tents each had ridiculously inappropriate titles, those damn Aussies, (ill leave the other names out for censor purposes) but ours was entitled M9, which was known as Mangina 9.

 
Home Sweet Home! Lauren I shared the tent, and the boys were a couple rows down. There's was P5, anyone want to take a guess what the name of their "P" row was? Moving on, after beer bongs, we headed to the bus at 9am to head to Oktoberfest. I always thought Oktoberfest was strictly about beer and beer with a side of beer. And don't get me wrong it is that too, but it's really a big carnival. There were SOOO many German families there, enjoying pretzels and riding the rides, amidst drunken tourists. It was really quite a weird vibe. Picture Disneyland on steroids, well probably on beer. It was really quite beautiful and it smelled like funnel cakes and churros, but the German equivalent. Everyone was dressed in leiterhosen or drendels (the German outfits), like 75% of the population, even tourists. I tried on a drendel, but it was 100 euro, and that was NOT the way I wanted to spend my money. So I stuck to jeans and a tee shirt just so everyone could tell just how American i was.

We headed to the "Hofbrau" tent, which is the touristy tent, and very friendly towards Americans, particularly the rowdy American crowd. Naturally the American college student population filled this tent, including us. It was actually the tent we spent 95% of our time, or waiting outside to get in. We got in, found a table, and ordered our first steins! Which is the equivalent to 3-4 beers, but the alcohol content is increased, so in reality its probably 6 US beers. The beer was delicious! At Oktoberfest, when someone chugs a beer, they jump up on the table and everyone around, like everyone in this huge tent, starts cheering. The first time we all saw this we were in awe, particularly when we realized the guy on the table chugging, happened to be our good friend Dane. It was awesome. Ben was next, and everyone around started clapping for us. Lauren and I, sipped ours way more casually, knowing that nothing good can come from chugging a stein aka 6 beers before 11am.

The day was so fun. The first Europeans we met were from Croatia, of all places! They were so drunk, but so funny. I told them all about my lovely noni and Croatian background. They tried to tell me these phrases to say to her because I told them she spoke Croatian. I wrote one down, but the sober Croatian (a godsend) next to me warned me what it ACTUALLY meant, and we cracked up. So Noni, I can not say what they told me to say, because it is just not appropriate. Haha, they were so fun and nice though. They even drew me a map, which is horrendous looking and so inaccurate, of all the places to I've been in Croatia, and then circled where I need to go to visit them. We then ran into some Italians who were not as cool. They bought Lauren and I two steins, and we immediately booked it back to our friends with free steins in hands. A bonus of being a girl, saved 10 Euro! We stayed till about 2 o'clock, and then we realized it was deeeefinately nap time. So we took the bus back to the campsite, and took a little power nap. Only to be woken up by the Australian camp directors, who deemed that 7 pm was party time again. For 15 euro you got unlimited beer/sangria for the weekend, did I mention that? So great. So we hung out at the campsite, danced to silly American songs they were playing, and eventually wandered over to another part of the campgrounds which played live music. We sang our hearts out and eventually lost our voices. Then around midnight, we called it a night, knowing tomorrow would be just as, if not more, crazy. 

We woke up at 7am to get ready to head over to the festival. Saturday is the craziest day, and they warn you if your not there by 10am, you won't get a table anywhere. We ate our free Aussie breakfast, which I have no idea what it was, it was some sort of meat cooked with potatoes and veggies. It was pretty good. Factoring in eating, and getting ready delayed us some and then the bus was late. We ended up waiting for an hour. Ben and Mike got so tired of waiting they took a little power nap while waiting.

So funny. We arrived around 10am to the festival, and it was JAM PACKED. There was people and lines everywhere. We waited for about 45 minutes just to get into the beer garden at HaufBrau, not even inside the tent. After in the beer garden, we re-entered another line, but this time we had steins so it obviously was more enjoyable, to get into the actual tent. We waited for about 2 hours in line, but it might have been more fun than the actual tent itself. There was about 8 of us standing pushed against tons of europeans, with our steins in hand. We decided to be super American, and started singing American songs at the top of our lungs. Clearly we started with the National Anthem, then made our way down to the classics, ie Journey "dont stop believing", "Build me up buttercup", then a little further to the not so good music, ie britney spears. I filmed a clip of it, just because we were laughing so hard. Half the people in line were irritated, while the other Europeans were giving us "PROSTS!" (cheers) because we were having so much fun.

When we made it into the actual tent around 1pm, it felt like Christmas morning. We all started hugging and high fiving. We then got more steins and prosted everyone we saw, then we met up with kids from Gonzaga, Santa Clara, and even Cal Poly. We eventually made it out of the tent, and walked around. Some of our friends went on the rides, but I couldn't bear the thought of a rollercoaster and beer in my stomach, so I was the mom who held everyone's purses and sweaters while they went on the ride. We then grabbed pretzels, which were bigger than our faces (see pic of my friend Mike below), but so delicious. We headed back to the campsite about 6 to take more naps. Naps and Oktoberfest go hand and hand, trust me.

We woke up at about 730pm for our free campsite dinner of hotdogs and hamburgers. The picture of Lauren and our friend Corrinne below shows the massive size of the hotdog which Ben INSISTED was in our picture. We hung out around the campsite doing the same thing we did the night before. Laughing, talking, drinking sangria and beer. I started talking to one of the StokeTravel boys, an Australian named Meeeeek, acutally Mick, but it sounds cooler if you try and say it in an accent. He was so funny and I think I love him? haha. We hung out the rest of the night talking about stupid stuff, but it was such a good time. Moral of the story, I MUST go to Australia, it is where I belong, with Australian people, particularly the men :).
 
Sunday morning, you will be glad to hear, was a day of rest and recovery. Ben, Mike, Lauren and myself wandered Munich, seeing the city center and the English gardens and everything in between. Munich is ABSOLUTELY beautiful, everywhere we turned was "oh look at that" "did you see this?" etc. We even stumbled into a part of the English garden which is a nude part? It even said so on the map when we looked later. Of course it was all gross old German men, but still pretty funny.

We wandered around from 10am until 2:30pm when we had to head back to the campsite to pack up. We left back on the bus at 4pm and got home to Florence around midnight. It was honestly one of the greatest experiences in my life, meeting so many new people and just having a good time. At first, I was a little hesitant, and seriously wasn't planning to go. I was actually scared of a festival based on drinking and being totally out of my element, but I really felt like I lived in every and enjoyed each moment. I guess that's apart of the whole growing experience. I wouldn't have changed the camping part for a hostel/hotel either! Not only because I met my Australian love, but also because we really got the whole Oktoberfest experience and met so many awesome people. We did drink alot, but we also had a ton of sober fun. I felt like I got to know the Gonzaga boys way better and we expanded our friend group with the Aussies, who might plan a trip to Florence? Heaven? I think so.  I will never forget this weekend. Okay adults- you made it through this post! Trust me, I promise the entire weekend we were so safe, with boys (who are all over 5'10) the entire time. We never got out of hand drunk or did anything dumb. You raised me right :) Miss you all.