After Frankfurt we ventured to southern Germany to the wonderful city of Munich where the infamous Oktoberfest takes place every year. Our couchsurfing host in Munich lived at home with his parents in a suburb right outside of the city. Such a wonderful family!! Ever since being in Australia, I have become quite the techno/house nerd... turns out our host, Lukas is into that as well. Felix Krocher was playing that night at a club in the city and he made plans for us to go meet up with some of his buddies and eventually make our way to the show. Around 4pm that day we started mixing some drinks at his house and had some dinner. He told us that Felix probably would start around 5 and last until 10ish... straight away I was like wow thats pretty early, will we even make it there in time to see him? Nope he definitely meant that Felix would start at 5AM! ....welcome to europe randi, get your head in the game. That night turned out to be such a blast... met a bunch of his buddies who were all loads of fun. A lot of them could barely speak english, but it made everything that much more fun and interesting. Felix ended up playing early - and by early i mean he came on around 3am. Finally ended the night around 6am and made our way back to sleep most the day away.
(heads up, this might possibly be the worst blog to date but i am suffering from a massive hangover and the fire alarm wont stop going off)
Our second night in Munich Sam and I actually went downtown to go explore like a normal person would. We ended up making it as far as the Hofbrauhaus, one of the most popular beer drinking halls in Munich. Once we saw the steins (giant glass of beer), our hearts were captured =) but on a serious note, it was really cool...loads of crazy Germans were there singing, eating, drinking the HB.
After a 7 hour train ride the next day, we finally made it to BERLIN! ...and yes i did see the exact window michael jackson held his child out of =D success. We got to Berlin on a Sunday night and all weekend there was a Festival of Cultures going on.. so we got to partake in the festivities all sunday evening. They had a parade that had started at noon and lasted until after 9pm! It was the most incredible parade ever.... it consisted of giant 'floats' that had the tunes cranked and a bunch of people on the float dancing and partying haha...oh those Germans. But straight away we met two German guys while at the ATM and hung out with them for the rest of the night. The whole downtown area was closed to traffic and was packed full of people...for those of you who are familiar with the scene in madison during Mifflin, it is similar to that only a way bigger area and possibly even more nuts. But is that German beer ever delicious! and of course we had a currywurts that evening...its like a hot dog/brat with some type of goulash sauce. hard to explain, just google image a picture of it! At the end of the night we had to catch the metro back to our hosts house and we were a bit far from the nearest station, but the guys we were with had bicycles so sam and i rode on the back of them while they drove through all the traffic! it might be one of those 'you had to have been there moments' to get a laugh out of it...
Our host in Berlin was so awesome, he took off of work that Monday to show us around the city. Monday we literally drove to all ends of the city on a food frenzy so we could have the best sushi, ice cream, kebab and beer in the city. we had a slow start to the morning, so our food travels took up most of the day. but that evening we went out to a few different bars, i reckon to make sure we washed that food down properly. In Berlin they have so many beach bars that are right along the rivers, so much fun.
Our last full day in Berlin we finally did a free walking tour. before the tour sam and i decided to get a cup of joe from starbucks to help wake us up (god forbid we had to be there at 11am). And as luck would have it, the top of sams coffee popped off when she was drinking it and it spilled all down her yellow dress! haha! But the tour was pretty legit, we saw the Brandenburg gate, a holocaust memorial, where MJ decided to hang his little one out, and also got to see Hitlers bunker. That was pretty neat- consisted of a parking lot and a small patch of grass...haha you would never know it was his bunker b/c there is nothing there that marks it or says anything- some things just dont need to be advertised and rightly so. That night sam, our host Norman and I all went to a show at the Friedrichstadt Palast (the theatre with the largest stage in europe) for the YMA show... SUCH a great show! it was kind of like Cirque de soleil but twelve times better.. so many acrobatics and crazy stunts it was unreal. After the show we bought a couple bottles of wine and walked along the river that goes thru the city and reminisced with Norman, it was such a great night and Berlin is a gorgeous city!
Overall, Germany was amazing....would LOVE to be there for Oktoberfest. Those Germans are nuts ...after visiting both Ireland and Germany I have a deeper appreciation of my heritage and have learned quite a bit about myself..... such as the fact that I will probably die from liver failure, going back to the states and drinking crap beer will be devastating, and that it is possible for this girl to keep up with some real professional drinkers!
The bicycle part is the best part of this story...and the pop topping off the coffee ;)
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